500 word essay

The essay needs to:
1. Define the learning objective
2. Outline the pedagogical approach taken in the design of the application's interface and modes of interaction
3. Critique the work (successes and failures), and where possible include some user feedback

In for tues.

It's up and online! Wooo

Clicky Clicky!

It's up and online, all seems to be working fine, yay!

Instructions Page

Proposed contents for instructions page:

Instructions

First you must choose you difficulty.

Once you have chosen how clever you think you are, you have to answer the questions. If you get a question wrong, you have to start back at the beginning, so be careful! If you get the questions right then you get a chance to guess what the catch phrase is, but be careful, as if you get this wrong you go back to the beginning too. You can skip onto the next question if you’re not sure. With each question you get right, a square will be removed, so with each question you get right, the catchphrase will be easier to guess!

Information Page

Proposed contents for the information pages:

Jumping
Some types of kangaroos can leap a distance of 30 feet. White-tailed Deer, when bounding, can cover almost the same distance. But the long-jump champion is probably the inch-long Southern Cricket Frog, which makes leaps of more than 60 times its body length.

As for the high jump, the Red Kangaroo can hurdle a 10-foot fence. North America's White-tailed Deer can hurdle an obstacle 8 1/2 feet high. Those leapers have got nothing on the lowly spittlebug though, which jumps 115 times its body height. The deer and kangaroo would have to jump about 600 feet to compete with the spittlebug!

Height

Elephants are usually 2-3.5m tall.

If we are talking about height, no animal can beat giraffes! With an astonishingly long neck, a giraffe can be more than 18 feet tall, making it the world's tallest animal.

Male Lions: Male lions are typically 4 feet in height with a large mane of hair that begins to develop around age two that surrounds the neck. The mane can vary in colour from tawny/tan to black.
Females: Females are 44 inches in height, and have no mane around their neck. Cubs are born with a slightly spotted coat that changes to their parents tawny coloration around three months of age. Female lions live longer than males and Serengeti female lions can live up to age 18, whereas males typically live to age 12.

Kangaroos are usually3-9ft tall.

Bones

The bones of a pigeon weigh less than its feathers.

We have the same about of neck bones as a giraffe and a mouse!

Birds

Hummingbirds are incredibly aerobatic and able to hover and fly backwards--even upside-down--and attain respectable forward speeds of 40kph or more during straight-line migration.

Penguins swim with surprising grace. A penguin's body is wedge-shaped, like a boat, and moves easily through water. Its strong, flipper-shaped wings work well under water, too; a penguin flaps them to "fly" forward while steering with its wings, feet and tail.

Ostriches are the largest and strongest of living birds. When fully grown can attain a height from crown to foot of about 2.4 m (about 8 ft) and a weight of up to 136 kg (300 lb). A young bird can run about 55 kms (35 miles an hour for short distances)! Whereas a fully grown adult, can run 100 kms (60 miles) an hour.

Largest

The Saltwater Crocodile can grow to lengths of 7 metres, it is the largest reptile.

Turtles can grow to be over 100 years old.

The blue whale is the largest mammal, even though it lives in the sea, it is still a mammal just like us. At up to 33 meters (110 feet) in length and 181 metric tonnes (200 short tons) or more in weight, it is believed to be the largest animal to have ever lived on Earth,[2] though some recent dinosaur discoveries may contradict this long-held belief.

The hippo's mouth is especially large; in fact, the hippo can open its mouth wider than any other living animal except the whales.

Random

On average, there are only about 100 shark attacks each year and only 10 of those result in a human death. More people a year have accidents putting on their pants!

The animal responsible for the most human deaths world-wide is the mosquito.

Camels store water in their humps in the form of fat. This allows the camels to travel days without any food or water.

Glossary Page

Proposed contents for glossary page:

Mammal –

• Body is mostly covered with hair.
• Feeds young with mother’s milk.
• Usually gives birth to live young.

Amphibian –

• Cold-blooded.
• The young usually live under water that breath through gills e.g. frogspawn.
• Adults usually live in and out of water and breath by lungs or through skin.

Insect –

• Small.
• Air-breathing
• Body is divided into three parts (head, thorax and abdomen
• Have three pairs of legs and usually two pairs of wings.

Bird –

• Warm-blooded.
• Body is mostly covered in feathers
• Forelimbs are wings.
• Have scaly legs.
• They don’t have teeth, instead they have a beak.
• Young are born from eggs.

Fish –

• Cold-blooded
• Live in water.
• Breath through gills
• Commonly have fins.
• Have long bodies covered with scales.

Reptile –

• Cold-blooded
• Usually give birth from eggs
• Breath using lungs

Workbook Notes

An initial plan of the questions we were going to include.

Animal Characters!

Cartoon animals are always good! We used them throughout our project.

Some screen shots

These are some screen shots of our work in progress!

Learning Styles

"A learning style is the method of learning particular to an individual that is presumed to allow that individual to learn best. It has been proposed that teachers should assess the learning styles of their students and adapt their classroom methods to best fit each student's learning style."

There are two types of learning that are commonly referred to, these are:
* Surface learning (aids the short term memory better)
* Deep learning (aids the long term memory better)

Most learning style are defined by the following aspects:
* Visual learning (learn by seeing)
* Auditory learning (learn by hearing)
* Reading/writing (learn by processing text) (This category is not always listed.)
* Kinesthetic learning or practical (learn by doing).

Some people believe that using more that using at least two of these different interactions helps the child learn with a deeper understanding.

Of course what all teachers and parents want is for their children to learn in the form of deep learning, using the style that is best suited to them. Unfortunately this brings up many problems, as a lot of the time there is not enough teachers to accommodate for all the children's needs in school.


Our game has tried to appeal to reading/writing and kinesthetic learners mostly. The child has to read through the question and process the answer and then make the action of choosing which option they think is right.
We decided to include glossary and information pages so that if the child gets stuck they can find all the answers they were not sure about.
Another thing we added in were difficulty levels, this means that the child can have a sense of achievement when they upgrade difficulty levels.
We managed to integrate the catch phrase idea more by using catchphrases with the questions. We also included some sound files from the original game to make it more interactive with the user. We believe that the more senses you include the more interesting the game will be to the user.

Run-through structure of game

Come to the main screen, chose to either have the instructions explained to you or play the game (we may add levels of difficulty here also).
>If the user choses to play the game then they will be taken to the first question screen, the user will chose an answer from the selection available.
>If the user gets the question right they are told and given an anecdote or piece of trivia related to the question.
>If the user gets the question wrong then they are given the same piece of trivia or anecdote, but they are put back to the beginning of the game.
>After the question is right, then we may put in a short animation (this is designed to keep the user entertained, and give them something to work for).
>The is where the catchphrase idea comes into play, with every right question a picture slowly gets revealed. The original idea is that the user had to guess what species the animal in the photo is.

We were hoping to intergrate the catchphrase idea by encorprating the sounds familiar to the TV gameshow.

More Workbook Notes

These are notes from the presentation and feedback.

Workbook Notes

This shows some notes in the planning stages.

Question Answers

These are two test screens for the game.
The information is put towards the user is terminology they would understand. It also makes it fun for children.

Original Ideas

Our original brainstorm for our ideas.

Research Links

We carried out most of our research online, the main links we used were:

www.saskschools.ca
This one we used mainly as an information site, as the display is very bland but it has some very useful information.
www.bbc.co.uk
We used the bbc learning site for an idea about level of language and display of information. We noticed that the information was mainly displayed using fun flash based games. The games used simplified language, and where longer, more complicated words were used, they were clearly explained.

Workbook stuff

Found another list, and I think this is the right one to go by:

Design workbook
• Research
• Brainstorming
• Sketches, clips, diagrams, photographs
• Flowcharts, mindmaps
• Storyboards, cartoons
• Screen layouts
• Interaction descriptions, dialogues
• Alternative ideas, including rejects
NB This should be a working collection of your ideas
with the design emerging from them, NOT a formal
report

Have to get it done soon, it's in tmoz!

Workbook deadline

Stuff we need to do for the workbook deadline on Friday:

Design Workbook: 15%
– Learning needs analysis
– Outline design, including storyboard, drawings,
photographs, notes, prototypes
– Learning structure
– Assessment methods

I think we've got most of this down, just need to consolidate it!

Planning Stages Diagrams

Some early plans for the interactive learning game.

Another one...

Another example with different font.

Another Example

An example of a question, again keeping with the theme of bright colours and entertaining cartoon-style pictures.

Game Layout Idea

This is an idea for the layout of our game!
We want to keep the game full of trivia and extra information about animals. We also want to keep this information fun and interesting, so that users will still be enjoying the game.

For pictures from my mobile about work etc, please see my mobile blog

E-learning 'catchphrase' idea

First off, we have thought of an idea to start with.
The idea is based on the well known game of catchphrase!
This game have a picture hidden behind a number of grid boxes, when the user answers a question correctly, one of the boxes is removed.

We were thinking of building this into an animal theme, for young children. The questions would be simple and easy to understand with a selection of four different answers to choose from, with one being the correct answer. We were thinking about keeping the answers based on learning types of animals, so an example of a question would be:

What type of animal is a frog?
a)Mammal
b)Amphibian
c)Fish
d)Bird

if the user gets the correct answer, they get a piece of the picture, if they get it wrong, they start from the beginning.

To make this accessible, we would also need to define the meaning of each of the types of animal at the beginning, as without this we are relying that the user already has the knowledge before the start when they may not.