JESS KLEIN

What the Heck is an MVP?

2012-02-10T13:17:00.000-06:00

Often times on this blog I drop jargon bombs. Today's word of the day is "MVP". Now, although we know that the recipient of this award was Eli Manning at the 2012 Superbowl, in the product design world- it has a decidedly different meaning. MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. If you check out wikipedia, you get this definition:

The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.

Yeah it sounds a little bit, marketing-talk-ish, for me- but what I like about it is that really, it speaks to the fact that we are creating a thing- that at the end of the day has a brand, a function and a user (among many other qualities). Some people actually say that MVP stands for minimum viable prototype- which has an interesting, subtle difference in meaning. Prototypes are a kind of a product, for sure, but saying and most importantly deciding that something is a prototype- an experiment - a test is liberating and I think speaks more directly to the kind of work that I am currently doing.

In What do Prototypes Prototype? Stephanie Houde and Charles Hill describe how prototypes can help to answer and explore different kinds of design problems. They discuss how prototypes help you to evolve your design concepts.

Selecting the focus of a prototype is the art of identifying the most important open design questions. If the artifact is to provide new functionality for users- and thus play a new role in their lives- the most important questions may concern exactly what the role should be and what features are needed to support it.

In this paper, they go on to say that a brick could be a prototype- if it answers a specific kind of design question- for example--- what will my product weigh?

So, why am I talking about this? As I have been blogging about here, here and here- we are in the middle of an Open News Design Sprint. We defined our "MVP" for the Open News sprint as something that has some level of functionality and gets our concept across. But really this is not so much an MVP as a prototype. We are not yet at the point where we are concerned about productizing our idea- so much as expressing that idea.

The concept for our prototype is that we can morph the lovebomb.me into a tool that will empower journalists and those with a passion for writing into learning a set of web literacies. But what are the questions that we are asking and trying to explore with prototype? We actually have several- as the prototype has a few components:

The Riddler also comes up with good questions, well maybe not "good"

1. Is this concept of embedding learning by having users deconstruct and reconstruct their own stories actually a good way to learn html and css?

2. Is editing html and css with the help of a preview window and an instructional overlay the most effective interaction for engaging users with this content?

3. What kind of tool will appeal to journalists who have never written html?

4. What kind of tool will appeal to users who do not self identify as journalists?

5. How can we incentivize learning of html and css for users?

All of these questions generally fall into 2 categories of Houde and Hill's prototype models - role and implementation. As they describe:

Role refers to questions about the function that an artifact servers in a user's life- the way in which it is useful to them.

Implementation refers to questions about the techniques are components through which an artifact performs its function- the "nuts and bolts" of how it actually works.

The prototype that we create will respond to both role and implementation design questions. So, what we are currently creating? Our prototype includes:

a 2 page clickable site

page 1- intro that lets you input a url for something that you have written online
page 2- a 3 panel page with the split editing window and the "instructional overlay

copywriting

landing page framing copy
instructional text explaining how to use the 3 different "windows"
explanatory text that explains techical things (for ex.: how to write a tag)
descriptive text for issuing badges

The prototype will not be pretty but it will serve its purpose and help us to answer our questions. Finally, as Dan Sinker pointed out - "building something forced us to think through the details." And really, that pushes foward our movement to ultimately one day getting to an MVP.

Open News Design Sprint Day 3: Meet the Journalists

2012-02-08T22:04:00.004-06:00

After two days of doing a design sprint brainstorming about a tool that could help journalists learn webmaking, we decided to go right to the source for help. We invited about a dozen journalists to join us for a conversation today. We lucked out and got a fantastic group of professionals with a variety of different skill sets and backgrounds. Journalists showed up representing tons of different orgs, including: New York Times, Forbes, Gotham Schools, NYU Journalism Institute, Mashable, NYU ITP and the Huffington Post.

The main question that we asked this group was: "What do they you to make on the web?"We had a range of responses to this question. There we are a lot of answers in the categories of data manipulation, data visualization, interactives, and text based interactives.

"There are two categories: a special project that's a one-off that blows people away and wins awards. But the thing that's more interesting are the things that can sustain and help a community. A database of property transfers that is maintained and is there for someone to access when they want to find out about it. Something that continues, is sustained, and is part of the fabric of info flow in a community. Data that comes in and continues to live." (note that all quotes in this post are paraphrased from the session)

We delved into an interesting conversation about what journalists need to know in terms of learning about the underpinnings of webmaking. Many participants talked about wanting to learn skills that actually fall into the category of "design thinking."

"Journalists don't have the knowledge of when to use a map vs not use a map. Or from a story to getting more interactive. They need to understand that a story isn't just an article, that it can be a whole bunch of different things. design thinking methodology"

"When you get down to it, we have a history of journalists as writers. But the last thing you want is a situation when all the journalists become coders. The more powerful thing is to have more of that process--the methodology/training/etc. To run a group of coders, or talk to coders. To know enough about your topic to come up with ideas and know if something is feasable or not. Not to be condescending, but 'skills are for interns' they are important to know to do, but nobody's going to make work-changing this just coding CSS. Skills are great and they're important, but it's about getting to understand the bigger picture. We spend a lot of time on, what do you call it, agile journalism."

I explained to the group that I personally have no interest in forcing anyone to learn how to code, but I was interested in learning about what would empower journalists to take an interest in webmaking.

"It's about showing them good work, and then showing them easy things--things that are very much within reach. It's about motivating them and liberating them."

"A big problem is internal. Which traffic cop gives the most tickets per parking meter: you dont' want to wait for six weeks for the data guys to come back to you with the answer. It's about being able to quickly test a hypothesis that could be interesting. There could be a story here--well, you want to know that quickly. Maybe the distribution of skills in the newsroom is 200 writers and 2 coders--it's going to be a long time before that. How much coding do you need to be able to play and test those hypothesis?"

"It's the bridge/demystification thing. There's a big wall--it feels like it. But then you go to hackjams and it feels attainable. It demystified it. When you realize those tools are attainable."

Mentorship and peer based learning was another topic that came up. One participant admitted to the group that he had signed up for CodeAcademy because of "social peer pressure" but then is now in the position where he has 6 untouched lessons in his inbox. This is because the great myth about something like CodeAcademy is that you are doing it with your friends. You signed up because your friends tweeted about it and you got all pumped up and signed up together- but then you are at home by yourself at the end of the day- not coding. Another participant talked about how she and a friend got a book and together followed all the steps to learn Python. After a month or so, they hired a "geek" to ask questions. We talked about how there are online communities for that like Stack Overflow or Quora- but these are often intimidating communities where a journalist would never think to go.

We asked for some initial feedback on the prototypes that we are working on. Here were some of their responses:

1) On the sequencing of learning content: Is the tag flashy enough to be the first thing that is taught in the instructional overlay?

some say yes, some say no. The yes came from a not super tech savy journalist "I don't want big blocks of text"

2) On the editing window: I see a lot of use of the immediacy of the left/right pane as tool

everyone agrees

"there is no internal demo tool other than building the page

3) On if this is useful: Yes: even myself, on my Tumblr, if I want to make a change, etc, I have to publish it, look at it, reload, etc, that's incredibly frustrating.

A bigger use-case for this is internal training, self training, etc. I'm throwing in on being the weekend home page editor.

4) On Badges: I can totally see only entertaining resumes from people with that badge. And if you don't have it, spend a weekend to earn it.

At the end of the session- Carl Lavin was generous enough to sit with me and tell me-- if we were going to do webmaking 201, 301 etc for journalists what topics would he want covered. He wrote out these cards for me:

I think these will be really useful when we start to build out learning pathways for our Mozilla learning offerings.

I spent a good deal of time picking the journalists brains as well about the topic that I have been struggling with this week- about framing this as a project about storytelling or something specifically for journalists- and many participants told me that they prefer the storytelling angle because it is something that can appeal to a larger audience. Some of the journalists told me that that "journalism" means different things to different people, but at the end of the day everyone has a story to tell. And that is something that I can bake into the prototype!

Day 2 of Open News Sprint- Design for Empathy vs. Pure Utility

2012-02-07T22:47:00.000-06:00

Day 2 of the Open News Webmaking Design Sprint kicked off with a storyboarding session- which of course meant a round of the color coding index card game! Basically what we did was come up with three categories of things that we were sketching out the flow for:

Main Screens and Modal Windows (pink cards)
Content in the Instructional Overlay (orange cards)
Badges (green cards)

*Note- I will post the full storyboards later this week

One thing that was an interesting change from yesterday's conversation was that we converted the "sharing" steps into information that can be revealed and explored when the user clicks on the "share" button, thus eliminating that extra step.

In terms of the badges, for simplicity we came up with one badge per each skill set. So, for example, in the image below- we sketched out 3 steps for learning about how to write the html for embedding an image into a webpage. Step 1- place an image that we give them, Step 2- hack that image with an unique image and Step 3- Remix that Image--- then the user will receive an Image Badge. Completion of all the Modules will give the user the "uber badge". (We need real names for these badges, but this is just a concept).

One thing that we talked about- which is out of scope for this pilot prototype- was having a user pledge for the badge by going through a series of interactive activities or games or questions... to prove their skill. It's a bigger idea that certainly relates back to integrating this badge into a larger spectrum of "Mozilla Badges," but I like this idea because on some level it proves competencies and could essentially allow users to skip other "intro" activities in courses or interactives.

Atul, Brian and I spent a bit of time trying to figure out how we were going to implement the designs into a working prototype, a small- yet crucial step. Good news, we think we can make something by the end of this week.

The group had a great conversation about metrics for the project that I think we will rehash again after we create the MVP (that's a minimum viable product not a most valuable player). This is what we came up with as a first stab:

Beyond-the-tool Metrics

How many people share their URL outside of the tool (twitter, blogs, etc.)
3-months-later survey of people who graduated

Tool usage measurement metrics

How frequently the user switches away from the page (to another tab, app, etc) while using the app
How many steps people go through
How many of those steps are repeated
Time taken per step
How many people are return users to the website; so they use the tool and stop at a certain step and then come back at a later date to continue
and what are those stop points?
Also, how many people graduate from the 'course' (tricycle) to the 'tool' (training wheels), ie. how many people turn off the overlay and keep coming back, how many times.
How many people do the bare minimum (just the tutorial)
What link text people use when writing links and how many links are they putting in
How many people come back to pledge for the full badge?
How many people go above and beyond with tinkering

i.e multiple images, all the "optional" styles, etc.

We spent the remainder of our jam packed day focusing on copywriting. We had a conceptual conversation about what direction the tool should take, which of course affected the way that we wrote the copy. Because we couldn't agree on whether this should be a generic webmaking 101 tool, a tool focused on helping people tell their story through the web or a tool geared towards journalists we decided to write as much of the technical bits and pieces as possible and to come back and add on the layer that included narrative, voice and character.

Today I am feeling a bit conflicted about the design direction. In my heart I believe that the project should be a self directed interest based learning tool- which means a tool that helps someone make something and then baking in the learning seamlessly. I am concerned that if we go too generic we will end up with a tool, that people can't relate to and thus won't feel compelled to deep dive into the learning content. So that said, I guess this just is about deciding between the "telling your story" vs. "webmaking for journalists 101". As I said before, I like the telling your story through the web angle for the product because it is something that is easy for many different kinds of users to relate to. This is about branding- and by branding I don't mean slapping a logo on the project and calling it a day- it is about creating a narrative for the project that is compelling enough to give users and potential users the opportunity to empathize and relate to the project on a deeper level.

For example- if the lovebomb.me experimental project was a tool it might be called something like e-card maker. I suspect that people would not have responded so strongly to that project. We built in a narrative and a real directive- make a love letter for a friend- and wrapped that into a light narrative heavily supported by cute lovey-dovey graphics. Well, this conversation is to be continued later.

Tomorrow we will be meeting real live journalists, so I am excited to ask them about what they really are interested in making with the web. Hopefully this will inform the direction of the project.

Storytelling- Day One of Design Sprint "Webmaking for Journalists"

2012-02-06T21:58:00.000-06:00

Today was the first day of the Open News - Webmaking 101 design sprint. Thanks to Hive NYC member Peoples Production House for graciously volunteering to host us! The team for our sprint includes:

pictured: erin knight, chris lawrence, michelle levesque, dan sinker, atul varma, brian brennan, jess klein and mark surman (not included are some top secret special guests who shall be named later this week!)

We started the day airing out our joint concerns about the direction of the project. It turns out, I wasn't the only one who was concerned about the tool not making sense within the range of potential tools that we might be developing at Mozilla. We all discussed what a journalist would want to make- and agreed that a journalist would want to use the web to tell their story. While this might sound simplistic, this is a topic that I am much more comfortable developing a project around compared to something like Webmaking 101 for Journalists. As I talked about in my last post, here is an example of a potential user who has a deep interest and motivation to make something (a story) using the web- and thus there is the opportunity to embed learning into this moment. Also, I think that the idea of storytelling has the potential to reach different kinds of learners (although it could certainly appeal to journalists)- including filmmakers, poets, youth etc.

We came up with a few goals for the week, including:

create a dirty working prototype- it doesn't have to be pretty, just having some functionality
designing some badges for the prototype

After determining our goals, we set to work reviewing the learning objectives for the project. This is a key thing for us to to review, because we wanted to make sure that the project fell within the scope of web literacies that are being defined for Mozilla. We had a good conversation about what could be included and what was out of scope for the project. Here is a little venn diagram that shows the domains within Mozilla's web literacies that this particular project will be addressing.

Essentially, there are 6 clusters/modules/ steps that we will be exploring through this exercise in helping people to tell their story through the web (below). While we will offer the skills in a series, ideally the user will have the opportunity to take these modules out of any particular sequence.

All about Tags
Style Your Stuff
Images
Links and the Open Web
Embedding and Beyond
Sharing

In our first brainstorm, we discussed using these 6 modules as guides for badge distribution within the context of the prototype.

Tomorrow we will be mapping these modules and learning objectives to storyboards for the instructional overlays and starting to work on developing out the content and copy for that section. I am really excited with the direction that this project is going and with our re-envisioning of the learning objectives as well as scope.

On Integrating Learning

2012-02-06T09:51:00.001-06:00

Over this past weekend I went to an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art called Hide and Seek- it was a fantastic show exhibiting American work focusing on gender and identity. I highly recommend it. However, as I was going around the exhibition, I came upon this sign:

The sign marked the entry to a room devoted to didactic content related to the themes and subject matter in the exhibition. While normally I am such a huge fan of how innovative and creative the Brooklyn Museum is with providing interactive and accessible learning tools in their exhibition spaces, I was a bit put off by this. First of all, no one was entering this space (except my colleague Atul- who I think falls under that small percentage of self proclaimed "information geeks"). I don't think that seeing the words "Educational Resource Space" would compel anyone to enter that area. The exhibition had extraordinary content with the lush and often times shockingly graphic art and photography- why didn't they exploit the opportunity right then and there? Yes, there were the typical didactic labels filled with tombstone information- however that kind of just scratched the surface of the potential conversation.

This experience got me to thinking a bit about the work that I am doing at Mozilla. As I've said numerous times, I am not about hiding the learning or sugar coating it- but I am interested in integrating it into the activity that the participant and, in this case "viewer" is passionate about. When we build software and tools- we should be thinking about how we can embed the learning into the experience and not make it something that you need to seek out as an afterthought. This is important for many reasons- but on a very practical level the reason to do this is because you have a captive audience!

As I keep iterating on my prototypes and participate in the Open News sprint this week- I am going to try to keep this in mind. But, it is something that Mozilla is committed to, by design. By design, people like Atul and I work on the same team- and we work with community members who are skilled in teaching and education. We have embedded the learning in our work structure, but now we need to constantly keep ourselves in check that "learning" is not something that happens just in a special space in our projects that is devoted to "educational resources."

Instructional Overlay for Webmaking 101 tool prototypes

2012-02-03T15:54:00.001-06:00

In preparation for the Open News design sprint next week I did a few mock ups playing around with an Instructional overlay. The idea is that this is a slider that could be toggled over the js.bin interface that we use in the lovebomb.me, webpage maker and soon- open news prototypes. It will give the user helpful tips and pointers on how to write html and css.

As you look at these designs, keep in mind that the grey bar can be moved up and down (or side to side) with your mouse.

This first iteration is a horizontal overlay. My concern here is that if a user has a small screen it might be cluttered. Additionally, I am not sure if this is the most logical design for a user who will probably have to go back and forth editing the html and reading the instructions. The numbers 1- 5 are a progress bar. I am not convinced that this is the best placement or if this is appropriate. I think that once we think through how badges might be integrated into this prototype, the progress bar will be reconsidered. (Note: all language and branding graphics are place holders)

Below is the second iteration- I am trying out a vertical overlay. I think that this feels a little bit more logical and intuitive in terms of design. I also changed up the progress bar a bit and the slider toggle.

I was having a bit of a prototyping party testing out some different ideas for progress bars below. Also- playing around with potential palette options. Such a small detail can really structure the entire learning experience- as well as infuse a little piece of personality into the design.

We will be having the design sprint next week in Brooklyn. I am excited to really dig into the project and to think a bit further about the question- "what do journalists want to use the web to make- and how can we help them do that?" We will be exploring if these designs are useful for the project. I'm not really concerned if they aren't because we can actually use them on the lovebomb.me experiment.

Webmaking 101 for Journalists: A Prototype

2012-01-31T11:27:00.004-06:00

Lately, I have been thinking about how to teach people something unexpected while they are working on something that they are passionate about. It sounds kind of obvious, but my goal isn't to trick someone into learning or to serve them medicine in their sugar. I want to create authentic learning experiences around webmaking projects. I believe that if you are really invested in something, then you will seek out the learning. It's not an innovative idea- but it is a guiding principle behind my design. So, with this in mind, recently, a bunch of my Mozilla colleagues and I brainstormed around the idea of how to teach journalists the basics of html, css and copyright in an authentic way.

As a group, we came up with several learning objectives - really focused on the introductory skills that a) anyone who was starting in webmaking would need and b) a journalist would be compelled to learn

The idea is that a user will come to the the website, and then enter a url of a story that they have written. If they do not have a url, then we will generate a creative commons page from propublica.com

Next, the user's story will be scrapped of style and put into the js.bin shell-similar to our lovebomb and webpage maker prototypes. However, instead of letting a user just do pure hacking in the wild- there is a third layer (seen above in the highly visible color of yellow). The yellow layer is a slider that will provide progressive instructions and tips to the user.

I started to work on a mock up just to play around a bit with look and feel. (above) I made a mood board using pinterest. Basically, we are going for clean, serious- but playful, modern.

Right now, although I think that this is a good first prototype, I am really thinking about the learning objectives here. Are these the right learning objectives? Are we just skinning this as something for journalists because that is one of main target audiences at Mozilla? I'm wondering if we should be making a more generic webmaking 101 tool, and creating supplementary curriculum for the target audiences- as opposed to tools for the niche audience. In some ways, this has more merit, because the tools could be informed by the various end users- journalists, filmmakers etc, however it could appeal to a much larger constituency. On the other hand, if we create a tool that could easily be reskinned and modded for different audiences, I could see the value in that.

However... if we were to in fact make a more general webmaking 101 step by step tool/ game- ultimately I wonder if this really is the best way to communicate to new users the excitement and potential of webmaking?

Next week my Mozilla colleagues- Atul, Brian, Dan, Michelle, Erin and I will be doing a design sprint on this. I would love to hear any thoughts that you might have, reader friend.

Am I bombing on this prototype?

2012-01-30T18:30:00.001-06:00

A few weeks back, I wrote about the "love bomb" experiment that Atul and I were working on. In many ways, I think that this project has more potential for impact than anything else that I have created while I have been working for Mozilla. It is the learning experience that we aspire to create- where someone is so completely motivated by their desire to make something, that they are compelled to learn or teach themselves something new along the way. Because of this desire to create an authentic hands-on learning project as well as the clear accessibility of the project, my colleagues at Mozilla asked Atul and myself to think about re-skinning the project as a potential campaign around Valentines Day.

In general, I like this idea. I like the thought of someone getting so excited about the thought of hand coding a valentine for their loved one. I immediately drafted a few concepts:

1. A DIY love letter

version 1

version 2

2. A Love Generator- kind of the closest to an e- card maker

3. Magnetic Attraction- based on the concept of magnetic refrigerator poetry.

Immediately we had a positive response, particularly towards the "Magnetic Attraction" prototype. I showed this to several people in the Mozilla community and did some at - home field testing (re: my mother understood the project). I played a bit with the actual format for the interaction. The concern here was that the current X-Ray Goggles tool and/ or the Web Page Maker prototypes might be too high level for say, the audience who receives the Firefox newsletter. So I went to work trying to focus on how to communicate that something has "html" or "css" underneath it's hood.

step 1: select a template

step 2: select an asset on the template and drag and drop the magnets to remix the html.

As you can see from the mockup, I really limited where you can click with your mouse.

step 3: voila. share through social network buttons

Looks good, right? Sure we would need to iterate on this, but this is a workable prototype.

Not so much- the problem that I am having with this, is that although it is accessible, and people who have some innate fear of html will be able to really just dive in- ultimately, they aren't tinkering or experimenting with a markup language. At the end of the day, a user is really just editing fields, as if this was a form. I suppose that if someone hovers over a

tag, then an explanation could pop up linking to some database like the MDN which could explain what that little strange object on a page means. But, I think that our goal at Mozilla is not to hide code, or to break it down to a level that is so obscure that you aren't even given the opportunity to experiment. That said, I'm not really sure where the starting point is at the moment.

My colleague Michelle Levesque, is working on figuring out appropriate "Web Literacy Skills" for Mozilla to support and develop around. The very first category of skills that she writes about is "Exploring". I think that this really hits the nail on the head in terms of why this prototype might not be worth pursuing- we are limiting exploration by curating what elements can be edited and how a user should try to edit them.

Of course, I am flip flopping on this topic and keep thinking about how we need certain parameters so that a learner can feel like they have learned something, even if it is a very small skill in the big picture that is webmaking.

Designing a Badge System

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-06:00

If you had to come up with a system to formally recognize the work that you do, what would it look like? In a nutshell, that is what a bunch of my colleagues and I were tinkering with at the recent Mozilla Foundation All Hands meeting. We were exploring this idea because Mozilla is committed to developing the Open Badges Infrastructure- a tool that could act as a platform where you can give and receive "badges" or achievements for various kinds of skills- both hard and soft. In addition to that, Mozilla is also going to be acting as a badge issuer within this context.

Over a year ago, I blogged about how I felt conflicted about badges- stating that they were formalizing something informal and sucking the fun out of everything. My thinking around badges has really started to change. Part of the reason for this is that I actually understand what the goals of the project are and have started to truly be inspired by the huge potential for this kind of rethinking of accreditation systems.

(this is a random badge that I drew)

Truly, think about yourself as a teenager- or not even- think about yourself as a 30 something, who is stuck at work doing one job, but dreaming of doing another. You can't afford to take off and go to graduate school, so you take classes online, and participate in some online interest specific communities. Over time you have a real skillset, portfolio and community of peers- however- no way of really showing potential employers that you are not just ready for a new job - but qualified and have EXPERIENCE. Enter badges. If you had received a badge for all of your involvement in the various communities- something that a potential employer would recognize and acknowledge, you would be getting that job and rolling up your sleeves!

In our prototype (above) we envisioned a system- where one can get a "Mozilla Remixer badge" by getting several lower level badges at different sites where they remixed things- a cut and paster badge from Martha Stewart online- for collaging, a CSS superstyler from Hackasaurus for changing the code on a site, and a beat dropper from SoundCloud for making music mashups. I wrote all the steps out above, but what's fun about this prototype is that the badge itself evokes the spirit of the achievement. You are proving you are a Remixer, by mixing up different orgs who all help you to remix. Yes, that sounded like something Dr. Seuss would say. Obviously, there is a lot of thought on this already out there in the world. But, as a designer, I don't really get something until I try to figure it out in connection with a problem. So here, we had a problem and we came up with a prototype to fix it.

Anyway, my ideas on this are constantly evolving, but I think that's part of the process of really getting something right- getting a lot of things wrong. Hey, I deserve a badge for that, or do I?

Infusing the Web with Play

2012-01-19T15:33:00.000-06:00

Last week, the Mozilla Foundation crew held an All Hands. For the uninitiated, an All Hands is where everyone from the whole organization gets together and does mini design sprints on different topics and projects. This is super important for us at Mozilla because it gives our teams- who often are all over various parts of the world working remotely, a chance to have some much needed face to face time.

One of our sessions was focused on our potential future website at the Mozilla Foundation. With our new focus this year on really engaging different kinds of webmakers in authentic project based learning experiences, we were asked to envision what the landing page of our new site could look like. My team- which included Dan Sinker and Geoffrey MacDougall did a ton of brainstorming- but ultimately we landed on the idea that a user should be able to immediately come to our site and be able to make something. Here is a sketch of what we came up with:

The basic concept here is that we offer our user various opportunities to make something with our web properties and tools. The "wheel" which is an homage to a wonder wheel or something that you would see at an amusement park or game show- is actually an interactive filter. I feel that although this might not be the end result, what is nice about this prototype is that it immediately evokes the idea of play or fun. Sometimes we get so focused in filling our websites with information, that we lose the chance to highlight our core values and voice. I think that our mock up speaks with our voice and although there will be hopefully many iterations and other ideas, I hope that we always keep to our ultimate goal of empowering people to learn something through making something that they are passionate about.

On Inspiration and lovebombs

2012-01-04T21:55:00.009-06:00

Mari Moreshead is awesome. She works at the Mozilla Foundation as the grease (wo)man, the person you go to when you need to get things done- and done well. She has personally helped me a whole lot- particularly during this one trip that I had to make while I was in Berlin with the flu, having to present Hackasaurus localization. Having a trustworthy, reliable and sassy co-worker is not only helpful, but it is needed in order to be a successful worker. Atul Varma and I were talking about her and thinking about how we wanted to thank her.

" We should make her an e-card."
" No we should make her an html5 lovebomb"
"Wouldn't it be cool to make a lovebomb maker that uses the Hackasaurus tools?"
"We could send lovebombs to all our co-workers who do small great things"

And so, we made lovebomb.me It started out as a simple sketch- and turned into this experiment in love and code. The idea is that you can send someone a lovebomb- or love note/ nod of appreciation and while you are doing it, you learn a little bit of html and css along the way. Here is one of the first mockups I made....

What was kind of fun and happenstance- was that I was running a bunch of workshops for teenagers at the exact time that we were tinkering with the idea. Atul had whipped up a prototype of what we are calling the Webpage Maker- a tool that will help users go from hackers to webmakers. I tested that tool with youth- and while iterating on both tools at the same time, somehow the two combined and became the current version of the lovebomb.

Designing the lovebomb has been a lot of fun for me- and it's rewarding because people immediately pick it up and want to just express joy or love or something happy. People smile using the tool.

I created a few templates, but I want to talk about one of them. It features a character, loosely - ahem- based on my colleague Chris Lawrence. Chris has a love of weird hats, masks and accessories in general (think- viking hats and gold sunglasses). I made this e-card in his honor, because he is another colleague of mine at Mozilla who is doing amazing work every single day. He isn't just working on one project - but possibly 30 at any given time. So, this is my way of giving him some "big ups."
Next steps- well Atul and I are working on a more polished iteration of the lovebombs - I hope to post some of my mock ups in the next few days. I see that this is a great opportunity to teach someone something because there is ultimately a huge DESIRE to make the end product. So I am trying to build out the mock ups and keep true to some of the core learning objectives for Hackasaurus. But at the end of the day, it comes down to this: when you are inspired - you will make things that are challenging and difficult to make-despite yourself. I am just lucky enough to have amazingly inspiring co-workers surrounding me.

Oh and Mari- here is your lovebomb.

Hacking the Holidays- Peer to Peer Jam at Mouse

2011-12-13T08:26:00.000-06:00

Yesterday the Hive Mozilla Youth Ambassadors ran their first event as facilitators. The hack jam was held at the Mouse headquarters and we had a nice mix of youth, adult "squad leaders" and adult program coordinators from the Mouse staff.

The youth facilitators came a few hours early to prepare for the event and do a walk through of the event plan. There was a lot of set up work to do, including: making a screen for the projector (see below), putting out the chairs, making sure the X- Ray goggles bookmarklet was installed on all the computers, and checking that the laptops were fully charged. This was a bit tedious, but we referred to the "IT Checklist" included in the Hacktivity Kit for pointers.

Before the event started, we paired off and role played "worst case scenarios" and facilitated them. We had a lot of fun pretending to not know how to navigate webpages!

Finally, event participants arrived and we kicked things off with a welcome and the "Hack Dance Battle" icebreaker. Zainab acted as emcee for the youth jam and thanked everyone for coming. Youseff then promptly asked everyone to get our of their seats and to get their groove on with some hackable dancing. (Neil dj-ed and we played a LOT of the Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell song) Omar lead the group discussion about what we mean when we say hack.

We then showed the two videos that the youth created on the topics of "What is Hackasaurus" and "Why You Should Learn to Code." Check out the REMIXED video that Omar and Youssef made here.

Jose gave a great demo on how to use the goggles, pointing out the importance of looking for opening and closing tags when editing html. The first hacking challenge that everyone participated in was hacking the google site. The youth facilitators broke up the participants into groups and tag teamed on the facilitation. Then, the youth did a shareout:

It was really great to see the youth teaching the adults how to code:

The final challenge of the day- "the moment you have all been waiting for," as Omar announced- was "holiday-ifying" any website of your choosing. After an hour of break outs, hacking, and full on merriment, we had a group shareout. Participants messaged the text the mob site that we put up for the event, with their new websites:

Here is one of the hacks:

After the event was over, and we cleaned up the space, we held a team meeting for the youth facilitators. We debriefed the event, and discussed what went well- the icebreaker, the videos, the holiday challenge- and what we would do differently- time of the event, and dedicating more time to the practice mini challenge. Finally, I gave the youth who completed all the workshops, including this peer facilitation event- their cerification:

Overall- I would say that the event and the Hive MoYo Ambassador trainings were a success. I will follow up on our next steps in iterating this process in another blog post- but I leave you with a team photo. Special shout outs go to Marc Lesser and Meredith Summs of Mouse for hosting and being involved in all of the workshops:

Hack Jams for Youth, by Youth

2011-12-09T19:36:00.001-06:00

The Hive Mozilla Youth Ambassador training theme of the day today was facilitation- aka Hack Jam 101. Although the thought of running an event can be daunting- our team of Mouse youth were up for the challenge. Today was the third session in our training series. It was another session of work that I have not tried out before- but I consider this a prototype for a more formalized opportunity for youth.

The first thing that we did today- was discuss the upcoming hack jams that the MoYo Ambassadors will help facilitate. First, on Monday they will be running a hack jam for their peers at Mouse- and then later in the year they will be helping TASC with several after school programs.

We started the training by reviewing the 5 steps to running a hack jam for youth, which is part of the recently launched Hacktivity Kit.

The 5 steps guide readers from preparation to facilitation of an event for youth using the Hackasaurus tools. The team of youth were quick to note that a hack jam- is like a music jam session- where participants could riff off of eachother's work!

We then reviewed the logistics for the event on Monday.
We looked at the event space and came up with several solutions for creating a maker space where participants can work in the "open".

We also brainstormed and came up with a theme for our event- called "Hacking the Holidays." Our team quickly noted that we covered a lot of things in our two workshops, so we decided to simplify our hack jam by only covering hacking (not getting into webmaking). We came up with a list of learning objectives for the 2 hour event:

The group then set to work. The first order of business was coming up with a good ice breaker to communicate what we mean when we say "hack". I made them play a game that Chloe Varelidi and I modded for the Media, Freedom and the Web festival. Each participant got 3 cards- a Goal, Mechanic and Concept card. The goal and concept cards were filled out in advance but the youth came up with the concept for the final activity.

They came up with pretty creative solution including a tweet game- where users had to Hack a Tweet and a game where participants were presented with a problem in a photograph and had to edit the photo to in order to save the day. Ultimately- they decided to go with a dance battle game.

We then took some time to come up with an event plan for the jam. We came up with an agenda, and assigned roles:

We then paired off an practiced talking to each other about the project. I then challenged the to make videos of their pitches on the topic of What is Hackasaurus and Why is it Important to Code.
(You can check out the fantastic video on Why It is Important to Code here.)

What is Hackasaurus by Omar and Youssef

Finally, we walked through everyone's roles for Monday and talked about what to do when troubleshooting. It was a great day and I know we all are looking forward to their first event on Monday.

Transitioning from Hacking to Webmaking

2011-12-07T20:48:00.001-06:00

Today was the second HIVE Mozilla Youth Ambassador training at Mouse. Today was focused on making that pivotal move from hacking bits and pieces of the web with the X-Ray Goggles to designing webpages with HTML and style. This was the first time that I have ever lead a followup workshop to the initial "hack jam" type workshops where participants learned about the open web, what we mean by "hacking" and an intro to the Hackasaurus tools. For me this workshop is very important because it moves from the "a ha" moment that many users have when using the googles to look under the hood of a webpage, to the "roll up the sleeves" and get to work phase. Or, as Mimi Ito might say- from messing around to geeking out.

We started out by stretching our content creation muscles with the Superhero Design Challenge. Participants were asked to look back at the "I think X makes the web special" and the "I think that X makes the web difficult to use" brainstorms that we did in session 1. They chose one aspect of the web to defend or compete against if they were a Superhero of the Open Web. They then used this as the basis for creating a short web- ready biography for their fictional superhero of the open web. We discussed what makes a good bio as well as what makes for good writing on the web.

The youth presented their stories:

"Captain Super wall- he has the power to throw fire balls at villains how try to cross the wall. A long time ago in a far school named cyber squad. were super wall a student was elected to go visit one of the most advanced technology in the hold city, but something when wrong in it’s visit. he touched one of the controllers and he when into cyber world. it took him to firewall city. where his mission is to let good information go in and burn bad things. "- by Jose

Then, they paired up and created an arch nemesis for their partner's superhero. Here is Captain Super Wall's arch nemesis, Title Wave:

"Title Wave sends title waves of info that is not needed does that because he thinks all info is good and also thinks that all info should have equal rights " - by Youssef

Now that they had bios, they were ready for some publicity! They went into online news organization sites and remixed the pages to include stories of their characters saving the day, or ruining the day as it were. The youth had a great time taking photos with Photobooth on their computers and doing post production and image manipulation in Aviary:

They remixed the html and style with the X- Ray Goggles and presented their projects and talked a bit about how they trouble shooted problems with the coding.

We then discussed the various components that make up a webpage, including: HTML, CSS, graphic assets and text content and reviewed that the combination of an opening tag and its corresponding closing tag and the content in between is called an element.

The final challenge for this workshop was to make an instructional "how to" webpage from a template- without the goggles. In order to do this, we all came up with things that we we experts at- we had a peanut butter and jelly maker, a hand turkey illustrator, a good music connoisseur! I gave everyone a crash course in web DESIGN. We talked about the importance in identifying a user and designed information architecture as well as wireframes for all of the sites.

Participants used a prototype that Atul Varma and I worked on as a spin off of the Hackbook that Anna Debenham created to help users craft webpages from templates.

In the end, everyone made the "how to" pages and we all critiqued the structure, style and design of each presenters work.

How to Sleep

Overall the workshop was a success - we user tested old and new tools as well as curriculum and workshop participants came a way with 2 webpages that they made in a stretch of 4 hours!

Next Up: How to Run a Hack Jam on Friday.

Hacking your World: HIVE MoYo Ambassadors

2011-12-06T07:58:00.015-06:00

Yesterday I lead the first of a series of 4 hour intensive learning labs at Mouse. This series of workshops will train youth to become what I am calling Mozilla Youth Ambassadors (it's a working title). That means that youth will learn Hackasaurus, HTML, CSS and facilitation in order to run hacking events and/or clubs. You can follow our group blog here.

The overall structure of the workshops will be:

Session 1: Intro to hacking, “open web” and intro to X-Ray Goggles

Session 2: Deeper dive into HTML and CSS – design challenge

Session 3: How to run a hack jam

Session 4: Practice jam with peers

Yesterday the teens came in and we started out by mind mapping. This gave us a chance to make sure that we were all on the same page when we talked about hacking, tinkering and coding.The teens paired off and responded to a challenge to define hacking in a tweet. Here are their final definitions:

We decided to test their definitions. The next challenge was to hack a board game. Our two teams chose to hack tic tac toe (which became Finger Tac) and monopoly (which became Hackopoly). The teams wrote new rules and then playtested each others games.

Throughout the course of the activity, we talked about our process and what options we had in terms of hacking the games.

After a break we talked a bit about what makes the web unique. As a group we came up with a list of things that make the webs special and things that make the web difficult to use:
We then talked about how the web was designed to be participatory and collaborative. We looked at a slide show that I created as part of the Hacktivity kit. It was nice to user test that- it worked really well. I think I am going to change some of the slides about installation because they are outdated since we changed the interface for the tools.

After a brief intro to the X-Ray Goggles, the teens hacked Google, and then I challenged them to hack a website of their choosing. The goal was to make as many changes as possible to hide the identity of the original site.

The teens hacked facebook, Tumblr, the NYC MTA page, Twitter, Apple and even the Mouse page!Our next workshop is tomorrow. We will be learning HTML and CSS and moving from hacking to webmaking!

Hello Mozillians

2011-11-17T16:23:00.003-06:00

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go to MozCamp EU in Berlin . It was a truly inspiring experience- meeting community members from all over the world. I really learned a lot about localization. It was at once exciting and educational for me to learn to the extent that I did about how to reach a global community with my work from a global community. There were so many new faces and names, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say hello and how honored I am to be amongst you.

Prototyping Win for Hackasaurus at Mozilla Festival

2011-11-07T15:15:00.017-06:00

This past weekend the Hackasaurus team was part of the Media, Freedom and the Web conference in London. 3 days = Hive London Pop Up for youth, 3 design challenge sessions + 2 game prototypes for the project. Whew! I thought it would be fun to re-hash the design challenge that we did with participants, because we ended up with 2 really useful prototypes that got me thinking about the future direction of the project.

We framed our design challenge prior to the festival as:

Interested in making a hackable comic book featuring superheroes of the open web? Or maybe an interactive story embedded with quests for webmakers? We want you to bring the spirit of the Hackasaurus design jam- online -- with a self-directed learning experience on www.hackasaurus.org. This is an opportunity to think creatively about how to teach HTML and CSS to middle school aged youth (10-15 year olds). We have designed a toolkit for Web designers and developers, that will give you all of the assets that you need to create an engaging online activity.

WHO SHOWED UP?

We had over 2 dozen participants- including teenagers, teachers, developers, designers, journalists, community activists and game-makers

HACK THE DANCE

The workshop started with our hack-the-dance icebreaker that we do with youth at hack jams. We did this because a) it's a whole lot of fun and b) we wanted to set the tone that we were building playful interactions for youth to learn HTML and CSS using the Hackasaurus X Ray Goggles.

BRAINSTORMING

After we got loose, we kicked off with a brainstorm game. Everyone broke into groups and were given three cards- a learning goal, a mechanic and an end product and they had to come up with a concept for a Hackasaurus learning project based on that. We played 3 rounds, and in each round the participants were given the chance to write - in more and more information on the cards.

As a result- we came up with about 7 different ideas for what we could prototype. We defined prototyping really loosely- it could be a storyboard, a sticky sketch, a tweet, an interactive website- whatever you needed to do to just communicate your IDEA.

Participants self-organized into groups and by the end of the day we had two distinct projects: Doctor Web and Hacker Battle.

Even though the groups started out with 2 ideas- after numerous iterations and sketches, the concepts morphed. For example, one group- started out with this idea for a Popcorn.js curated Hack gallery for users to display their remixed websites- however, after pitching to our group and getting feedback and iterating on the concept- that exact idea turned into a Hack Battle game where participants could post their hacked websites up on to a challenge page and compete against other users who changed the code on the same website.

THE PROTOTYPES

Title: Doctor Web
Concept: You are a doctor responding to a medical emergency! Your interns incorrectly fixed a patient (Website Master) and now he is a complete mess. It's your job to dig into his HTML and CSS to fix him up- but hurry up before his health completely depletes!

Interactive Prototype:

Title: Hack Battle

Concept: After learners remix a website - they can submit their hack into the Hack battle where website visitors vote on the best hacked version of whatever website the learner started from.

Interactive Prototype: here

DEMO + BEYOND

We demo-ed the prototypes at the Mozilla closing circle and received some positive feedback. So what now? I feel very excited about the possibility of these prototypes because they fill two voids in our project: Doctor Web gives users a playful introduction to both the X-Ray Goggles and HTML/CSS and Hack Battle provides a social, community space for users to collaborate and communicate.

We need to continue building out these prototypes. One of the great things about the Festival was that we had the end-user in the room with us developing, that is- a teenager. Also- we had a plethora of experts helping to design these experiences. Let's continue to work together- because, clearly, the power of numbers and the diversity of community members engaged in webmaking and media-making has proven to be a huge win for us.

Working with Educators on Hackasaurus

2011-09-09T09:06:00.008-05:00

This week I have been working on building out the educational objectives, sample lesson plan and assessment rubric to go in the Hackasaurus jam-in-a-box. The process for this has been interesting because I am trying to do this in an "open" manner so that it is truly designed as an open educational resource. In order to do this I found myself working on a strategy to engage the education community to help review my work and most importantly iterate and come up with new ideas.

I have reached out to people through social media and direct asks. The response has been good and it is definitely a start. Many of the people who responded wrote me back with statements like:

"I know absolutely nothing about code or html, but I want to learn and help the project succeed."

"I would like to try and help. I have daughters now in bother senior / junior so it may be possible for me to run a Hackasaurus event."

"Count me in!"

This is really positive and so now the challenge becomes, what is the best way to work collaboratively with all of these kinds of contributors? At the moment, I am building out the jam-in-a-box on a wiki and then, connecting content mostly through etherpads.
This is kind of a hacky way of being collaborative. It really just let's people contribute by editing, but doesn't truly encourage webmaking.

I am inspired a bit by the way that p2pu is developing out their challenge template and I see that this is on git so Atul and I might fork it and try to develop it out for our purposes.

I like how essentially it is a table... but in my mind it is a sharing repository where educators can post lesson plans and resources, and just like git hub- fork ideas and build upon them and post new ideas. It can be searched, used and built upon.

I would love to hear other ways that could support working in the open- and I mean working- webmaking, not just editing!

Call for Educators!

2011-09-06T12:31:00.003-05:00

Happy first day of back-to-school for many of you! I am writing because we are coming very close to shipping beta for Hackasaurus and I wanted to see if any educators are interested in working with me to give feedback and iterate on some of the Open Educational Resource materials that we are building. These resources include the design jam-in-a-box which gives you all of the tools that you need to run a Hackasaurus event- whether you are a teacher, parent, informal educator or a teen running a workshop.

In the next ten days I would like to get some specific feedback on the learning goals, learning assessment rubric and a superhero of the open web lesson plan/ design challenge.

If you are interested in helping, please shoot me an email at: jess (at) mozillafoundation (dot) org

Thanks and happy hacking and webmaking!

Badges: Level Up your Webmaking Skills

2011-08-26T09:30:00.006-05:00

Badges are huge topic in the digital media and learning world and something that I have been working with in some form ever since I have entered into the realm of educational technology. To be honest, I have struggled with my feeling towards badges, that is to say, assessment for skills that you aren't always given credit for.

The Mozilla Open Badges Project describes badges on their wiki:

Badges give you public recognition for your skills, achievements and learning beyond the classroom -- unlocking job and educational opportunities.

The reason that I struggle is that I am concerned that badges allow you to formalize something that is blissfully informal. One example of my fear around this was when I was in Barcelona at the Learning, Freedom and the Web festival. My colleague Jack Martin and I participated in this local learning incubator where we told a story with twitter. It was a fantastic and fun day and we loved what we made just as much as we did making it. However, after the activity was over, a learning assessment team came over during our presentation of our story and gave us badges for our story. It somehow cheapened the experience that Jack and I had and sort of reminded me that, yeah this was about learning and grading-not the fun experience.

Ok, now that I have that off my shoulders- I find the idea of using badges to assess web design skills intriguing. Many web designers and developers learned webmaking skills in informal settings- hanging out with friends, navigating the web on their own, tinkering with blog sites. However, theses skills equate to real life work competencies that often need to be proven in some form when you are applying for work (for example). What if there WAS a way to say, bring along some form of street cred and accreditation into your interviews along with your portfolio?

So with all of this enthusiasm, and mild trepidation- I started to look at the learning objectives for Hackasaurus and, with the help of Matt Thompson and Atul Varma, started to answer the question: if Hackasaurus had a system for badges what would the badges look like?

Essentially I came up with 5 core badges and then 3 "level up" badges. The level up badges are really geared towards refinement and mastery, whereas the core badges are a compilation of hard and soft webmaking skills. These badges can be mapped to a structured and scaffolded curriculum, or be achieved in a more organic (non-linear) way. What will be an interesting mechanic for the project is the dissemination of the badges. Right now, we are thinking that a learner can acquire a badge physically in a design jam or online through some sort of self guided experience

The badges I came up with are described here. It's just a barely baked idea, and Atul, Matt and I are really just starting to tinker with how badges could support the learning experience. We won't be actually implementing this online for a little bit, however, I would love to hear your thoughts on how this maps to the learning outcomes and if you have any other ideas. The Tuesday Hackasaurus community call will focus on badges. Join us if you have the time.

Learning Objectives for Hackasaurus

2011-08-16T06:45:00.009-05:00

While many people speak about how Hackasaurus is an open source development project, I think that it is important to note that this is an open educational resource project (OER) as well. What is particularly challenging and stimulating about the work that I do is that I am integrating ideas and creative thinking of both technologists and educators on a daily basis.

The project was birthed out of conversations between Mozilla and The Hive Learning Networks in New York and Chicago. Some of the initial test beds for the project were the New York Pubic Library, T he Chicago Public Library YouMedia and the New York Hall of Science. The Hive involvement in the project is still strong and we have more contributors including the Digital Youth Network, Eyebeam, The National Writing Project, the Institute of Play and Mouse, as well as many international contributors, including Brussels, Barcelona, the United Kingdom and Nigeria. The strong involvement of these organizations as well as individual educators who have volunteered their time and energy towards Hackasaurus helps to strengthen the design of the tools as well as the curricular aspects of the project.

The development team of the project and the learning experience team worked together to iterate on defining the learning objectives for the project. I am sharing with you a bit of our thinking around this because I feel that it is truly interesting to see how our project has evolved over the past year as well as where we believe that we are headed.

We initially came up with a set of learning objectives that we know we are currently satisfying with our tools and design jams. The objectives sketched out here more or less fit into three categories: browser basics, web making basics and tool basics.

We then started to develop out what our aspirational learning objectives are for the project. This included everything from being able to code websites to understanding what ethical web making means. One area of particular interest was defining what we mean when we talk to teens and tweens about the open web, which one participant on our open web etherpad described as:

"It's better to teach kids how to tie their shoelaces (an "open" skill needed for making knots, useful for many other purposes) vs just making them use shoes with easy Velcro fasteners (which is also much less challenging for developing fine motor skills)."

This process was really interesting because it was a mix of the technical side of building for the web with the emotional side of creating- that is, acknowledging that humans are crafting the web and thus, have a responsibility to themselves and others to understand the power of their medium. Finally, and this was probably the most difficult part for us, we started to list what are NOT our learning objectives. Yeah, this list is probably too short, but I think that it is a good place for us to begin. Ultimately the learning experience that we are interested in supporting is that of a web maker, someone who is thinking of the web as a place for designing, crafting, challenging and coding, which allowed us to remove some of the other areas that are tangentially associated with the work we do, but are not our direct focus.

The initial frontier: Hackasaurus Training Missions

2011-08-15T12:38:00.013-05:00

Last week, Atul Varma, David Humphrey and I took some time to think about crafting specific missions or quests that were directly mapped to initial interactions or skills that can be acquired when using the Hackasaurus X Ray Goggles. These training missions are being thought of as a way to introduce a new user to the "Hackasaurus" experience (no relation to the Jimi Hendrix Experience). Here is a little summary of our prototyping session.

The first thing that we did, was list the basic kinds of interactions that we know teens either have or that we would like them to have with the goggles:

Some of these interactions are really for advanced users. For example, ascending or descending to parent/child elements is something that really gets users to start to explore the Document Object Model (DOM), however isn't learned on the first day or hour with the tool. We also thought about more "hackable" interactions, or ways that teens could start to explore code- without actually knowing any code (ie- hacking javascript code without know how to program). As a result we came up with 4 concepts for training missions using the X-Ray Goggles.

Prototype 1:
Skill: Learn how to read and edit links
The idea for this sketch is that you can edit a link. So here, you have three animal links that connect to wikipedia entries, except the link for cat goes to an ugly dog- so the user will have to change that link using the goggles

Prototype 2:
Skill: Learn how to delete an element
The idea here is that the ball is moving around the frame (which has kind of a Super Mario Brothers set) and the goal is to get the ball into the basket which cant be done until you delete the div of the bar that is blocking the basket, using the goggles of course.

Prototype 3:
Skill: Learn how to edit javascript
This sketch shows this idea about kind of creating a "pinball" effect by increasing a value in javascript. The idea is that even if you don't know everything about javascript, you can hack it to make it work for you. When you increase the value to the correct amount, the ball will fly to the "pow" or portal button that takes you to the next training mission.

Prototype4:
Skill: Learn how to use CSS
This sketch shows that a user can use css to create an avatar . The idea would be that using the goggles with the CSS functionality (and even html editing) you can either reposition the objects to cover the avatar body and/or add your own elements to personalize it.

In the future at some point, we will prototype these using the repository on GitHub that Atul made for Hacker Parcours and game like creations.

Storyboard for Hackable Comic

2011-08-15T09:30:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned, last week I worked with Anna Debenham and some local tweens from Toronto on this hackable comic idea. We prototyped a simple storyboard for what could be the intro to the comic- how the main character (currently Sue) acquires her superpowers of hacking the world wide web for the good of the world.

I drew up the comic and played around quite a bit with navigation (horizontal vs vertical vs ZOOM). Additionally, we started to think about how we could incorporate actual hacking in the comic. There is a moment for activating the goggles and a sketch about how one of the characters is saved by the deletion of an element using HTML.

Here is my mock up (pulled together using Photoshop stitching):

Click on the image and go to Flickr for the best viewing. I annotated the flickr version with tons of notes to explain both the story and the interactivity.

What the Hackasaurus team does on our day off

2011-08-14T07:25:00.007-05:00

Atul, Anna and I are in Toronto for a Hackasaurus team design sprint to beta. Yesterday we took some time to relax. Wondering what the Hackasaurus team does when we have a day off? We went to the Royal Ontario Museum- and spent some time with the dinosaurs (of course)

Atul loves looking at fossils!

This is the icon on the displays to show when to use the audio tour. Pretty awesome, right?

Anna and I were quite fond of the big dinosaurs. Rawr

Although there were no Hackasaur sightings, we have informed the paleontologists that they should start researching around the new Mozilla office stomping grounds- just in case.

Hackable Comics

2011-08-11T10:50:00.011-05:00

This week at the Mozilla offices, we have been participating in a game design sprint to explore using the Hackasaurus tools as controllers for game play as well as building some games with integrated learning experiences. My colleague, Atul Varma, has already created a prototype for what I think could become kind of a mad libs + a choose your own adventure. It is a fantastic vehicle for us to teach learners how to use the tools as well as guide them through some very basic lessons in hacking html. Ever since I saw his Parable of the Hackasaurus, I have been inspired to create a hackable html5 comic.

But, maybe I should take this back a notch and talk about me and my relationship with comics. I love stories and in particular I love stories that are told in visual form. I read and collect children's books. I liked comics that I saw in newspapers, but it wasn't until I was really about 16 that I found them meaningful to me. As a grown up, I am an avid reader of graphic novels and I love anime and thus, can often be found attending comic con or geeking out at comic book stores. Whenever I was asked as a teenager what I wanted to be when I grew up- I said a children's book illustrator. Eventually my aspirations extended into comics. However, as I matured as an artist, I really started to become involved in designing interactive spaces and I just couldn't figure out how that factored into my comic/childrens book dream. I always keep around a sketch book, where I doodle little comics and drawings about my life- but I have never felt that it was a place for me to really share with others. I think that I made this distinction because to me, comics are personal spaces that you explore on your own and appreciate in the quietness of your own world.

doodle from my Israel sketchbook

However, my thinking about this started to change as I saw the possibilities of HTML5 and comics. Disney's Tron: Legacy interactive comic is absolutely beautiful and for me, it was a moment where my two worlds collided. Working on the computer, is a personal thing for the most part. You have your screen, and keyboard, and the path in the world wide web that you choose to explore is yours alone. The intimacy of reading the comic in the bookstore corner was somehow retained in the html5 experience. In the past when I have tried to get into reading comics online,the scrolling, the screen display, everything just seemed like it was just copying and pasting the comic from print to online and it wasn't translating. However, with these new HTML5 comics, like Tron and Never Mind the Bullets, the medium of the comic have been taken to a new level. While these initial experiments with html5 are really dabbling with interactivity, I think it is worth noting some of the interactions that make the experience unique to the medium.

With a web- based comic, you have the ability to expand on what it means to represent a non- linear narrative. This can be done in a truly clever way, by zooming into and linking to elements and really exploiting the nature of the web. I can think of endless possibilities in terms of breaking frames and giving the reader/user the opportunity to engage with the crafted comic world in a new way. Finally, something that is uniquely exciting about HTML5 (as opposed to Flash) is that content being developed can be remixable and hackable, allowing you to essentially insert yourself into the story and in effect, connect with the content in a more meaningful way. This possibility highlights the potential for the reader to become not just a user- but a player, conspirator, a dreamer and a maker.

I am working on creating a hackable comic prototype this week. So far I have just drafted a few frames of the narrative and in collaboration with my colleague Anna Debenham, have sketched out a few scenarios that give you the power to exploit the unique affordances of this interactive medium.

This week we tested the idea on a bunch of tween game designers who were helping the Hackasaurus team come up with game like ideas for the project. The feedback that we received about the comic was fantastic and I am really motivated to move forward.

If you are interested in learning more about Hackasaurus, or are interested in our work around gaming, and play- please visit the Hackasaurus website

Hackasaurus Cheat Sheet

2011-08-02T07:02:00.004-05:00

Sometimes you need a little something something to remind you which keys do what when you are using the Hackasaurus goggles. I pulled together this little cheat to have beside you as you are remixing websites with the Hackasaurus tools.

The Earth Day My Carbon Footprint 3D Design Hack Jam for Youth at the New York Hall of Science

2011-04-26T09:01:00.009-05:00

This post is co-written with guest-blogger Chris Lawrence, Director of Formal and Informal Learning at the New York Hall of Science

"The Earth Day My Carbon Footprint 3D Design Hack Jam is easily the most rewarding day at NYSCI I have had in a while" Chris Lawrence, NYSCI

On April 22, 2011, tweens, teens and families celebrated Earth Day at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) My Carbon Footprint 3D Design Hack Jam. If you have any hesitation about hitching a ride on the "design jam" bandwagon, then you just need to witness the array of projects and hear the experiences that were had by participants at this event.

The event brought together youth from two NYSCI Schools Out Innovation camps that were running during the New York City spring break. Both camps were made up of middle school age youth who had been exploring in detail themes of the Jam such as 3D design, climate change and digital tools. While the camp was a structured informal learning experience, the Hack Jam allowed the youth to showcase their expertise in a much more free flowing and interest driven environment. In addition to the NYSCI campers, there were also NYSCI Explainers and Explainer Interns who work at NYSCI and are involved in both in leading the camps and participating in digital design projects with NYSCI Education staff. These Explainers ranged in age from 15-20. The Jam was orchestrated by the staff at NYSCI and the New Youth City Learning Network, and made possible by the Mozilla Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, The National Science Foundation and the Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors. However what made it successful is that the teenage NYSCI Explainers took ownership in the event and acted as peer mentors for all of the activities taking place.

"Today was amazing! I came by the "build jam" today and it was really good. A lot of different events went on, and so far this is the biggest build jam i've been into. I just wanted to blog about what a wonderful time i had and how amazing this build jam was :)" blog post from NYSCI Explainer Intern and Virtual Hall of Science designer Yessenia Bautista

Like a music jam, participants at this event, worked on many different kinds of projects and then riffed off of each other to produce a collaborative online 3D exhibition space with the theme of human's carbon footprint on Earth. The event space was organized around work stations:

NYSCI's Virtual Hall of Science is a 3D world built in the Active Worlds software similar to Second Life. Teens had the chance to work with each other to develop interactive exhibits, scavenger hunts and virtual stories all building around the theme of Earth Day. In order to do this, teens used various technologies including Active Worlds, digital imaging software and Google Sketchup. The VHOS team placed the beginnings of two exhibits in the Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors "wing" of VHOS, a map of the United States and blank gallery walls. Hack Jam participants then researched various temperatures through geological time and placed pinned them to the interactive map. Contests were held to see who could place the most data points on the VHOS map, with 15 being the winner! The blank walls were where digital photos were currated and hung to demonstrate what youth were understanding about their carbon footprint both inside and outside the walls of NYSCI. Funding for the Virtual Hall of Science project is provided by the National Science Foundation.

Virtual Hall of Science (NYSCI)

View more presentations from nycln.

Hackasaurus- This station gave participants the opportunity to learn how to locally hack websites, so that they could remix the content and also learn how to develop their own websites. Hackasaurus is a Mozilla and MacArthur Foundation initiative that helps teens learn how to design and develop for the web. Teens who came to this station made hacks and shared them on Flickr like this:

and some, who really got into the project geeked out and made websites like this and shared it in the VHOS exhibition space.

"Jessica showed us how to use Hackasaurus and delete and change elements of a webpage (locally only). The Hackasaurus Firefox add-on is really cool. When we started out, I didn't know how it worked and actually "went backwards" and made my own website before I learned how to hack an existing one." blog post from Jam participant, Ishum.

Digital Imaging- Earth Day is a time to embrace the outdoors, so many teens left the Jam and took photos and videos outside while looking for examples of our carbon footprint. They then creatively integrated the best images into a photo gallery in VHOS, or embedded into participant created websites.

Paper Prototyping- Some participants wanted to sketch out concepts before taking their work online, others wanted to draw assets to be incorporated into VHOS after they were photographed, and some teens just wanted to use their hands and draw. This station accommodate all of the designers who were interested in mixed media in some form.

The event was intentionally designed to be messy, so that participants could float around from station to station to play, explore and create. The room was laid out with tables containing digital and analog materials. A LCD screen and two projectors were positioned so participants could share their work and see what other teens were doing at any given point during the event. At many times during the Jam the room was a hot wonderful mess of wires, laptops, butcher paper, crayons, cameras and snacks! The beginning of the event was scaffolded so that teens could move around and experiment with all of the tools available. Many of the youth took this opportunity to explore while others had a clear focus on what interested them. Interestingly within a few hours teens were in control and had both sampled at least a few of the activities while also getting down to some serious tinkering!

An unantipated joy was the inclusion of family members of the youth participants. We had teachers who had come to visit their students in the NYSCI Innovation Camps, parents excited to join the fun and many siblings (ages 2-12!) who saddled up to their brothers, sisters and cousins to learn about and participate in all the making. A head count of participants of all ages topped 75 people by the Jam's end at 6 PM.

The event was successful because teens had a multitude of tools and mediums to explore their interests in science, the environment and digital media and they embraced the casual atmosphere of the Jam as a moment to experiment and share. The Jam incorporated the programmatic work that NYSCI and the NYCLN are doing, however both organizations allowed their work to be remixed in the event so that teens and staff worked on different projects and could collaborate in a social setting. The result was that over 50 youth played in different modalities, self-identified as experts in a variety of thematic as well as technical areas, and established working relationships with peers.

What will you be doing for your Jam?

Youth Design Jams 101: Building Your Toolkit

2011-04-13T14:26:00.023-05:00

I’m very excited to announce a new series of posts that I will be writing:Youth Design Jams 101: Building Your Toolbox . For the past 5 months, the New Youth City Learning Network in conjunction with Mozilla, have been hosting design jams focusing on developing a youth maker/ hacker culture. In our jams, we have been focusing on user-testing the Hackasaurus tools, learning about our core audiences relationship with computing and developing fun, casual ways for teens to connect while getting messy with code. As a result, we have had many requests from Learning Network partners and generally awesome community members who want to host a similar jam in their local communities.

I will be creating a collection of tutorials and reference guides that will make the process of hosting a jam fairly simple. My hope is that as you read this, and embark on your own youth design jam adventure, that you will contribute tips and ideas that helped you to craft creative opportunities for youth engagement with technology in open design.

Today's Guide is a 10 Step Plan for Hosting a Youth Jam.

A successful jam takes some time to plan, but with a little elbow grease, your event could rock. At least a month prior to the jam you should have the venue identified, the date confirmed and the core planning team more or less in the works. At least two weeks prior to the jam you should have permission slips disseminated. This is particularly important if you plan on having teens engage in open design, where they are sharing their work on the web and documenting their process.

Invite youth and facilitators who have experience in the field and/or with kids and work with them in advance to develop a game plan or curriculum for the day of the jam. It's good to have some people with technical skills on hand to troubleshoot as well as act as a creative support system. Consider approaching local universities or tech organizations to act as on-site mentors. After the team is formed, assign tasks to all of the facilitators in the room. Documentation, Tech support, etc. Don't have anyone lingering- this needs to be established as an interactive/ collaborative YOUTH space.

Hacking for the sake of hacking, can be fun for some- but not everyone. This is an opportunity to think creatively about incorporating technology into the work that you already do. Is there a project already underway in your organization or neighborhood that you want to build enthusiasm or crowd-source data or content for? Remember, the technology or media should not be the theme of the jam, just a strategy for implementation. Some past jams have included: Hacking Citizen Science, Social Hacktivism and Entrepreneurship 101

The goal of every jam is to make something. Set expectations for outcomes so that both the youth and facilitators know the expectations coming into the jam. Reinforce this with publicity efforts and messaging happening around the event.

Working with your team of Superheros and H.I.T's (Hacker's in Training) - plan out the lesson or event plan. A jam is not a class, it is SUPPOSED to informal and playful. However, this kind of environment still needs to be structured- particularly when you are a) working with new technologies and b) planning for youth under the age of 18. Many of the event plans allow for some dedicated instruction combined with experimentation time. Check out hackasaurus.org and build off some existing curriculum or upload your own and get feedback from the Hackasaurus community of educators, techies and geeks.

Define space in the venue that you will be hosting the jam. Break up the space as much as possible. We don't want this to look like a classroom. Move chairs into a circle. Set up a projector connected to a laptop that everyone can have easy access to share their work. Make sure that laptops have Firefox 4, Safari, Chrome or IE9 installed. And if they are using Hackasaurus tools, have those tools up and running in advance.

Make every attempt humanly possible to define the jam space as interactive. Start out with some thematic ice-breakers to get people talking and defining their identities within the crowd. Go around have people say names and a noise explaining how they feel- something silly. Make a Human Hack Spectrogram: put stickies with positive and negative signs at either side of the room and then a neutral sticky in middle. Tell participants they should move about freely and feel that they can change their mind as people give responses. Some intentionally controversial statements could include:

I think i understand how the internet works

I think of hacking as a positive word

I think of hacking as something I want to do

Explain ground rules for the space: 1. Respect- we define respect in this space- dont talk when other people are talking and honor the fact that people have different opinions 2.Inclusion- collaborating can be fun and creative, let's figure out how. Finally, throw in a curveball-if they have a question or there is a word that they don't know - tell them that they should interrupt that person.

Don't hold back! As soon as possible, start hacking away. Bust a hack- on the big projector with participants. Let participants start hacking away. Participants don't want to hear what cool things they can do, they want to get dirty and figure it out themselves- let them.

Let teens work together in teams, and throughout the jam encourage them to take on specific roles on their project (i.e., visual designer, coder, project manager, documentarian).Have the youth present what they did, encouraging conversation about process and techniques! Everyone should share something useful that they learned- only one sentence to answer and if there is someone who said something interesting, shout it out and let them know that you agree. Embed a light weight de-brief into the sharing out of useful things.

As soon as your jam is over, upload your pictures to a public repository like Flickr. Direct participants to resources so that they can continue making, hacking, building and connecting to peers who they met at the jam. Leverage social media whenever possible. Encourage teens to post their work to virtual spaces that they already populate, whether that be deviantart or facebook!

That's it! Now, with just a bit of elbow grease, you have the tools you need to getting started preparing for your jam. Please post your ideas, tips and suggestions in the comments field!

Drumbeat

2011-02-20T17:04:00.002-06:00

"No one in this house is going to pick up the phone! ... and if you do pick up the phone, I am NOT giving you dinner!"

I remember the feeling of great joy and satisfaction that I had when my brother and I not only showed my mother how we would connect to the seemingly mythical Bulletin Board System in the early 90s- but how we would get her buy in to collaborate with us to make the experience last just a little bit longer than possible without her. We started up the computer, booted up DOS, ran our dial in program to access the modem, typed in the command line and told it to dial some magical number-then the fun of running around the house like a maniac ensued. We needed to tell everyone not to pick up the phone- out of penalty of death. When we finally did connect to some service, we would type in the user name and password combination and enter this secret world of the Bulletin Board System.

Everyone who was in this sacred space had some interest or skill in common, but for the most part, we would join the community without knowing we were talking to, or what we were going to be talking about. It took a leap of faith to enter this community, and an even larger level of courage and creativity to publicly put your thoughts out there into this void. But, when you did take that leap- it was exhilarating! Here I was, a 10 year old girl, talking to people about computing, comics and just anything that came to my mind. I felt connected to something that was much larger than my living room in Queens- now, I was talking to people all over the world and, even more amazing than that was the fact that they were talking to me! At the end of the day, we would part ways and possibly never talk to each other again, but we had a moment of connection. My family had this moment. These moments changed my perception of the world and allowed me to conceive of the potential for the future internet and my future life in computing.

Since the early 90s, I have grown up a little bit and become a full fledged designer. I now work at the Social Science Research Council on a project supported by the MacArthur Foundation called the New Youth City Learning Network. It was through this position that I was given the opportunity to go to the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival in Barcelona this Fall. Like my childhood experience of entering the Bulletin Board System, I came to the festival with little understanding of who I would be meeting, and quite honestly what exactly I would be doing. Channeling the courage of my 10 year old self- I entered this non- conference like space, and participated in a variety of projects and conversations with people from all over the world.

Since no one knew who I was coming into any given workshop or project, my actions defined me as a "hacker" or "maker". I became one of those people who was using her hands to figure things out. It's funny, because I guess in the Bulletin Board days, I assumed roles or identities as no one was going to remember my name. In the 90s, I was really activated by the ASCII art and making words into visual forms (while my brother found himself entwined in code). Today, I am a designer (and my brother is a programmer) and took on that persona at Drumbeat. The unique thing about Drumbeat was that it was designed to be almost a physical realization of the collaborative communities of the web. Here, programmers, designers, educators and enthusiasts work together to ponder the future of the open web.

I attended a jam session building temperature sensors with blinking lights with the arduino- while thinking about the classroom and educational opportunities for teens and physical computing. It was fun, empowering and super hands-on geekertainment.

I then attended a conversation with Dale Dougherty, founder of Make magazine, and Mr. Maker himself. It was a really interesting talk because we discussed making communities all over the world. I had been familiar with Dale and his DIY and maker enthusiasm from my work with NYCLN and his maker posse at Maker Faire NYC, however we ended up having a great conversation about the potential for maker or fabrication spaces. What kind of affordances do these spaces provide being outside of the school environment? Our group (who were mostly not from the U.S.) wondered if this need for alternative art spaces was an American problem. However, after listening to the full conversation- I believe that this is not about the lack of arts in schools but about forming your own identity through informal learning opportunities. Informal here, being out of the classroom and self-motivated- I like to compare this to the idea of a community garden.

So here I was, in the beautiful tactile Gaudi- crafted city of Barcelona, feeling my way through physical computing projects by hacking into the arduino with a gang of new friends- wondering how I was going to bring it all back to my real world and work in New York. I then attended the session that NYCLN and the Chicago Learning Network was running on local storytelling. It was an awesome session, with a mixture of people from our two networks as well as locals from Barcelona, and other educators from around the world. The premise of the session was simple- go out onto the streets of Barcelona- as a team or by yourself and come back and tell a story that represents your experience of the city. We left the interpretation open and the results were pretty awesome. One group made a poignant 45 second film of children playing soccer, another group used a google map to embed images and stories of their journey, and another team did a he said/ she said story of their time on the streets using twitter and facebook- which culminated in a crowdsourced experience of members from the drumbeat community helping one of the lost participants back to conference.

What was then an interesting turn of events- we then combined with a session on developing badges to discuss how badges could be applied to the activity. So, they used the twitter story to basically "badge".

While this was an interesting experience to be having a conversation as both a maker, as well as someone who supports learning in some form, I have to admit it felt really weird. I had just had this amazing experience crafting the story using casual skills in a non-formal setting and then, it felt like they were just trying to formalize my experience and "grade it" in some form. I am willing to keep playing along with these nascent badge ideas but, as Tim Gunn would say, "I'm dubious."

Regardless, our twitter story won the "multi modal" badge amongst other things. I feel that badges are useless unless they are put out there into the world in some kind of social context. I think that the work that P2PU is doing in now developing out a universal open source badge backpack is really going to help this concept along and I am excited to see where that goes.

Since Drumbeat, I have incorporated this local learning "incubator" activity into one of the youth oriented design jams for our network. This jam is going to be hosted by the New York Hall of Science. Chris Lawrence, the Director of Formal and Informal Education at NYSCI helped to develop the initial concept for the incubator, so taking it back into our own local setting - in Queens! seems not only appropriate, but important.

Another way that we at NYCLN and CLN are bringing the Drumbeat experience back to our local community and world is by developing out a project called Hackasaurus. The Network's involvement with Hackasaurus was really birthed at Drumbeat. The goal behind this work is to create tools to help teens hack the web, and as a by-product learn web design and development. This is a project that is near and dear to my heart because experiences that you have as a teenager- connecting with the world through a medium that engages you, helps you to not only define your identity- but help establish your identity within the context of the world. This was true for me in the 90s, using the BBS, and even more true now with the web. We are working in collaboration with Mozilla, the New York Public Library and YouMedia Chicago, to develop the tools and the complimentary curriculum so that this experience can be easily implemented by any teacher, mentor, parent of teen. The goal for us is to be transparent about our process so that we can engage whoever from the community is interested in collaborating.

At this point we have user-tested in four hack jams in New York and Chicago and developed a small team of teen designers and developers who are going to do user testing as well as development with us. The jams have been an interesting learning experience and I will try to write about them more in another post.

Drumbeat was an engaging and eye-opening experience for me as well as my colleagues in the New York and Chicago Learning Networks, but really what it did was bring back the 10 year old spirit in me. It reminded me of the importance of ingenuity, collaboration and learning by getting messy and jumping in. However, it also reminded me of how as a family, or a community- learning can be even more fun and powerful. My brother and I learned to become designers and developers over time by engaging with the web through meaningful identity building experiences. It is my hope that with the projects that we are developing through the Learning Networks in conjunction with Mozilla that we can inspire a new generation of learners, ones who connect remotely with collaborators, take risks and inform the world of their unique existence using this flexible and definable medium of the web.

Presentation for Parsons

2010-11-11T12:59:00.001-06:00

CUNY on Wheels, PS 43, Rockaway Waterfront Alliance and... OCEANLAB

2010-05-27T19:28:00.004-05:00

Yesterday we had a great day at the beach with students from PS43Q. I ran 4 Oceanlab workshops and had the help of my mother, Rose Klein- DOE educator. The workshops went well. Each time I ran the workshop, I became a little bit more comfortable working with students and I felt that much more confident presenting the material. Not being an educator myself, I truly admire the way that teachers can calmly talk to children - without talking down to them, or being intimidated by them. Regardless, I introduced the oceanlab website to approximately 100 students and got some great feedback. I learned that students in this school tap into the social networks of facebook, myspace and twitter. Many use the cell phone as means to search the internet throughout the day.

In a formal setting- such as this classroom on wheels- students were most concerned about learning where they could go to learn how to swim. This makes me think that I need to add more links and informal "lessons".

I am thinking of modifying the Oceanlab site to include areas for research and representation of the informal activities- but then again, I could rely on a facebook page to communicate that content as well.

Here are some photos from the day. I really enjoyed the experience of this mobile learning vehicle and am already talking more with CUNY on Wheels to plan our next event.
Look how neat the bus was!

Water safety learning in action.
We parked the bus right next to the boardwalk.

This is Norma Coleman James, Assistant Director of CUNY on Wheels.

Locative Bike Tour

2010-05-16T22:17:00.005-05:00

Here are some pics of the Oceanlab Seamonster Summer Bike Quest. Test 1 complete. Still trying to come up with a snazzier title for this bike game/ tour. Below is a qr code that when participants take a photo of it with their phones, they receive a text message story element. Here, participants are told to read the signs surrounding them and to decide whether Shelly Seamonster should stay here for her adventure at the beach or try another location, because she is not a strong swimmer.

web presentation

2010-05-06T07:50:00.000-05:00

My symposium talk: Child's Play

2010-05-04T07:21:00.001-05:00

Opening!

2010-04-30T08:07:00.002-05:00

My thesis process according to Phill Retuta

2010-04-15T21:51:00.001-05:00

via his blog

1. Visited every public beach in New York.
2. Asked visitors what they thought about the beach.
3. Began research both on the web and in libraries
4. Compiled the history of NYC beaches and water safety
5. Googled everybody with the terms “NYC,” “beach,” “water”, etc. and made calls and sent out emails
6. Did a lot of soul-searching and got over her fear of approaching people
7. Became comfortable making mistakes, choosing topics, and not boxing herself in.
8. Went crazy.

Oceanlab- Some Publicity

2010-04-12T13:42:00.005-05:00

Sooo the web address is wrong, and a few other minor details- but it's press! How exciting- the printed word. :) This was published in the April 9, 2010 edition of The Wave- Rockaways Newspaper since 1893.

Amigurumi!

2010-04-07T21:01:00.003-05:00

My mother is quite the craftswoman. She crochetted me an octopus in honor of Oceanlab.

First Official Sponsor

2010-04-05T15:15:00.002-05:00

Oceanlab has it's first official sponsor- NextEra Energy. They will be supporting school workshops! Yipee!!!!

Filming for the Oceanlab Videopods

2010-04-03T09:34:00.005-05:00

The other day we took advantage of the great weather and filmed the video pods at the beach. It was a great opportunity to talk to some real experts about beach life and safety. People showed up from The Rockaway Waterfront Alliance, Reel Works, The American Littoral Society, The United States Lifesaving Association, The Board of Education, The Surfrider Foundation, Boarders Surf Shop and local public schools. Here are a few sneak peek photos. More to come....

Rockaway Waterfront Alliance and ReelWorks

The American Littoral Society

Filming with the United States Lifesaving Association and the Board of Education

Surfboards from Boarders Surf Shop on Beach 92nd street

Some Great Feedback

2010-03-29T09:36:00.003-05:00

Last week I had my midterm review for my thesis class and then, coincidentally I had a full out crit on my website in my Advanced Web Class. I'll break it down here, because both crits were really useful and truly helped me take my work to the next level.

THESIS CRIT -( Tuesday)
For the midterm review I had three critics- Anthony Deen, Marco Tandefelt and Chris Prentice. Anthony, my studio professor is an architect who focuses on the integration of technology into his work. He is also very interested in community development and I feel that he has been a good advisor for me because of this innate understanding of the connection between public land and it's actual use by residents. Marco is a physical computing professor in the department, and I think because my project is anything BUT physical computing- he was able to offer up some good outsider advise. Chris, is my writing professor for thesis, however she is so much more. Anezka told us that Chris has an expertise in writing grants, and focusing on academic writing. However, I find that Chris is one of the few people who have really helped me to see the importance of my work and how the message of the project could be extended beyond the thesis.

Okay, so enough with the introductions. Here are the highlights of my feedback:

I need to present my "big picture" ideas in a different way, because it is not communicating all of the legs of the project. Chris referred to this by saying I need a "30,000 ft map" of the project and Marco said that I needed to do a sales pitch, (which for some reason as I was standing up there made me think of Crazy Eddy from tv- we've got cables, we've got widescreen tv's....)
I need to give clear user scenarios about the project. What would the experience be for a teacher vs a student?
I need to describe the different levels of goals for different developmental age ranges.
Everyone responded positively to my new web design (thank goodness I was very n vous about this) but Anthony noted that I now need to refine it in terms of communication vs. design.
Finally, as I knew, I need to show some of my user testing.
Overall, all of this was really useful. I am going to make some time to meet with Chris and Anthony to talk about how I can achieve these suggestions, and really polish up my presentation for the symposium. The end is neigh!!!!

WEB DESIGN (Thursday crit)
I have to say that this was a refreshing crit. It has been a rare thing to get specific feedback on my designs in this program, usually the crits are focused on concept- which is fine, but sometimes you just need feedback. For this crit, my entire web class gave me feedback, as well as my professor Jay Van Buren. Jay has worked with a variety of clients, and is known for his work with non-profits and fine art institutions.

Highlights:
think about the bubble background- maybe reducing the amount of bubbles and adding a more obvious gradient to achieve a "wave" effect.
ABOUT page- split the page up into three pages. This will allow for tiered sponsors.
TAGLINE- move the tagline to live underneath the logo. This came up in both crits. Apparently, placing it where I did, above the navigation produces legibility issues.
the crab= "awesome", I need to go back and bring that same animated quality to the seagull and oyster. They don't have the same strength as the crab. (Chris also gave me this feedback so I am looking forward to doing this).
LANDING page- I need to make the current beach conditions more kid friendly.
There was also the suggestion of moving the characters to live just off the bubble shape. I need to try this out though, because I am not sure how it will look. I like how the whole site looks a bit like a big sticker.
And that's all. I am just going to keep chugging along and make my way to the end of the semester.

CUNY on Wheels has signed on!

2010-03-29T09:23:00.004-05:00

A brief bit of exciting news- CUNY on Wheels will be donating a bus for the Earth Day launch. This is exciting, because the Earth Day celebration will be happening totally on the beach, so we are doing some mock workshops that will be on the beach but then we will also be user testing the website on the CUNY buses. These buses are fully equipped with computers and movie screens so it is quite an interesting opportunity. I mean, check out the bus in this picture- it's legit.

7 Scenes Test

2010-03-29T09:11:00.004-05:00

A few weeks back I participated in a 7 Scenes test which was part of a MacArthur grant for a project that asked high schools to take part in making design decisions about the neighborhood surrounding their school. I really love the idea of this project. The test that I took part in was really just familiarizing the students (and some of the faculty) at Taft High School in the Bronx with the technology. We walked around with the kids in groups and showed them how to operate the 7 Scenes program on the Nokia N95 cell phones and then we took a walking tour around the school grounds. Prior to the test, the teachers programmed a 'scene' for the students to try out which included some interesting historical tid-bits about their school and the goal of the test was to get the students to think about how they could enhance the scene, and make it more into a game format. The group of students who I lead were extremely articulate and, exceptionally well versed in critiquing technology.

Projects like this are exciting because they use mobile technology to augment the natural environment so that students can see it with a critical eye. I would like to continue to think about ways to implement this kind of project with students in Far Rockaway. It would be fantastic.

Midterm Presentation

2010-03-23T08:19:00.001-05:00

This is my last midterm----- EVER!!!!!

The Swimming Song

2010-03-21T16:43:00.000-05:00

Presentation for Parks Department

2010-03-03T14:24:00.001-06:00

Quiz Game Progress

2010-03-03T13:52:00.000-06:00

Here is a little slide show of where I am with the quiz game. Basically I made 15 questions to start. The game is now not leveled. I need to develop the curriculum and then make 30 more questions - 2 more levels of 15. Also- I need to work on the code, the animations for what happens when you get something right vs. wrong, make an intro panel and design the music. I guess this could also be without music.

My Thesis Process

2010-02-26T15:07:00.004-06:00

The Director of the masters program that I am currently in (for only a few more months!) asked me to answer a few questions about my thesis process. It was a little strange to talk about my process and give advice to the next group of students doing a thesis because I am still in the middle of finishing all this! Anyway, here it is. If you are a first year visiting this site- please drop me a line and say hello. :)

A classmate of mine, Clay Ewing also was asked to answer a few questions.Here is his moment of fame. It's interesting to hear what he is up to and how far along he came with his project.

Website Creative Brief

2010-02-25T08:50:00.003-06:00

I did THIS creative brief and brief competitive analysis for the oceanlab site. I am going to run this by a few of my potential users to get some feedback.

Peer Review Presentation

2010-02-24T08:40:00.001-06:00

The presentation went really well. It was a nice small group of people. Only about 4 of my fellow second years showed and 3 first years. Seriously, I am not complaining! This was the most productive peer review that I have been to. Okay, so I was given good feedback on my website. Some suggestions:

-think about using javascript on the LEARN page to put all the content on the page and then let it jump down.
-think about completely separating the navigation for the TEACH page so that it is not distracting to kids using the site.
-for the exhibition, think about doing a demonstration of some sort- get people involved with the topic- if not the project.
-for the exhibition, maybe print out a beautiful user scenario

I think what was clear about my project- compared to the others in the class- was that my piece is not fine art. It's design. I made that decision for my work and I need to figure out the best way to exhibit it. My classmate Rupa suggested that I check out some science museums like the Liberty Science Center to get some ideas for display. Maybe Ill also take a look at the Brooklyn Childrens Museum.

My QR code tutorial

2010-02-17T20:58:00.002-06:00

Review: The QR Code

2010-02-17T15:43:00.003-06:00

I recently discovered QR codes. QR codes are two dimensional bar codes that were invented in Japan. QR is short for quick response and these codes really do just that. All that you need to do is take a picture with your cellphone and instantaneously a text message (or whatever kind of message is embedded in the code) will appear on your phone. For me it was love at first sight. I started thinking about all of the possibilities for encoding my neighborhood, writing secret love letters for my boyfriend, or even just for branding and marketing. My only issue with the qr code - for American users at least- is the qr code reader that needs to be downloaded on to your phone in order to use it. Many phones in other countries have the QR code reader built into their applications and such, but for me with my non- ipod phone- it was hell. There needs to be some better system to get the applications on to your phone. I had to hunt down a site that would have the specific reader for my specific phone. This is not so intuitive. It actually is putting a foil on my romantic code letter goals! However, after this hurdle- it is truly a pleasure to play with and it is a fun way to tap into mobile potential without building an appication.

what I am building

2010-02-16T09:13:00.000-06:00

Mocking It Up

2010-02-08T20:47:00.000-06:00

Updated Site Architecture

2010-02-08T15:35:00.001-06:00

Why the change? I realized that parents and teachers (ahem families and educators) needed to be separate from learning for this to be a kid-friendly site.

Site Architecture

2010-02-08T11:45:00.003-06:00

I have been tweaking the site architecture. I went from having 5 sections to 4... among other things. I am still trying to think about what can be more dynamic on the site. However, after my thesis I am probably not going to be maintaining this. So- I am just thinking about what existing API's I can pull from.

Website Interactive Research

2010-02-07T13:06:00.005-06:00

I have been re-thinking how to use the oceanlab website. At first I thought that it could just be a container for all of the different kinds of media that are connected to the project. However, after some thought and a good dose of inspiration- I have been thinking about more engaging ways to relate the student visitors to their coastal environment.

Here are some of my recent inspirations:

1. NY Times Interactives for the Style section showing people's houses.

This is pretty cool because it is really just a scene that has clickable hot spots with audio, visual or text embedded into it. It really personalizes the experience in a fun way.

2. Lost Here Felt There

This website features an image of a rainforest with a scroll over-able grid. On the grid you have the ability to click on squares which represent acres that you can pay to protect.The interface is really clean and nice, and its informative at the same time that it is getting you to take action.

3. Urban Plough

Urban Plough is a site that uses google map images of a farm and allows you to scroll through and look at the changes in the environment over the years. Additionally there is information that pops up about the land based on the year and then embedded within the images are markers talking about specific projects happening in that location.

game assets and monsters revised

2010-02-03T21:49:00.002-06:00

monster mash

2010-02-02T11:06:00.005-06:00

So I have been finally making things! I think that it takes me so long to just get in the groove and start. I remember someone telling me back a few years ago that it is part of my process to mull things over and think about it, plan, conceptualize etc. But to be honest- I hate not making things. I need to jump in and just make things sometimes to get further along in my project. This past week I made a brochure with all of the associated art. Making that art was a huge improvement for me. It helps me to see a light at the end of this tunnel that is thesis.

This past week I also met with the Parks Department to talk about the project. It was a really nice experience talking with them about my work and hearing about their plans for the future of the department. Hopefully more soon on that...

First Day of 2nd Semester Presentation

2010-01-26T14:28:00.001-06:00

Obituary for Mel Cuba- Lifesaver

2010-01-19T20:33:00.003-06:00

This is Mel Cuba in 1933.

I read this post the other day in the New York Times. It is an obituary for a 99 year old (wow!) man who had saved 4 children from drowning in the Rockaways during his youth. The article briefly discusses how these children came to the beach from an orphanage and then they got caught in a powerful wave. It just shows that there is this constant history of stories about children drowning and the "heroes" who from time to time prevent sad endings to stories- but very few about what can be done proactively to fix these problems.

New Waterfront Park for the Rockaways!

2010-01-06T11:22:00.003-06:00

The Trust for Public Land recently announced that vacant land at Beach 88th Street in the Rockaways will be converted into a public park. This is going to be an amazing opportunity for local residents and families to engage with their community and the ever-present coastal environment. This is an important bit of progress for New Yorkers connecting with their natural habitat. This project will hopefully ensure that the waterfront is something that can be accessed by people in a familiar, comfortable and approachable setting.

(image from the Trust for Public Land website)

Final

2009-12-10T07:28:00.000-06:00

Thursday Presentation Day

2009-12-02T23:02:00.002-06:00

Thanksgiving Break

2009-11-29T20:21:00.005-06:00

This has been a really crazy break for me. For the first time in a long time I didn't do a lot of work. My nephew came to New York, from California. I haven't seen him for a year. He was born when I started graduate school in the Summer of 08, and so it was really hard for me to concentrate because I was so excited to see him. My first nephew. Anyway, I spent a lot of time with him looking at Elmo, Barney and Mr. Noodle. I was really inspired by the power that music and this kind of entertainment has on him. We did take a trip to the beach in Rockaway that has lost all of its sand. It was sad to see how a natural storm can destroy a communities land.

I also came across this video:

Pictorial Webster's: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

I was really taken by it.

Big Picture Thinking word dump.

2009-11-23T14:58:00.005-06:00

Why?

When I started out the project, I knew immediately that there was a need for beach safety didactic materials. Having grown up in a beach community, I knew every summer that when I heard helicopters flying close to my house, that someone had drowned. The emotional toll that this takes on a neighborhood is intense. People live in fear of their surroundings and their tenuous relationship with the ocean. Over the summer, after having recently been attacked by someone on the train, I went to the beach and got caught in a rip current. I felt a total loss of control and felt that my body was abused as I was thrown onto the rocks. Although I am an extremely strong swimmer, having swam competitively in high school and college, and professionally as a lifeguard, I needed help out of the water. Although as New Yorkers we are constantly made aware about hiding and protecting our possessions on the subway and being mindful of ourselves in those situations, we are rarely taught how to react or protect ourselves from the innate environmental conditions at the beach. This was my entryway into the project.

I immediately reacted to the recent slew of drownings in Rockaway Beach that caused the beach to be closed early.
However, as I did more user testing and had the opportunity to really meet local beach goers and children in schools, I learned that there was a much larger issue in that people are not aware of the environment surrounding them and in turn their relationship to water. Additionally I learned that beach safety and awareness education seems to be dispersed on a priviledged basis. Students, for example in schools that are in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods had the benefit of getting swimming lessons, or even parent teacher associations that payed for regular field trips to the beach and or the Y, while students in poorer neighborhoods often did not even own bathingsuits.

I now realize that I want to create a project that will offer educational support on beach safety and awareness to elementary students regardless of their race, neighborhood or wealth.

This will expand upon efforts to develop urban beach communities in NYC as well as teach basic life skills in an unique and engaging way.
-community- based
-learn by doing system

Assumptions

- So starting off I assumed that people had relatively no knowledge about basic beach visitation practices

After user testing my assumption was confirmed and then altered because I learned that people had knowledge it was just that they were being sent mixed messages by the parks department and various organizations dispersing information. As I met my user, I came to realize that they also needed support with understanding info not just about beach safety, but about beach environments.

- when doing u.t. i assumed that creating a narrative interactive experience for elementary students would help them to learn about the topic while engage them with technology.

- after testing i have learned that i need to craft something that allows students to run with it. interactive is no longer the thrill. they are used to getting information in bite sized chunks and having the ability to customize it, so they need something that appeals to that nature. Although this assumption is forcing me to face my fear of this kind of technology, I feel that this progression is fluid.

personally invest in their learning.

Elevator Pitch

2009-11-19T08:21:00.008-06:00

To a Grandmother:
Do you take your grandchildren to the beach? Did you know that every year dozens of children just like your grandchild drown or get seriously hurt every year on NYC public beaches? Well they do because they don't have basic beach safety skills like knowing what the right conditions to get into the water are, making sure that lifeguards are looking over the beaches or even on a bigger level how to swim. I am creating games and activities for parents, teachers and elementary aged students to learn these basic life skills so that they are prepared to go to the beaches this Summer.

- STILL NEED TO: bring it right to the grandmothers concerns. its hard to keep up with those kids at the beach.... wouldnt it be nice if you need

To a Principal:

Did you know there are students who go to this school, don't even know where the beach is- and it is three blocks away?At the moment there is no educational initiative in any NYC school to prepare students for beach visitation prior to the Summer. This is an issue of public safety and we need to do something about it! I am creating a multi- media tool kit for elementary students that can be implemented by teachers within a 45 minute period. The idea is to teach students a life skill in a manner that is in harmony with the way that they receive other kinds of informal education. The kit will include lesson plans, printables, games, animations, activities, a website and an mobile urban game for an in and out of class integrated educational opportunity to acquire both beach safety and awareness skills.

STILL NEED TO: Connect the project with the intelligence of the students

A few seconds

2009-11-16T10:42:00.000-06:00

bird element

2009-11-16T09:30:00.000-06:00

peer review/open house presentation

2009-11-13T13:46:00.000-06:00

Surfer Dies In Queens

2009-11-13T07:38:00.002-06:00

Today in the Times is this article about a surfer dying in Queens. It really saddens me. The issue here is beach safety and public awareness of beach visitation practices. The man was surfing alone when the incident happened. A lot of times surfers feel that they are above standard beach practices. They go to the beach when it is closed, without lifeguards and in remote sections of the beach. This is often because of the conditions required for optimum surfing. However, at the root of it all is the fact that beach safety is something that needs to be innately embedded into our culture so that people would never think to go to the beach and swim or surf alone.

test

2009-11-12T09:29:00.002-06:00

my thesis class voted for this style and to continue with sea monsters.
i am still feeling insecure about it. I'll do some more tests this weekend with it.

backgrounds

2009-11-12T08:48:00.003-06:00

the game

2009-11-12T07:51:00.002-06:00

what I am doing in respect to the urban game:
- I am coordinating a viable test group with the help of the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance
- I am taking photographs of the surrounding area
- I am creating a treasure hunt
- I am coming up with scenarios
- I am researching persuasive mobile design, augmented reality, urban games
- Going to buy a SIM CARD!!!!!!

Just a Test

2009-11-11T22:49:00.001-06:00

testing out some more things: movement, background textures, and text treatment

another movement test

2009-11-11T22:00:00.000-06:00

still trying to figure out style.

a little test

2009-11-11T21:28:00.001-06:00

Typographic Inspiration

2009-11-11T19:15:00.001-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=CA&hl=en&v=y9LlnLTH87U

art.

2009-11-11T13:18:00.003-06:00

Urban Games Research and Meetings

2009-11-09T08:29:00.003-06:00

Over the past week I met with two really helpful professors at school: Nick Fortugno (Friday November 6) and Mike Edwards (Monday, November 9). Both Nick and Mike gave me some great advice on how to get started with planning out my urban game.

Nick recommended that I go to the locations of the schools and figure out what assets are available in the environment. He said to start thinking about the game mechanic and to just take a stab at it- not worrying about the big picture.

Mike directed my attention to the book Space, Time and Play. We talked about a few ways to get started including making a scavenger hunt and investigating mystery games and clue.

In terms of research and what has been done, my friend Grace Salem pulled together a delicious page on urban games.

My research to do list/brain unload also includes:
research educational games
qr codes
go to the beach and look for landmarks and things that they can use in their playground
give them a problem to solve
point system?
get parents involved?
give them missions, get in groups
are people working together/ against eachother
how does someone win game
sea monsters are helpful- giving them hints
sea good and bad
seashells: bad
sea can have good and bad things
seashells lose points if you get a sea shell card
if you find one
what i need to teach them.

Animatic

2009-11-08T18:45:00.002-06:00

This animatic has a scratch track with my voice.
I have set up a recording for this Wednesday with a guy who I believe has the kind of voice I want. The animatic has minimal camera movements- not really intense animation but I just wanted a sense of how long it will take to get this snappy video across. I think that with some sound editing I can get it down by 20 seconds so it will be a nice crisp minute. I am going to show this to a few people to get their feedback this week.

storyboard

2009-11-04T20:53:00.001-06:00

Here is my storyboard for my beach safety in a minute psa.

PS3 User Testing/ Research

2009-11-04T15:45:00.006-06:00

The classroom was really awesome. The kids had their own domain maps!

Note the "screen" that we had for watching a video as a class.
Said screen ran out of power, but I had a back up.

style frames

2009-11-02T12:46:00.004-06:00

Wireframes, Website and the big picture

2009-10-30T20:17:00.004-05:00

I made some wireframes for the project website. Basically the components will be:

* I italicized big deliverables

ABOUT
mission
friends and allies
contact
fact sheet
day of action?

SPREAD THE WORD
tell a friend
logo, banners, video
posters, stickers
social networks

ANIMATION
PSA
GAME AND QUIZZES
fact game bubble game mobile/map game
PARENTS AND TEACHERS
fact sheet printables lesson plans

My thinking behind these two versions of the wireframes is that the visual hierarchy will be:
1. brand
2. what you can do on the site
3. a taste of the content
4. ways to connect through the site

I am not 100% in love with the way either of them look right now. I am going to take a break for a day and come back to it.

Mood Board

2009-10-29T20:56:00.005-05:00

As I am warming up for a weekend of making storyboards, wireframes and such, I decided to quickly throw together a little mood board. This is helping me to get a little closer to a style for the psa. I need to really get my act together on this. Production is happening now. I really appreciate the hands on aesthetic of all of these styles cumulatively.

so the credit business:
-charlie and lola (top left)
-monster by artist lori joy smith
-keith haring
-yee haw industries
-Y water
-the happy corp
-the electric company
-vimeo

PSA Reference

2009-10-28T12:14:00.003-05:00

new domain map

2009-10-24T14:15:00.006-05:00

hello world.
here is where I am at with my ever- changing domain map. I think that it might be fun at the end of the year to look at how many times my domain map has actually changed, but i digress. for the moment, this is my map.

(click it)

I have added "media literacy" as a domain that I am focusing on more. Revisiting my domain map every few weeks has given me the opportunity to gage the ebb and flow of my project. While two weeks ago I was more about drowning, now I have broadened my focus to water safety. I also had the domain of community up there lingering on my domain map, but it wasn't until last week that it really felt like I was tapping into that area of interest. As I explore more and more I am sure that all of the areas will continue to dynamically change, but I happy with the core topics that I am honing in on right now.

water safety psa

2009-10-21T08:52:00.001-05:00

This is typical of what I am finding.

I think that:
it's creepy
targeted at parents
doesn't actually give any positive reinforcement

School Beach Survey

2009-10-17T14:30:00.004-05:00

link

Here is a survey that I am preparing for bringing into the schools in Rockaway

Midterm Presentation

2009-10-16T08:03:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I had my midterm critique. I was really nervous about presenting. I wasn't feeling like I am at the point in project that I should be (full on production). But I presented (I didn't go way over on my time limit like I thought I would), and I got some really great feedback. Overall it was a positive experience and one that gave me the ability to step back from my work, re-contextualize my focus and start considering the nature of the fieldwork that I have already done.

My critics were Anezka Sebold and Cynthia Lawson.
Cynthia said that I should really appreciate the way that I have localized my project. She said that I should think about surveying how many New Yorkers feel connected to water and the beach community. She felt that I could tie my thesis in with the positive effects of urban dwellers. She also agreed with me about how I should analyze my user group. How independent are they from their parents? This is an opportunity to collaborate on projects. How can I best position this as something that the community helped to create?

Anezka noted that I have done due diligence and that I still have much to do. She told me to think about the inherent access issues with google. She asked me to consider expanding upon my interest in the domain of media literacy. Finally she noted that I should think about pushing to implement the idea in the curriculum for a longer term.

I feel a little bit like I need to go back to the drawing board and think about my project not specifically in terms of drowning, but in terms of overall water safety and awareness. I know this should have been an obvious move, but it didn't really dawn on me until after my crits yesterday.

Taglines

2009-10-08T08:23:00.003-05:00

Coastal Safety Locative Media Campaign
Coastal Safety Locative Media Tools
Coastal Safety Locative Media and Narrative

Beach Safety and Awareness Locative Didactic Media

complex plots for courtroom proceedings

2009-10-07T10:45:00.003-05:00

I just happened upon this funny project. The description says "Client: Private Lawfirm
Goal: Coordinate and design complex population plots for use in courtroom proeedings." It made me think about my project and about how some people really just view maps as a more complicated way to approach a topic. I agree, but I also feel that it can be used to uncover mysteries and hidden stories, which is why lawyers implore this technique so often. Lawyers after all are just telling their clients stories...

Animation Test

2009-10-07T10:02:00.003-05:00

Although I am pretty sure that I am not going to continue with this style, I am posting my most recent test because it deals with a moment of panic and drama and it's my first attempt at animating that. Some of the animation is a little quirky and if I gave myself more time on this I could definitely tweak things here and there...

Presentation: October 6,2009

2009-10-06T14:44:00.003-05:00

This is the week before my midterm presentation- presentation. All the ingredients for the midterm are here but I need to figure out the recipe a little more.
The feedback I got was super helpful.
For next week, things I need to look in to:

make a domain map
make a slide that breaks out my schedule into a map
incorporate statistics and citations into a slide
pull together a style frame with the images in the map
precedents but only for shaping domain etc
storyboard the narrative
incorporate the notion of 21st century learning goals and media literacy (deploying technologies in the classroom, kids not just being consumers, but producers themselves, feeding into the hackability and re-mixability factor).
think about flickr or videos for backgrounds
scenarios

Map Prototype

2009-10-05T22:03:00.001-05:00

View Narrative Prototype in a larger map

Where I am

2009-10-04T18:19:00.003-05:00

I haven't really had time to post my thoughts, but I am chugging along. What I have been doing for the past two weeks is clarifying my narrative, talking with my professors at Parsons (Anezka, Dave, Chris, Josh), talking with my contacts in the advocacy groups (mainly Jeanne Dupont) and starting to write and sketch up ideas for the ever-important narrative component. The picture posted here is a screen shot for a prototype that I am working on. I have not even addressed style but this is my 2nd go at making something very vectory. Anyway, I will post that when I make more progress on it and have specific ideas for questions about it.

Plan

2009-09-28T10:33:00.004-05:00

Here is my first attempt at pulling together a plan of action- each month I have a goal. The 2nd half of the year is less focused at the moment but I will rewrite that. (You can click to get a better view of the chart)

Style Test

2009-09-26T20:58:00.003-05:00

presentation-2nd attempt

2009-09-21T23:02:00.000-05:00