2/5 | 5/4 | Project Description | 8/3 | 1/7 | ||
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The school and teacher with whom we'll be working with
We will be working with Mrs. Ellen Lynch, a teacher at Vartan Gregorian Fox Point Elementary School. Mrs. Lynch is currently teaching an all-day kindergarten class with 12 students in it. The first language for the majority of students in the class is Spanish. They are a highly energetic and eclectic bunch of kids. Needless to say, because we are designing our program for kindergarteners, especially kindergarteners whose first language is not English, the software will have to be predominantly visual-based.
The audience for our program
We are creating software primarily for the 12 students aforementioned. The program will be installed in the school's computer lab, however, and thus will be available to students ranging in age from 4 to 11. We will always have to keep this fact in the back of our minds so that we can construct a program that is interesting for all the students who use it
The computers we will be installing our program on are fairly up to date, and more than adequate for our purposes. They have Pentium II processors and are running Windows 98. They have 6 gigabytes of hard disk space and 32 Megs of Ram. Additionally, all of the computers are networked throughout the school via Ethernet and two server computers running Windows NT. In Mrs. Lynch classrooms, one of the computers can output to a television, allowing for possibly group activities.
Because Mrs. Lynch and we have a strong desire for the majority of the program to be fully interactive, we have decided to use Macromedia Director as our development software of choice. There are a few reasons for this. Primarily, Director's interface and design lend itself to creating interactive presentations/programs with a minimal amount of coding. Secondly, should complex levels of interaction be necessary, Director projects have a modifiable back-end written in Director's proprietary language Lingo. This is an object-oriented language that will allow us to increase the complexity of the program. Finally, Director can output to Shockwave, which can easily be place on a web page for public viewing and use.
The program will primarily be used during the students' math time and, as mentioned above, will also be available during their computer time. Mrs. Lynch has expressed an interest in having the program address both the concepts of fractions as well as, possibly, teaching notation. While the state requirements for kindergarten only require the understanding of 'one-half', we are hoping to cover up to 'one-fifth' or 'one-sixth'.
Our team has decided to meet every Tuesday @ 5:30 to touch base and plan. Of course as the project proceeds, meetings will be added to our schedule to accommodate its needs. Mrs. Lynch has informed us that we can come in at any time during the day to observe her students. We are initially planning to go in at our own convenient times, and post our notes to the rest of the team. Special times to note: Math time is from 12:00-12:30PM, and on Thursday and Friday the children can be observed in Computer time as well as Art and Science.
Deadline |
Task |
February
15 |
Rough
draft of the revised project description |
February
15 |
Rough
draft of an initial web site |
Week of
Feb 19 |
Compile
the group's ideas of what the program will do |
Week of
Feb 26 |
Speak to
Mrs. Lynch again and propose our ideas |
Week of
Feb 26 |
Revise
the specifications of the program |
Week of
Mar 5 |
Spend
some time with the students |
Week of
Mar 5 |
Begin
working on the Storyboard |
March 15 |
Storyboard
is due |
Week of
Mar 19 |
Begin
actual coding of the project |
Week of
Mar 26 |
Make
initial tests with the students |
Week of
April 2 |
Revise
and continuing working on the program |
Week of
April 9 |
Make
follow-up tests with the students |
Week of
April 16 |
Revise
and continuing working on the program |
Week of
April 23 |
Begin
testing the completed version of the program |
Week of
April 30 |
Finish
testing and make the final program alterations |
May 8 |
Project
is due |