6 - Week - 2-24-12

Again? Yes, sorry. After the small-group critiques on Monday Feb. 20, I ended up in another direction than I was previously going. Well, not so much another direction in concept, but in form. The book has been dropped, which is a pity, but I understand the reasoning behind the suggestion. With the time allotted, it was a pretty ambitious goal. Mostly the reasoning behind creating this book was to organize all of the research that I collected. It wasn't just a couple websites that I pulled resources from, but a lot of different, legitimate sources! But of course, I can just make a place for all that in the process portion of this project. I don't want to seem like I'm not doing anything though, so here are a couple spreads that I had started from the now-retired book.

Whatever! Now though, I feel a little set back, so I've got to spend a lot of time catching up, concepting for the new form of this project. First: another schedule! Hopefully I'll be able to stick to this one with minimal changes in the future. I've also built a little "wiggle room" into this timeline, in case any bumps in the road come along. This is mostly because the shift in the direction, I am not quite as sure about how this is going to happen? No, that's not true. I am sure, of what I'm doing, I'm just not quite as confident in this area of work, so I've given extra time to work out any kinks and make it look the best it can be.

For next week, I am going to spend a lot of time working out what functions I would like this application to have. I want to figure out all the experiences that it will encompass. This has also led me to thinking a lot about the form that this is going to take.

iPhone? Yes? Too default? Maybe? No.
I was hesitant to jump straight to doing an iPhone application, for the sole reason that it was an "easy" route to go. I want to make sure that what I create is informed by the content that will be in it, and I'm not just flaking out and going with the iPhone because it is the easiest solution. But the more I explore, the less it makes sense to create a whole new object, when the iPhone is a perfect medium to contain the functions. Perhaps speculative functions can be within the iPhone, rather than call for the creation of something completely new.

5 - Week - PROGRESS, PROGRESS, PROGRESS

First off, here is my revised schedule. It's generally the same, but I pushed some things forward so that I'm not working through the "presentation refinement" time allotment. Things are about to get busy busy busy! My goal is to push the book out rather quickly, created the second artifact based on the information and outcome of the book, and then make them into one cohesive design, so that they act as complements to each other. Very exciting stuff. What's also exciting is...

The beginnings of the book! I've pretty much completed going through all the materials that I'm going to be basing my project on. I've pulled from lots of books and resources sent by the Kindergarten team at Prairie Trail Elementary, as well as a few online resources to help supplement certain areas touched on, but not necessarily fleshed out in the teacher-given, more legitimate materials. First, I went through everything, and began arranging it into different categories that I might use in the book:

 

The reorganization of all this information was extremely beneficial, as it allowed me to break down the categories and assess how much content I actually had for each one. It also gave me a more in depth knowledge of what each category was about. Initially, I had seven total categories, like this:

 But, after mapping everything out, and accounting for areas where there was a significant amount of overlap, I've decided to pair several of the categories into compound categories instead. Social Studies and Social Development were very similar, and can easily be bridged into one-another. Math and science skills, while somewhat different from each other, both have an overlying theme of categorization and observation. Moving forward, I will be using these five categories (but not these colors! they're still left over from the very beginning!).

With all of that out of the way, it's time to start putting everything together! Here's the beginnings to the mapping out of the book. Very rough, I am just trying to determine the order of the book, and where to place the content that I've collected as well as content that I will be writing myself. Some of it I am still a bit unsure of, but it will clear up as I begin to put everything in its place. One thing I am a little concerned about it imagery for this book. It is meant for adults, yes, but I still feel that these pages will need some visuals! Not sure what that content will be like yet. My focus right now is on the written information and layout, not the filler pictures.

ps: forgot to add "bibliography" to the end of the book. Oops, that is definitely going to be there!

Here's a sneak peak at the beginnings of the book layout! I want to keep the middle open as a small area where tips, tricks, activity examples, or any additional tidbits will go. Now time to finish the grid and start dropping stuff in, got to stay on schedule!

HEY, IT'S A SCHEDULE. ONE THAT WILL CHANGE

4 - Week - Concepting and some Resources

The conceptual stage. Time is of the essence in this project, and while I want to ensure that the final product of all this is highly conceptual, meaningful, helping/useful, all that stuff...I also know that I need to keep in mind a certain weakness that I have in design. I’m pretty great at the conceptual stage, and then I get so comfortable in it that I have trouble moving on, and sometimes my final pieces lack a certain refinement, or finesse, as a result. I really don’t want to get stuck with this project, so while creating my schedule, I plan on building in a lot of time meant for refinement of visuals, rather than of concept. I feel like I’ve got a pretty solid concept anyway. But enough about that.

As I am beginning to create the content for my degree project, which right now I am thinking (open-mindedly!) will be a book (and then something else!), I am making sure that I reference solid, legitimate materials.

These are some of the materials that have been graciously given to me by the lovely ladies of the kindergarten team at Prairie Trail Elementary. Some of them are the very earliest materials they use in their classrooms, while others are handouts and exercises that they give to parents when they come in for the kindergarten screening in april before the next school year. I requested both kinds of materials from them because I was curious to see how big of a leap there was between what parents were encouraged to do, and what teachers were teaching the first couple weeks of class.

These papers, along with various books that I have borrowed from the teachers, is what I will be pulling my information and some of my activities from. On the other hand though, there are a wide variety of online resources I will be pulling from as well, most of them parent's blogs. This information, while not quite as easy to validate, is still valuable when trying to come up with new immersion activities. I'll definitely be taking some liberties of my own to categorize and/or create activities within my project.

Link Dump

Because I'm tired of them cluttering my bookmarks.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQrnI_1IdHw

http://www.naeyc.org/

http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/

http://www.aiga.org/video-pivot-2011-salen/

http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_What_You_Need_Your/?page=6

http://www.scholastic.com/resources/article/ready-for-kindergarten#recognition

http://school.familyeducation.com/kindergarten/school-readiness/38491.html

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/columncc/cc010309.html

www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com

http://www.babycenter.com/0_kindergarten-readiness-is-your-child-ready-for-school_67232.bc

http://carlasnuggs.suite101.com/kindgergarten-readiness-a35942

3 - Week - Considering Form

Teach by "immersion" and "show kids how letters are all around us." Lisa Mosier

While sifting through all of the websites and other resources that I am using to fuel this project, I got sort of hung up on this quote. Hung up in a good way, though. I hadn't come upon this "immersion" term before, and, in a way, it both answered questions while creating so, so many more(in a constructive, definitely-moving-forward kind of way though). Previous to this moment, I had spent a lot of time considering books. Books, books books. But the more I go through things, the more it seems like that is the wrong way to go about things—at least, in respect to the materials created for the children.


 From the same article comes this quote:


"Every outing is a spontaneous opportunity to learn," Play guessing games like, "I spy with my little eye something with the number 3."

Why was I stuck on books? Silly me. Books might be an appropriate format for parent materials, but I don't need to be formatting books and worksheets and the like for these kids. They will have plenty of time in the next 12+ years they spend in school to get used to the "buckle down and work at a desk" method of learning. That's not how children learn in their earlier years of life!


I want to take this dense information, and inform and motivate parents with it. I want to create an opportunity for dialogue and participation. I want to call attention not just to the formal aspects of what their child needs to be prepared for school, but to the fun, interactive every-day experiences that can be presented as learning opportunities.


I want to finesse this into an artifact that—while it might contain some of it's own activities—also contains a spark that ignites a participatory flame under parents and gets them to find their own ways of preparing their children. This is where the form comes in, and right now iPhone/iPad design seems to be a logical path to move down. Not only is it portable and interactive, easy for children with developing fine motor skills (and it also assists in further developing them), and—hypothetically—can be updated endlessly to meet any regional/I-don't-know-what-else-yet standards, it also opens up the opportunity for sharing and community. What's better than creating a community and an opportunity to distribute and share  knowledge!?


Now, for the sake of practicality, keeping an eye on the calendar, and trying to be realistic and all that stuff, I don't know that I will have the time to make this degree project into a full-blown research project. I thought about this. I am okay with this. I've spoken with professionals, I have collected research, and I am putting it to good use. I will continue to correspond with them to make sure I'm keeping my project in check as far as materials goes. With only 11 weeks to develop and design though, I want to keep focused on the end-result of all this, which I would prefer to be more about the final artifacts than the research that it stemmed from. A small change from the original plan, but I think it's a good one!


(now I will get to designing—images will be added soon)