Week 4 Homework
Due Tuesday, June 12:
Critique
- Watch: Jie Qi on Art with Paper Circuits (below)
- Cloud Valley - Read: Music Curriculum as Lived Experience
- The music classroom does not have to look like one teacher standing up front directing. Plus, Efty, the Cloud Valley music teacher, studied with Lucy Green, the author!
- SSO - Read: Walk over, Beethoven, Feel the Beat, Orchestra Adopts a City
- Recent articles on expanding access to and interest in live music
- Tinkamo - Read: Introduction to Mindstorms
- Seminal text on open-ended computer learning environments. Scratch, Tinkamo, Processing, etc. all descend from LOGO.
Create
Continue ideating and working on your group projects.
Due Thursday, June 14
Critique
- Read: Deschooling Society, Chapter 1
- Only read through the first sentence in section 4. The rest is optional.
- Read: Deschooling Society, Chapter 6
- Read pages 1–5. Feel free to skim the rest. (Some radical stuff in there though…)
- Much of Deschooling Society (1971) is a critique of institutionalized education, but in this chapter, Illich proposes decentralized learning networks aided by technology. How might your projects align with Illich’s vision for self-motivated, peer-supported learning done independent from traditional schooling? Do you agree with everything he argues?
- Watch: Do Schools Kill Creativity (below)
Create
First, continue working with your team on your project. By this point you should have a pretty clear vision of what project idea your team is pursuing, the tasks you need to complete, and the roles of your teammates.
Second, experiment with methods of documenting your team’s work. We will brainstorm some ideas in class. You will need to have a formal method in place for weeks 5 and 6.
Third, begin preparing a presentation for the last chunk of class on Thursday. You will have time to work on it in class, but not enough to start from scratch.
You can organize your presentation however you would like, but we’ve included the following template to help.
- Slide 1 - Project Idea. What are you planning to create? What is the challenge as you see it? You might want to include sketches or any of the work you have already done to help the class understand.
- Slide 2 - Persona(s). Describe who you are designing for. Make sure to include a name/bio. What is their story/needs?
- Slide 3 - Experience Design Sequence. What is the attraction, engagement, and conclusion? (Check out Slide 9 in the first day’s presentation for examples of experience design sequences.)
- Slide 4 - Connecting Your Design with Your User. Now go more in depth. What does your user already know and what are they able to do before you provide them with your experience? What should they know/be able to do after? How might you observe/measure the success of your experience?
- Slide 5 - Project Plan. What is the timeline for the next couple weeks? Who is working on what? What are you confident you can finish? What are stretch goals if you have time?
- Slide 6 - Questions What open questions are you grappling with? What do you need to ask your client? What would you like the class to discuss?
We do not expect you to have all the answers! In fact, you do not have all the answers, and some of what you present will almost certainly change if (when) asked to give a similar presentation two weeks from now. Nonetheless, we expect you to be as specific and complete as possible. Treat this as an opportunity for you to solidify your ideas, for your team to get on the same page, for your peers to offer insight, feedback, and concerns, and for your client to respond constructively.