The Project Process

• Meeting with sponsoring teacher
• Revised project description
• Begin project page(s)
• Gather materials, schedule observations, and begin the design process.
• Note the dates for storyboard presentations

The Revised Project Description

If you look at the revised project descriptions from past years (they are included on the project pages) you will see that different teams have structured them differently, some with more and some with less detail. But here are some kinds of information that you should consider making clear in the revised project descriptions:

• The audience for your program
• The school and teacher with whom you'll be working
• The computers for which you'll be designing the program
• How the program will likely be used by the students/teacher.
• The tentative schedule of team meetings and classroom observations as the project proceeds.
• A timetable for the project, including benchmarks like the storyboard, prototype evaluation, testing and final installation
• The qualities you are looking for in an authoring tool/ environment for this project.
• The distribution of responsibilities (if known) for accomplishing your work.
• Your initial thoughts about the project and your expectations/aspirations about what you hope to accomplish with the program you're building.
• Whatever else you would like followers of your project to know.

How to Talk About Interaction Design in/for Education

We'll continue the discussion begun by considering the introduction to Thoughtful Interaction Design and the January 2005 issue of CACM, with a look at a 2003 article from the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction called "Interaction Styles: An Aesthetic Sense of Direction in Interface Design." A good place to start might be the authors noting distinctions between four perspectives on interaction style( 69):

• the system perspective
• the information processor perspective
• the workshop perspective
• the media perspective

The discussion will be led by Itay and Hoy.

From Interaction Design to the Philosophy of Education

One thing the study of technology and the study of education have in common is a controversy about the degree to which each should be neutral as opposed to deterministic. In preparation for reading Dewey's Experience and Education (please do so by Tuesday) we'll talk briefly about different educational philosophies in K-12 and where we plot them on the line between Neutral and Deterministic.

For next week: Read Dewey 1938 for Tuesday and Israel Scheffler's "Computers at School?" (1986) for Thursday. Arrange a team meeting, contact your sponsoring teacher, and begin your revised project description after you've met with and discussed the project with your sponsoring teacher