Week 7 Update

Most of the past week was spent preparing our design plan in hopes of fine-tuning it this week and having it ready next Tuesday. Each of us has taken the responsibility of getting specific information from each of our schools about the learners that will be using our program. This data will be combined to depict an overall view of the learners. We also spent time looking at all the various media that our project will utilize and began to plan out where that media will be used. We created a media strategy grid and began to plug in all the different types of media and which of those we will use and where. We rationalized the fact that students will have limited choice in our program. Although they will be able to have choice within the sequence of subtopics in each category, however the categories must be viewed in a particular order (concrete to abstract). Since our program is motivational, the way to test success would be through a Likert Inventory to test student behaviors both before and after. We are still working on both the treatment and interfaces. It was decided that the overall mood of the program would deal with searching out information and having the program set in a detective agency. This would cause our treatment to lean toward a Carmen Sandiego-like appearance with each aspect dealing with searching for clues. The interface will also reflect our decision.

Health Status: Stable. We are still moving along well. There is minor pressure on getting all the information together for our design plan next week.

Week 6 Update

This week we began to think about how we need to chunk our content for maximum effectiveness. We needed to figure out what different categories and main headings would fit best within our program. For example, the focus of motivating students will take place in five different categories; money, time, measurement, fractions, and probability. We arranged these topics in this order because it shows a natural progression from concrete to abstract thinking. In order to have consistent media, we began to think about what we want to have in each category, whether a testimonial will precede each page as an introduction or how text and video will play a role. Our next step is to map the whole project out by working on our media strategies and how they will fit into our flow chart consistently. Since our project is one that is motivational, we need to come up with a plan on how to measure whether or not the students’ motivation has been increased. We will need to begin researching motivational strategies and how researchers have measured whether or not students have become more motivated.

Health Status: Although we are still itching to work on our theme and treatment, we are still gathering content and moving along. No major problems or difficulties have occurred yet. Stress levels are low, but as the planning and development stages begin, we will have an increased workload that may push the stress level up.

Week 5 Update

This week we realized that we needed to take a step back from our thinking. We were so excited about the theme that it took over most of our project and we were not focusing on the content. Thus far, we have narrowed down our focus and what we would like to include. We are currently searching for content to fill those areas and plan on how the content will be communicated in our project. In order to show real word uses of math, it would be beneficial to use a mix of video and photos. The use of tutorials will also be important to communicate attitudes and misconceptions. After collecting the content in the areas that we have chosen, our next step is to come up with a consistent use for the media and map out a flow chart to show how our project will be navigated.

Health Status: We are doing all right. After taking a step backward we are starting to see how the content we collect will impact the overall design. Once the content is gathered, flow-charted, and a consistent media is decided on, we will then be able to work with the theme.

Week 4 Update

This week our initial proposal was reviewed with Dr. Abed. After the feedback, we began to think of a different way to present our content and devise a better theme for our project. In the beginning, we were thinking about being a detective in a house and trying to find evidence for math through the different rooms. Our revised plan now includes a detective agency that was hired to find evidence of math in the world. This would allow our content to not only include things that are found around the house, but also throughout the world. We began to think of the different elements that each concept would have in our program so that they would be kept consistent throughout the program. Our next step will be to create the different media strategies for each section and give them a purpose.

Our proposal is begin revised with the changes made from last week.

Health Status: We are very excited about our new ideas and are looking forward to continuing with our plan.

Week 3 Update

This week has been one of preliminary planning. We took a look at the different projects that were handed in during previous semesters and began to think about what our program should include. Some of the basic similarities between all the projects were the logo, and the introduction video followed by a main menu that led us into the program. From there the projects began to vary. One of the things that we realized that would be an essential part in both our designing of the video and assessment was the use of the student handbook. We felt that since our program will be designed to motivate students, having them write reflections and observations would be a good way to assess what they take away from the video.

From there, we started to think about content and what types of information our program should include. We came up with a very rough draft of some of the topics and navigational points we would like to see. We listed the different math areas that we thought students would be able to relate to and constrict meaning from. We also started to think about a very tentative flow chart, which includes the ideas from paragraph one as well as different navigational points throughout.

Health Status: We are feeling okay at this point. We are still eager to hear what Dr. Abed will say about our proposal and anything we can do to focus our intent. It seems that we have a long way to go in such a short period of time, but once we get feedback we can begin to think about all our paperwork for our binder.

Week 2 Update

This past week there has been discussion over completing our proposal and all the elements that are required in it. The first thing we did was create a title that represents what we want our product to show. Keeping with the theme of Math in the real world, we created a subtitle to help further explain our purpose. Some of the basic elements were discussed as to what we wanted to display visually. In order to show Math in the real word, video would be essential to our multimedia presentation. Before we broke off on our own, the project manager collected the rest of the needed information for our proposal due at the end on the week. One of the things that we talked about was setting aside some time to look at the presentations that pervious classes have created. We felt that this would be important to see how other groups went about making their projects.

Health Status: We are experiencing less stress than last week as we work out what we would like to do with our project. Some stress still exists in the unknown factor of whether or not our focus is correct or how Dr. Abed will receive it. We believe that once we sit down and hatch out the proposal with Dr. Abed, with some guidance, we will feel much more comfortable in what we plan on doing.