Simulated Client Project

The Brief

The Copyright Protection Society is starting a public information campaign that
illustrates and explains what file sharing is, when and why it is illegal and also the
consequences of being involved with this illegal activity. They want you to
produce a piece of multimedia that will address the points above. You have six
weeks to complete the task and you are required to produce a short proposal of
your designs and ideas then you will produce the multimedia product.

Interactive Environment
Produce a micro-website that consists of five distinct pages and includes well-
formed accessible WC3 validating css/xhtml and includes at least one interactive
element.

Ideas

When we were first set the brief I was quite unsure on what to do however having our first tutorial with David helped me gain a lot of ideas. What didn't occur to me was who my target audience was, what scenario would I have, what identity should I do etc

Until my first tutorial it hadn't occurred to me that I was in control of ALL aspects of this project (like I stated above) but I already have a rough idea on who I like to target and that is....us, students, freshers!! main reason is because they like freebies and I have a few ideas up my sleeve that I think will appeal the students yet will also get the message across.

My next aim is to start researching into different types of campaigns mainly that aim at students (or people around the student age) so I'll have a little bit of a brain storm.

Review backs later formal lessons

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8309153.stm

"Children should not start formal learning until they are six, a review of primary education in England says."

In this BBC article that I came across the reporter explains a cambridge review suggests that children should not be starting education until the age of six. It goes on explaining how at such an early age children between the ages of three and six should not have a structured learning plan but should be use for the children to have more 'play time'

The age change is already in place in other countries (Spain, France, Germany etc) and it has shown improvements for when the children actually start their education curriculum. The report also points out that this could be an advantage to those who have learning difficulties and disadvantage backgrounds however, it could also hold back the brighter children who are ready to start learning.

It has had some positive and negative reactions from the public the main issue being parents having to change work arrangements and will it change how children act socially?

In my opinion I agree with both sides of the arguement. I feel that at such a young age children should not be stuck to a curriculum; they need to first build skills that could help them, for example social schools. Going into a playschool/reception must be quite a daunting experience for children as making friends is a new thing in their lives.

However a point clearly made in the report was that it could potentially hold back children that are ready to start learning. I feel that looking at this report has given me the idea that I could maybe look into ways to combine boths sides of these arguements into a sucessful solution that works for both. Maybe look into simple gaming that could be used within the preschool/reception classes but also be available from the home.

The more I research into my chosen subject the closer I get to my final title question.

Digital games in education: The design of games-based learning environment

Searching through google scholar I came across this pdf article written by Begona Gros, a professor at the university of Barcelona and being that her main area of interests includes 'instructional design, computer supported collaborative learning and e-learning' I thought that this article would be interesting for my research.

In this paper I feel that Begona Gros is trying to bring across both sides an arguement that in my opinion is quite a big subject. The paper provides a fair arguement about the use for video game technology used in a learning environment. Gros points out that it is clear that today's younger target audience is involved in technology be it social or gaming, Gros also clearly points out that the different types of genre of gaming also provides a different source of learning ...

"1. Action games (also called platform games)—These games are reaction-
based; most of the games of the first generation are action games.
2. Adventure games—The player solves a number of tests in order to prog-
ress through a virtual world.
3. Fighting games—These games involve fighting against computer-con-
trolled characters or those controlled by other players.
4. Role-playing games—Human players assume the characteristics of some
person or creature.
5. Simulations—The player has to succeed within some simplified recre-
ation of a place or situation to achieve a particular goal.
6. Sports games—These games are based on sports.
7. Strategy games—These games that recreate a historical or fictional situa-
tion to allow a player to devise an appropriate strategy to achieve a goal."

Another point which Gros points out from her studies is that (Gros, 2005) 'gender differences do not influence interest in the games, but do influence different lines of play or preferences.'From my opinions I always believed that gender did influence the interests in games (this is useful for my research)

Even though Gros shows a good source of evidence that edutainment would be beneficial she brings across a fair arguement about the teachers. Even though there was a positive reaction to the gaming it was shown that teachers in higher education (secondary) struggled using games for learning mainly because of time and the need to cover the whole of the curriculum outline. From reading the paper timing seemed the drawback for video games as even though students were learning playing a computer games proved very time consuming.

Having read through the paper it has now given me the encouragement that I am pursing my research project in the right direction because even though education has researched into gaming, gaming has not greatly researched into education.

Could this maybe be opening for my research?

And so it begins

Yes it has been about four months now since I have last posted something and in future posts I will write about what I got up to in the summer but now I need to focus on the final year.

We have currently been give two briefs; client and personal research project but for now I am going to talk about the personal research project.

The Brief

During this module you will develop a body of work, which reflects individual
interests and demonstrates professional potential. You will research into the
content and background of self initiated topics, including technologies theory,
practice and contexts as appropriate.

Below is the part that I am focusing on:

Research Document (Term 1)
A written research document of between 3000 and 4000 words to be handed
in before Christmas. The form of the document follows a generalised thesis
structure, where the document aims to communicate keys aspects of your
research enquiry. The document should be an elaboration of your proposal i.e.
an elaboration on your topic described in your 'PRP_Topic_Submission_Form'.

Ideas

Since I have been thinking about this subject I have always had in my head that I want to write about something that involves children and technology. Having also done some work experience over the summer working on the Blur Peter website I gained a greater interest.




We had our first PRP meeting on Thursday with Simon. Hoping to gain so more information however I am still stuck on what final question will be. Ashley gave me the idea (and proper name) 'Edutainment':

1. The act of learning through a medium that both educates and entertains.
2. Any of various media, such as computer software, that educate and entertain.

Ideas that I thought that I could write about were; is edutainment the way for for students? How could edutainment increase learning abilities? how has edutatainment improved?
All of these ideas have been based around the idea of computer games being based more around learning and I personally find this interesting but I am going to research further into this. Having thought about this also brought flash gaming into my mind, what makes flash games popular/successful? what genre of gaming attracts the younger target audience?
I basically have a whole bunch of ideas and I have to pick just one because when I had a conversation with Deborah Tuck she bought to my attention that the subject I have chosen (children and technology) is a broad subject.

I am going to continue looking at books, articles, journals etc until I get the idea that I am happy with.

Microsoft Technology - The future home

The other day Ashley showed me a bbc article on how the technology will effect the everyday home and I have to say I was very surprised. The video shows us how Microsoft technology will change a normal house.



Having seen this it just makes me wonder what else the future has in store for us? is it really necessary for us to has all this technology? We have been able to live without it but it seems now that the world has to evolve around technology. It also makes me wonder how far technology will go. I feel that our society are getting too dependant on technology.

Client Project - Presentation

Today we had to present our work to the other groups to show our progress in our projects. After hearing and looking at other groups projects I am quite cofident that we are making good progress.

I felt that we are at the same level with the majority of the other groups; having finalised our designs we are at the stage of starting to create our HTML design. It was agreed that I created the presentation because Jacqui was creating the CSS template which is a big job. I kept to the theme our final site design throughout the presentation (See images below)

As our group have created a vast amount of designs I thought that I would go one step further by designing a simple handout. This included information that I thought was important for the other groups to see but I did not want to create a long presentation. Within this handout I included the designs from all different stages of our project (start to final designs) evidence of emails to the client, different examples of websites that we have researched and shots of what the site initially looks like.

Having done this presentation made me see that our group have worked really well, over the next two weeks we plan to complete the site so hopefully Shaun can launch the new site.

Client Project - final designs (hopefully)

More design updates. Our group joined together on Thursday to see what ideas we created after our previous, that we would work along the design idea of Vikesh's designs (see previous blogs) As you can see in my older blog posts I created some designs that kept to the design theme that Vikesh created but also to the criteria that Paul ask for.

Home Page



We managed to get some positive feedback from Shaun and suggested that we should pursue the design ideas that Vikesh created above, I was pleased with this outcome because I really like this design layout however Shaun wanted a 'messier' background, get a more arty effect. Luckily an artist managed to snap up some images on the old flooring in the old gallery, which was perfect.

Below is my attempt to recreate Vikesh's design but with the edits that Shaun suggested.



As you can see above I have only tweaked a few things i.e. the background, removed a few images and added a few more buttons. But I think that it really works well and fits into the art theme. Its a simple design and works well for a home page. The group prefer this as appose to the previous design. But we think that keeping the background the same would be ideal.

Artist menu page

I have created a different idea for the artists homepage, mainly sticking to the ideas that Paul suggested and this was having a poster theme. I had previously done a design like this but had to change it because it looked too full.



As you can see in the above image I have used a wall as a background but having seen the design layout from Jacqui's blog I thought that I would work with that layout. Rather then having all of the artists on one page we would section them off onto three separate pages, four artists to each page. The user would have to simply click on the chosen artist to view their personal profile page.
I like the look with the old Polaroids and paper however whether it would work to the chosen theme I am not so sure about.

Exhibition Page

Having looked at Jacqui's design I thought that I would try and work around the same theme but make it look simpler.



As you can see above all I have done is created a list of the artists who had an exhibition and when the user would click on their name it would show the exhibition advertisement. Its a simple idea and clearly shows user some info about the exhibitions however whether or not Paul will like this I am not sure about as it does not show much information.

A problem that has popped up that has got us thinking is the accessibility. We are unsure as to how to make the text tilt like our design yet still be able to be created in Dreamweaver. We don't want to change the design because we have recieved alot of positive feedback however we could maybe create it in flash but we need to think about what the users would need.