Wii Prototyping

Nintendo reveal the prototypes that gave birth to their lastest release, the Wii U. It's two Wii remotes stuck to a screen! Basic but effective prototyping.

via Engadget

Mechanical Birdsong

I might do a watch making course just to make this. Its fascinating.

Dyson Fixes Hair Balls

I cant help but find this fascinating.

The Revolution Will Be Home-Made

An interesting BBC article about how the second industrial revolution with be a creative one brought about by grassroots makers, hobbyists, hackers and tinkerers out of sheds and garages.

The availability of cheap components, from microcontrollers such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, coupled with the plethora of crowdsourcing models to allow the sharing of everything from ideas to funding, means that production can move out of the factory and into the home.

If the garages in which the computer revolution was born were all about computers and code then the makers' garages are filled with laser cutters and 3D printers.

And this time you don't need a computer science or business degree. 

REC:all webinar

Yesterday I watched a web seminar on REC:all - 'Building a community of practice about lecture capture in EU universities'. I had previously not heard of the initiative, but from listening to the speakers and reading more into it, it seemed very interesting.

The speakers were Yacine Abboud from the University of Lorraine, Clive Young from University Collage London, Mathy Vanbuel from KHLIM, Silvia Moes from VU University of Amsterdam and was headed by Sally Reynolds, managing director of ATiT.

REC:all is a project that seeks to develop and better integrate digital lecture capturing technologies into higher education for the purpose of off-campus learning. As well looking at lecture recording and delivery, they are interested in implementing new technologies into remote learning environments, such as study trips and excursions.

One example of this was from Silvia Moes who provided a case study where students on a trip to Rome were told to form groups, each collecting evidence from around the city and depositing it on an open source mapping software. The map could be accessed by the other students who could learn from the data collected from the group.

Particular emphasis in the webinar was put on 'Flipping', a way of providing prerecorded audio or video lectures before a timetabled session so that more time can be spent in the session for the type practical, hands-on instruction that cant be effectively communicated with just a video. Pamala Kachka from Pearson eCollage gives a nice overview of Flipping here.

Another initiative that was mentioned was transLectures, which has been running since November 2011 and whose objective is to develop solutions that translate video lectures into many languages to reach wider audiences.  

W.I.R.E.

W.I.R.E. or 'Web for Interdisciplinary Research and Enterprise' is a think tank based in Zurich that sees itself as 'a platform between science and practice'. Their research is interested in global developments which positively effect individuals, communities and industry. This includes looking into interdisciplinary methods that empower people, enhance our lives and help provide for a better future. Their site says:

W.I.R.E. sees itself as a laboratory for the development of new concepts for the creation and dissemination of knowledge. The foundations for this are to be found in the breaking down of traditional boundaries between academic disciplines, the abandonment of hierarchical concepts and the integration of content and form.

I like them.

Cargo-Bot - Programming game for iPad

I should probably stop surfing the net today, but I keep finding cool things. This is Cargo-Bot, a game that encourages the player to think like a programmer should. The player is given a stack of blocks, a grabber arm and a image of how the blocks should be stacked. 

The player then needs to drag and drop a series of commands that when executed, controls the arm so it stacks the blocks to match the image given. This is a perfect representation of Papert's constructionist ideas of learning theory.

I want to get this but I dont have an iPad :(

On a separate but just as interesting note, this is the first ever app to be made entirely on an iPad. Done with an app called Codea.

Floating Orb Interface

I'm a sucker for interfaces like these.

Found at www.fastcodesign.com

A programming book for bed-time stories

Imagine reading lines of code to a child every night while in bed? That would certainly send them to sleep, I dont think it would teach them much about programming.

Luckily, a real book has the same goal (teaching programming, not making kids fall asleep), but with a different approach. Lauren Ipsum is a story book aimed at young kids that embeds logical programming scenarios into children's stories. The stories seem cute, and the pictures look awesome. I've just bought one.

The book uses metaphors within a fairytale story to convey concepts that would be encountered in a programming environment, and is actually written by one of Facebook's engineers responsible for maintaining the programs which runs on their servers. He wife does the illustrations.

With each copy bought, the creators will donate a copy to a library or school.

Meeting 24/5

Who was there:
Myself
Tom Page

Topics covered:

• Google's plans to back Raspberry Pi
• Videos - How did they go?
• Methodology for choosing prototyping systems
• What does the BA require? what is the purpose of the prototype? - we need focus
• Comparison of Brunel's and Lboro's curriculums

Google Backing Raspberry Pi

Google has plans to fund teachers to work in schools around the UK along with resources such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi. East Midlands named as an area that will receive support.

• Which schools around this area are going to get the support?
• How can we find out? Talk to Nigel Zanker
• A good idea to speak to the schools, contact the teachers, find out how they are teaching
• Collaboration?

Videos with Peter Simcoe

In the last few days, Peter and myself have been conducting video interviews with 3rd year undergraduate students in the last stages of their FYDP. This was primarily for videos to go on the IDATER conference website to describe the kind of work students do at Loughborough and to get some insite into how they used electrical prototyping in them. I took the opportunity to get some information about experiences students were having with electrical prototyping.  The following questions were asked:

1. Tell us your name and briefly describe your project. 
2. What stage are you at in terms of product development? 
3. What do you hope to achieve with the prototype when its finished? What will you be using it for? 
4. What aspects of the project involve electronic prototyping? 
5. What proportion of it has been spent on that? 
6. What kind of systems and software are you using to make your electronics? 
7. What has been the biggest challenge during prototyping so far? 
8. What sacrifices have you had to make in order to get the prototype working? 
9. When you first thought about / considered / approached the task of prototyping the electronics, how did you feel about it? Were you keen? Was it daunting? 
10. In comparison, how do you feel about it now? 
11. If you could have anything to make this process easier, what would it be? 
12. Prior to university, how much experience have you had with electronic prototyping?

The videos have not been reviewed or transcribed yet, but one of the points I came away with was that a lot of the students (7 interviewed in total) mentioned that time was spent and wasted at the start of the project by not selecting the right components to do the job. This meant only later on they realised their mistake and switched to a new system or approach, either by their own realisation or by the guidance of a lecturer.

Prototyping Methodology

Possible solution: create a methodology to help with the process of choosing systems.

• A handout given at the start of FYDP (October)
• Consists of a guide / flowchart / grid that the student follows inorder to choose the best system for their project
• Outcome based upon desired complexity, control elements, inputs, outputs, wireless systems, etc
• Includes list of recommended suppliers / websites / books / guides / code libraries which are more likely to work together.
• If one of these are made over the summer, it could be used as a handout for next years FYDP students.

Possibility of crowd sourcing information? Take experiences from previous years, good sources students have used, systems that work well, components that are reliable / cheap. Would require vetting and selection system.

What does the BA require in terms of prototyping?

As stated in the previous meeting, the prototype represents and showcases many disciplines that the student has gained during their time on the course. Therefore, it cannot purely be made for user testing purposes as that would neglect other skills that need to been demonstrated. However, how far can we expect a student to go during the prototyping stage, and how much does this really influence the final mark?

Case in point:

Mark is making an mp3 player that reacts to movements of the user (tapping, nodding, etc) and changes the music to suit the perceived mood. He cannot create the computer system that calculates the type of song required as this would need a very complex system, instead he decides to create a system that mimiks the interface. It involves a screen, an Arduino, 3 buttons and an SD card reader. Originally he wanted the mp3s to be stored on the SD card and to be processed through the Arduino, but he struggled to make that work, so now he has taken an mp3 player apart and plans to use the buttons to turn on sounds with the mp3 player as well as navigate a menu on-screen. He has spent a long time trying to get it all working and thus far, has got the screen to display characters. Much time was wasted trying to get the mp3 player working within the Arduino, not yet sure if he has managed to include the bought-in player to the system.

Ben has made a Beehive that you can monitor the bees with a wireless camera. Along with the camera feed, the temperare of the hive is also displayed on a monitor. He looked into making this using Arduino and components bought off Sparkfun. But instead, he bought a wireless webcam off eBay, a thermometer with a digital readout and set it up so the web cam was pointed inside the hive with the readout in-shot. The image streamed to a computer screen.

Both these students are BA. One decided to take the long and hard route and has resulted in something not much more better than if he just put a cheap mp3 player in it. The other saved time, bought all the fully working components in and got nearly the same as he would have if he prototyped it.

What I am interested in is how much is Mark's work going to pay off? When it comes to marking, how much more will be given for the work done with the electronics? Is it going to be worth the time spent working on systems that never worked, and worth the time neglected on other parts? Especially since the areas neglected are more likely going to be considered more typical concerns for a BA student. 

I need to talk to various members of staff to get their views on how something as subjective as FYDP marking works. Talk to:

• Mark - BA FYDP coordinator
• Ian
• Karl
• John
• Richard
• Darren

Lectures who are ex-students, worth getting their opinion:

• Steve
• Rhoda

Get the FYDP marking scheme. However, this will not explain all the decisions because it does not take into account the subjectivity of each lecturer.

Lboro / Brunel curriculum comparisons

Brunel's courses being considered the course closest in setup to Loughborough's, to help visualise where each course overlaps it might be worth setting up a matrix to compare the areas which they cover.

Might be worth speaking to Nick Schneider, who seemed opinionated when it came to the differences between the two courses.

Technology Will Save Us - Interview

Ever since I got my Lumiphone Kit, I have been really interested in the work of Technology Will Save Us, a small group of guys who set up communal workshops usually in empty shop spaces, aimed at members of the public who want to learn more about electronics and making things themselves.

The above video is an interview with Daniel Hirshmann, one of the Cofounders of the company, where he talks about the reasons for setting up the project as well as how well its doing.

He starts by talking about how he wanted to start a company that did not only make a profit, but also gave back to society with more than just more products that will later end up in a landfill. Their goal was to create some kits that encourage people to learn more about technology, learn to be more creative technology and learn to produce it, not only consume it.

He says with the increased complexity of technology, along with the recession, there is a growing public interest in becoming more hands-on and learning new skills that save money and help people become more self dependent.

So now they set up workshops that help teach people how to put the kits together, as well as creating a fun, inclusive, communal atmosphere. Whats interesting is how he talks about the huge cross-section of people that come to the workshops; he mentions that not once have there been no women in a workshop session, yet there has been sessions with no men.

He talks about how their work can influence larger corporate companies by showing them that there are ways of producing while also giving back to the community and engaging with your customers. TWSU are selling a product that a customer buys, but also gets taught new skills and knowledge that they can take away to help improve their lives.

He then touches on open source communities online and the vast resources available to anyone who wants to take on something like electronic prototyping, but makes a good point by saying that many people struggle to pick that up when it is a list of steps or lessons online, but find it easier when it is booked out as a fixed time and place where the learning takes place. That is where the workshops come in.

People Shouldn't Learn To Code

A debate has come about recently, spawned firstly from a tweet by the major of New York City, Mike Bloomberg, and then a response by a guy called Jeff Atwood. The original tweet is below:

Great, the guy wants to learn code, lets leave it at that. But Jeff Atwood thinks not. Jeff is a bit of a superstar in the coding community, and on his blog he posted a piece called Please Don't Learn to Code.

His points seem to mainly revolve around his dislike for inexperienced programmers being employed and messing it up for the rest of them.

• It assumes that adding naive, novice, not-even-sure-they-like-this-whole-programming-thing coders to the workforce is a net positive for the world. I guess that's true if you consider that one bad programmer can easily create two new jobs a year. And for that matter, most people who already call themselves programmers can't even code, so please pardon my skepticism of the sentiment that "everyone can learn to code".

• It implies that there's a thin, easily permeable membrane between learning to program and getting paid to program professionally. Just look at these new programmers who got offered jobs at an average salary of $79k/year after attending a mere two and a half month bootcamp! Maybe you too can teach yourself Perl in 24 hours! While I love that programming is an egalitarian field where degrees and certifications are irrelevant in the face of experience, you still gotta put in your ten thousand hours like the rest of us.

True, its not good to dilute the skill level of a workforce by flooding the sector with unqualified workers, but that might be more a problem with employers not hiring the right staff. Or if it is about there being too many under-qualified coders, surely that will mean there will be an increase in perfectly good coders who will no doubt float to the top.  Jeff seems to be inferring that if more people learn to code casually, everyone will want to be a professional coder.

Some people in the comments of this article can see his point and attributes this to the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby incompetent people have a tendency to overestimate the level of their skill, and fail to realise where they fall short. This could well be true, but I digress.

What Jeff only touches on however, is the move to push programming into the forefront of education, and making it as an important as Maths, English and Science, something that Papert would advocate. Jeff says this wrong, as well as 'learning to code for the sake of learning how to code'.

As the writer of this post points out, learning to code is does not mean seeking to become a professional programmer, but is about gaining a better understanding of the technology that we use, and by gaining a whole host of transferrable skills that are applicable to thinking and solving all sorts of problems and as a way of approaching learning itself.

So, while I highly doubt Mike Bloomberg is really ever going to learn how to code, the question is should he? Yes, I think he should. I think many of us could do with understanding more of the basics of what makes the things we hold in our hands, the displays we read off every day, work (and also not work).

esmoove puts it well:

Learning new skills opens up new perceptual avenues and cognitive spaces. I'm learning to sew right now, not because the world needs another tailor but because I want to be able to recognize quality in clothing and create pieces that I can't find. Novice coders feel the same way about their digital goods and should be encouraged to continue. Learn to program.

Meeting 10/5

Topics covered:

• IDATER content
• Learning, teaching and the 2 decades of technology darkness 
• The focus and purpose of prototyping for FYDP
• Resource and Prototype matrices
• Curriculum summary report

IDATER content:

Interviews happening next week, Wednesday. Prepare questions for then, run them past Tom.

Podcast - Not compulsory because not many people use them, but a good idea to encourage people to submit various types of media. Peter talking about recording it, really it can be done in our own time because of the basic technology that it needs. 

- Best done with two people discussing the subject and covering key points? Casual, very much like a friendly discussion, ad hoc.

Paper to be submitted to be my final year report. 

Trip to Limerick for the main event. Instead of a conference booklet, hand out CD's memory sticks. Alternatively, create an app (iOS, Android) that mimics the website, presents all the content inc. videos, picture galleries, etc.  No point creating it ourselves, can you get app templates? Similar to Wordpress templates but in app form? We pick a theme then add the content. Maybe several apps/volumes based on the subject area; reduces size and download time of each app.

Learning and teaching electronics- Discussion with Nigel:

Much of electronic teaching in design starts with learning the components first and then building up to the systems. Much of what Arduino and Sparkfun is about is only providing small subsystems that go together - no need to teach the individual component part.

Looking at it from a top down approach rather than bottom up. Grounded Theory.

Teach systems first > identify the system > what subsystems are required > what components make that subsystem.

Upside it is more efficient - more time is spent learning the system that is required for the project.

Downside is that the systems are understood but how they work is not.

2 Decades of Darkness:

During the 80's programming was taught on BBC computers, programming, creating games, devising problems. Papert, LOGO.

Then the 90's and 00's brought Microsoft based computers going into schools with word processing and spreadsheet programs - The idea of computing became to write reports and organise data. 

Only now with the introduction of Arduino and Raspberry Pi into schools are people realising what computing really is. Chance to properly implement Papert's ideas?

-Nigel is writing a paper on this.

Investigate Deep and Surface learning

- Link to that paper by that guy pulling apart PBL stating that it only works surface/shallow memory.

The purpose of prototyping in FYDP:

Shouldn't students be focusing their prototypes on delivering relevant user data, rather than focusing on making it at close to the proposed design as possible?

The FYDP prototype fulfils many roles:

Aesthetic, representative & showcasing lboro design

User testing

Representative of its functions

Demonstration of what has been learnt from many modules and disciplines.

A student might get more marks creating a prototype that has embedded electronics but still offers good potential for user testing, rather than a prototype that 'cuts corners' in regards to embedded technology but still has good potential for high quality user testing results.

Prototyping can't be reduced down to be purely user testing focused, but more focus can go on to user testing. More consideration at the start of each project the purpose of the prototype, embedded system based upon that while other criteria still met?

Resource and Prototype matrices:

Two matrices proposed:

1. Resources Matrix - a subjective representation of the relations between resources suitable for classroom teaching of electronics, prototyping and interace design. Ordered by skill level / ability.
2. Prototype Matrix - a graph used to mark the efficiency of any given prototype based upon the fidelity (overall finish, inc. cost and time spent on it) vs. the quality of the data drawn from user testing. 

Prototype matrix looks effective, could possibly be used in FYDP or form a basis of a paper. 

Resources matrix is a fine way of putting resources in context of one another. Subjective and some explanation for the boundary choices may be required.

Curriculum Summary Report:

Report to be written up summarising the collected curriculums from the selected universities and also from the FE subjects identified. This will make a portion of the final year report.

Jon Rogers contacted for module information, possibly visiting lboro soon, worth sitting down and discussing some of this.

An X Prize For Education

The X Prize founder, Peter Diamandis is set to announce a prize for improving education in the US. Tall order, especially because he has no idea what challenge he is going to set. However, previous prizes have greatly influenced other industries such as public space travel and medical industries, can it have the same effect here?

In the video below (5:15 in) he talks about it being like a 'Khan Academy on steroids'.

"Add artificial intelligence, and add the ability for anyone of us to have the best teacher in the world who knows what your passionate about, what you care about, what you know and then move you on the educational path forward. Everything is personalised, customised [...] and it teaches you exactly the way you want"

Interestingly, the interviewer then asks where random discovery (constructionist, self directed learning) comes into play in all this. Peter responds:

"Its there, random discovery is now really the juice [of education], its socialisation, its experimentation, but its not sitting in [the] front of a classroom listening to one sage on the stage. Lets change that part, then take everything else you do in school and make it fun and interactive"

Meeting with Steve Gill, Cardiff Met

Last Friday, the 4th May, I visited Professor Steve Gill at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Product Design Research (PDR) Centre. Steve heads the Programme for Advanced Interactive Prototype Research (PAIPR, pronounced 'paper') group which develops quick prototyping technologies and techniques for designing devices that involve physical-to-virtual interfaces such as mobile phones, remote controls, medical technology or anything that involves screens and other outputs reacting to buttons.

The key aim of the resulting work is to initiate the design of a product's user interface as early on in the product development process as possible. This involves lots of user testing on prototypes of increasing fidelity to assess the overall functionality and to ensure the final product is functional and easy to use.

But the problem with this has always been a case of the proverbial chicken and its egg. Product development of electronic interfaces have typically been tackled from a 'bottom up' approach, whereby the inner workings of the device is developed first, then tested, and then case and interface built around it. That is partly because in the past very little could be tested until something usable was made; how can someone fully test how easy a mobile phone is to use without a working mobile phone?

The problem with this bottom up approach is that even once the electronics is all working and being tested by a focus group of 'end users', it becomes very difficult and expensive to then alter all those electronic parts and functionality once it's found that none of the users can use it. So sacrifices are made, and more often than not its the usability that suffers.

The alternative method is from a 'top down' approach, where the design, usability and interface are all but defined at the start and then the technology built in afterwards. The work Steve and PAIPR are doing provides the tools that allow this approach to work.

Several tools and systems have come out of the work at Cardiff. One of them is called the IE4 (pictured above). This is a small, battery powered device, which on its own is no bigger than a small pack of matches. As the name suggests, the IE4 is in its forth generation after nearly 10 years of development. It contains a Bluetooth module and has a 20-pin connection at the back along with a breakout-board to make it easier to work with in the early stages of prototyping.

The IE4 interface Prototyping tool

The device works by simply connecting to a computer via Bluetooth and acting as a control device, such as a mouse or keyboard. The inputs can be added to the pins of the IE4 in the form of buttons, sliders, joysticks, sensors or other input components. These can then be arranged on the surface of a to scale appearance model with the IE4 neatly tucked inside of it out of the way. 

The computer reads the inputs as mouse movements or keyboard presses, and these can be configured to trigger on-screen actions such as menu systems, animations or control dragable objects. In theory anything can be controlled, and the complexity and difficulty of the virtual mock-up is determined only by how far you want to take the simulation and what program you use to do it. You can make something quite complex in Adobe Flash, or save time but still get a decent result in something such as Microsoft PowerPoint.

Photo from paipr.wordpress.com 

The IE4 allows you to create devices that are meant to control virtual interfaces wirelessly from a distance, or just use the computer screen as an effective example of how a screen built into the device would respond - all while being able to quickly build and test mock-ups that effectively trial interface designs of a product.

The facilities for user-centred design testing and analysis at Cardiff are very good. They even have a room which contains 4 HD cameras focused at one desk in the middle of the room. Scenes and scenarios can be set up and users or focus groups can test products and prototypes while being monitored remotely from a room elsewhere in the building. As well as simply recording the actions visually onto tape, data can be collected indicating things like the number of time certain controls were used, or time the user spent reading each menu screen. This gives designers and clients a very detailed analysis of the performance of any one interface.

Summary

The work done at Cardiff is very applicable to my work and I can learn much from it. It has made me think much about the kind of prototyping I am trying to teach with my resources. A prototype can come in many forms, not just a polished, fully to scale, working model that fully represents the finished product, but it can also be an off-cut of polystyrene foam formed roughly to fit in a human hand. And from a usability perspective, there is no reason why as much can be learned from the latter as the former.

Questions arise over the real purpose of a prototype, and what information we as designers need to get from them. Does the test user even have to control the device themselves? What if they only think they are controlling the device, and actually someone else is manipulating the prototype like a puppet, reacting to what the user does. This technique, dubbed the 'Wizard of Oz' method, is very powerful because the 'puppeteer' can control the system in real time, react to the user and simulate as many different scenarios as he or she likes without stopping the simulation to alter the prototype. They can throw in bugs, alternate routes navigation or different functions very quickly without the test subject knowing any different.

Shouldn't we be teaching designers the most effective ways of prototyping for designing and then support it with the necessary electronics and interface design skills? Rather than teach them that the polished end product is really the only real kind of prototype, when really its just the one that would matter in a sales meeting.

Knowledge Is Like A Room Full Of People

This excerpt from Papert's Mindstorms really stood out to me as a good analogy of my studies, but also of the role teachers have the process of learning any new skill or field, and the importance of learning how to learn.

"Getting to know a domain of knowledge is much like coming into a new community of people. Sometimes one is initially overwhelmed by a bewildering array of undifferentiated faces. Only gradually do the individuals begin to stand out. On other occasions one is fortunate in quickly getting to know a person or two with whom an important relationship can develop. Such good luck may come from an intuitive sense for picking out the "interesting" people, or it may come from having good introductions.
Similarly, when one enters a new domain of knowledge, one initially encounters a crowd of new ideas. Good learners are able to pick out those who are powerful and congenial. Others who are less skillful need help from teachers and friends. But we must not forget that while good teachers play the role of mutual friends who can provide good introductions, the actual job of getting to know an idea or a person cannot be done by a third party. Everyone must acquire skill at getting to know and a personal style for doing it."

Nobody Can't Teach Nobody Nothing

It has been contended quite properly that one person does not teach another. A teacher can do little other than set the conditions for allowing others to learn. The consequence of this observation attests to the functioning of a teacher as a manipulator of the learning environment. When a person shows a change in behaviour, learning is inferred to have occurred.

-Professor Kolstoe, 1975 

//Quote

"Just as babies learned to take their mothers milk long before anyone wrote a guide to motherhood, so children were learning to work things out for themselves long before anyone thought of setting up a school"

- John Abbott 

Gove's Plans to Make Universities Shape A-Levels

Michael Gove is calling for Universities to dictate the content of A-Levels, and to monitor them each year. I completely agree, there should be more continuity between schools, colleges and universities, just as Industry should be having more input into all three.

However, I think a balance should be met; I dont think the best course would be to hand all control to Universities. Yes, they should have a large say on what content goes into the subjects, and I believe the workload of A-Levels should be enough so that they are a pre-cursor to that of universities. That said, the structure and teaching style of universities is very different to that of schools, and the distinction between the school and university structures should be kept intact.

A-Levels should however, at least prepare students for the type of university work they will undertake.

a study suggested universities wanted A-levels to be more intellectually stretching and with less spoon-feeding from teachers

Indeed, in an ideal world this 'intellectual stretching' would have begun long before a student reaches A-Level, but it is at least a start that this kind of approach should be considered in schools.

Meeting 29/3/12

Topics covered in the meeting on Thursday:




Data thats currently being collected:

• Module specifications from Design and Technology courses from selected Universities
• Structures and covered topics from relevant subjects from Further Education curriculums 

1) A proforma needs to be created that accommodates all this data so it can be effectively compared.

2) Current mind map should be put into a document

These two deliverables completed by the 16th April and sent to Richard Bibb, along with the current aims and objectives of the research.


Lit review/End of year report:

Add a section about applied teaching techniques within Electronics and Interface design education

Sections order:

1. Cognitive/Learning Theory (General)
2. Applied Teaching Techniques
3. Subject topics/required lesson content
4. Physical Resources

Teaching:

How does teaching school pupils (<19yrs old) compare to teaching university students?

How do their Intellectual Level & Learning Style differ?

How should the approach to learning differ?

What Further Education courses are equivalent in content and skill level to Electronics and Interface design modules in BA undergraduate Design and Technology?

                  - This can be found after the module and curriculum data is put into proformas

Current Final Year Design Projects (FYDP)

What is the scope for FYDP?

Is there a limit to the functionality that students can give to their products?

Therefore, is there a limit to what we teach them to do?

ie, Resources exist that allow for quite complex systems. Do we assume that some students will want to build them therefore teach them what is required? What is the limit?

Arrange a meeting with key lectures/students/ex students to discuss this.

Meeting with Thomas Jun, LEGO mindstorms used as a teaching tool:

How do we capture a accurate picture of students, skills/knowledge/understanding of Electronics, Interface Design, Mechatronics?

Questionnaires:

Use real-life, relatable examples? - this demonstrates skills and not understanding

Use scales of ability/understanding of key skill or subject area, Plot to a graph

What questions are we asking, how are we asking them?

The importance of doing stuff by yourself

In school, at work, in our social lives; we are constantly being encouraged to mingle and interact with other people. Even the learning methods that I read about and write about on here are focused on collaboration and team work. But its important not to forget about the importance on spending time with yourself, having time to think and reflect and work thing out by yourself.

In this TED Talk, Susan Cain makes the case for the introvert, and shows how important it is to encourage both the outgoing and the self-contained amongst us.

MIT launch a free electronics course

MIT are trialling a little thing; They are running an online version of their undergraduate analog electronics course, 6.002: Circuits and Electronics.

Its running from the 5th March (tomorrow) until June the 8th, free of charge to anyone who wants to do it.

I've signed up just so I can get a cool downloadable certificate from MIT and ya know, maybe learn something.

https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/

Edward De Bono and his Headwear Collection

After watching that St. Christopher's video mention about Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats, I'm reading up on them a bit. It's interesting, what he describes is quite simple; it's just about a team thinking about a problem from 6 different standpoints in succession (actual hats not required - but it adds a sense of flamboyancy to the exercise).

Its kinda like a boiled-down Design Specification but reversed, and then discussed within a team. And sure, to maximise creativity, viewpoints such as caution (Black Hat) should be left until last. There's nothing worse than a meeting where ideas are shot down as soon as they are suggested - thats just counter productive.

I also see parallels with things like the 'Whiteboard' from PBL methods (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). Whiteboards encourage problem solvers to tackle a problem using 4 columns on a whiteboard: Facts, Ideas, Learning Issues and Action Plans. This is similar to De Bono's White Hat (known information, missing information), Green Hat (creativity, new ideas, possibilities) and Blue Hat (overview, direction). However De Bono adds other variants which force each team member to counter their feelings of a situation; its aim being to remove the effects of bias, ego or timidity.

Seems obvious when you're told it, and this guy is making a mint from it. Save your money from lining his pocket by watching 1 hour's worth of YouTube videos of him talking about it.

Boycott Elsevier

Some academics have put together a boycott against Elsevier Journals. They are against 3 things:

1. The high cost of the journals
2. The expensive 'bundles' that they force libraries to buy, even if they dont want them all
3. The fact they support SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act (RWA)

Now I'm always for anything that encourages the free-flow of information, and this is no exception. Not only am I against SOPA and PIPA, but the RWA tries to restrict free, open access to state funded journals - journals that the public has paid for anyway. 

Plus, I wholeheartedly believe that knowledge is power, but currently powerful only to the few who lock it away. Knowledge and ideas are what allows us as a civilisation to grow and develop, and restricting it to only those who are able or willing to pay for it is at a detriment to our progress.

I dont expect to have anything to do with Elsevier in my next 3 years, regardless of this list, but I'm adding my name to it to help the momentum and to (hopefully) show other journals that this issue is not taken lightly.

Read a little more about it here, and sign the thing here. Already over 2000 signatures.

Michael Gove Suggesting D&T Limits Progress

This is Michael Gove pretty broadly calling all Design and Technology purely vocational, and suggesting that it limits a students capacity to progress afterwards.

While I agree a GCSE in 'Nail Technology' is going to have limited applications when looking for jobs, broadly saying all D&T limits capacity compared to the core subjects is a huge generalisation. Completely overseeing the key skills which D&T (like Product Design and Resistant Materials) provides is frankly being blind.

Where in the core subjects do you learn the kind of contextualised problem solving that D&T provides? How about industrial processes and manufacturing techniques? All very applicable in a huge number of courses and jobs.

Along with them downgrading Engineering Diplomas, it shows that the government has a poor idea of the skills thats needed to get this country out of the state it in.

//Quote

"You can't think seriously about thinking without thinking about thinking about something"

- Seymour Papert

Why its important to prototype

Some early prototypes are purely aesthetic. I made one for my final year project

When we have ideas down on paper, they are in essence theoretical. But theories cant be proven or debunked without them being tested out in practice. No amount of theory can ever say for certain if it will work in practice because no matter how hard you try, it is impossible to consider all possible factors.

External factors can range from a large number of things. In architecture, they are more likely to be based on environmental factors, such as ground movements, temperature wind and rain. Products are going to be more focused on external factors in the form of a human and how they interact with it (people are probably harder to predict than the weather).

Secondly, when designing products or electronic circuits, there can be a lot of guess work involved; certain parameters just cant be fully defined until you know how the whole system is going to react. It is there for imperative to test the system.

In fact, if anything man-made breaks or goes wrong it is always because the factor that caused it was not foreseen by the designer, or they failed to act upon it. If you try to open a beer can and the ring pull breaks off, its because that certain manufacturing defect was not taken into account. If you stand on a chair to fit a lightbulb and you put your leg through the seat, its because it was not designed to take that much force in such an isolated area. Or if your computer freezes while your working, its because the particular sequence of executed code that caused the error was not properly written inorder to avoid it.

But thats OK. Nothing can be made indestructible or made to suit everyone in every situation. Sure, companies try to do it, but even the mighty Apple are not immune to major product faults. Every product developer reaches the point where they have to stop developing and release it into the world, onto shelves and open to the scrutiny of the increasingly fickle consumer.

In electronics, some blue foam and Pritt Stick can
make the best tests

In many ways thats what makes the difference between a good product and a bad one; how much time, money and effort they put into development before its released. The majority of this time and money will be spent on 10's, maybe even hundreds of prototypes; each made, tested, evaluated and then superseded by the next, and then the next, and the next...

Even after a product is released, changes might be made in the design when products keep getting returned with common faults. Thats why its often useful for companies to have a warranty on their products, so that if there is a recurring fault, it gets logged and the product returned for the problem to be diagnosed and fixed.

The thing is, if you design something you can never fully understand it until its real. There are so many factors that cant be foreseen, so many things that can go wrong. Whether it's a good design or bad design, its not even a full design unless its been made.

Peer Review In Action

St. Christopher's is a British school in Bahrain that my old D&T teacher from school is now teaching at (he will probably appreciate me pointing out that by 'old', I mean 'previous'). He has been telling me about some of the innovative teaching methods they have in their classrooms, and many resonate with PBL and Inquiry Learning; the methods I'm looking to implement for my own resources, such as peer-to-peer teaching and strong feedback links between students and teachers. The above video illustrates some of these methods and how this makes for a more coherent learning experience.

Key points for me:
The feedback card system - When a topic is taught, students are asked to hold up a card which reflects how well they understood it. Then the teacher can focus more time onto them while the more able students work on further independent learning for themselves.

The Market Place, where "green" students share their better understanding with "red" and "yellow" students who dont understand so well.

Problem Designers

Through my studies as a designer, I've been taught to solve problems using a design methodology. Now I'm being tasked to design problems to solve.

My task is to create problems that have features that guide the user (solver/learner/student) to experience certain things. Like an interface for a car radio must be designed so it is instantly intuitive, the problems within the learning resources must naturally and effortlessly guide the learner through certain actions, thought processes, discussions, dilemmas and internal dialogues inorder to teach them what is necessary to complete the task (and more).

From a PBL standpoint, the problems must aid learners to learn the subject knowledge so the information is concise and flexible so they can retrieve it when the opportunities come about.
They must stretch the learner's capabilities to solve problems and develop similar self-directed learning skills so they are applicable throughout their life.
They must induce natural collaboration inorder to find all the answers and most importantly (in my mind), they must cause the learner to be intrinsically motivated to learn - ie, when they work on the problem they are motivated by their own interestes, challenges or self satisfaction.
(Hmelo-Silver, 2004)

Due to the vast diversity in possible students, designing a problem is a huge task. Two encourage these characteristics from everyone who approaches the problems requires a lot of scaffolding that is strong yet flexible so that it can be added or removed depending on the abilities of the individual students. But ultimately, it will be up to the facilitating teacher or lecturer to decide where scaffolding is required/not required*.


*Can problems have built-in fluidity in regard to the supportive scaffolding? Can an activity itself judge the abilities of its solver and change its course to address skills that are lacking? Eg, Like a book that lets you choose the outcome based on your own choices, a problem could test a learner after a certain stage, but instead of saying "go back and learn that chapter again", it sets the next task in a way that addresses the lacking skills for a second time, but maybe from a different direction or within a different context.

Technology and the Development of Teaching

As Seymour Papert inquired in 'The Children's Machine' (1993), if using a time machine and you were to bring a group of teachers and a group of surgeons from 100 years past into present time, how would they fair at their craft?
The surgeons would probably have a hard time adapting to the new tools and techniques used in hospital theatres today, but despite the new technologies in today's classrooms, the teachers would probably find it easier to adapt and teach nearly as effectively as teachers do now (apart from getting overwhelmed with the increase in unruly, undisciplined, knife-wielding kids).

If this were they case, Papert asks, then why? Why has medicine developed far more than education? Is it because the ways we used a century ago were the best ways to teach? Is it because the pressure to improve surgical methods has been greater than for education? Or maybe the success of new medical procedures are far more quantitative and obvious than a new teaching technique.

Possibly for medicine in many ways, the tools have dictated the techniques. New technologies have directly influenced how a medical professional works on their patients; from making diagnoses easier to making incitions smaller. In schools however, the influx of technology has only recently been making a direct effect on teaching methods.

This, I expect, is due mostly to how the technology is packaged. Desktop computers have been in most classrooms for nearly a decade, but its only until the screens could be projected onto whiteboards did the power really be injected into every lesson. Now with the new wave of tablets, the technology is not hindering the learning experience but complementing it.

The development of technology:

The fast development of technology is most certainly a double edged sword. In one sense it is greatly enabling;  the stuff only realised by science fiction authors a short time ago is entering our homes (and classrooms), providing us with media and services in ever more convenient and fast ways. But on the other hand, the speed of progress makes everything around it seem dated as quickly as version 2.0 comes out.

Look at any physics textbook thats 5 years old, and apart from the omission of Pluto you will most likely see very little difference between that and a book published yesterday. Do the same with a book on ICT and you would have a hard time following it. Despite a PC now having very simliar tools to one 5 years ago, the volatility of software has caused those to be changed and updated beyond recognition.

Therefore, learning resources associated with such technologies must be built so they utilise technology rather than rely on it. Rather, the learning resources must be backed up by a skill-set, methods rather than specific tools should be the backbone of this work.

//Quote

Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand

- Confucious

Pinguino

Pin-goo-ee-no, Ping-wee-no, I'm not sure how to pronounce it. But this is a project that been developing since 2008, with the purpose of designing an Arduino that can be built on the cheap by anyone at home. It mostly supports Arduino code, and this is getting improved on. As for other hardware, for the next release they they are working on supporting Zigbee, OTG and CDC, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to plug things in and get them working. Also whats interesting is that they are working on getting Android support, so effectively turning this into an ADK board as well.

What caught my eye though is that the guy who developed it, Jean-Pierre Mandon, is a teacher at the robotic lab at the Aix en Provence School of Art in Southern France. Why an art school needs a robotics lab I'm not yet sure, but initially this project was meant as a tool for his students. This guy might be useful to talk to.

Ultimately, it looks like they are saying this board exists to build more features into the existing Arduino platform, while making it more widely compatible and cheaper to make. I think its worth giving this a look at, at least after the next version.

More info and an interesting interview at MAKE and the original site here.

2012 musings

Yes, the evening after new years eve. I dont know why I'm not in bed either. But I've had some things on my mind. Some things that started with the last meeting of 2011 with Tom Page.


A mate of mine, who went to my old school and is now studying at Loughborough design school is also really good at making apps for iPhone. Out of bordom during his gap year, he taught himself how to code in Objective C from scratch using only Youtube videos and online tutorials, and now is selling some apps on the Apple app store. Apparently he is even getting some sort of monetary return from it too.


What occurred to me was this: That hobby of his is very design centered, from the interface layout to the styling, and apps are being used in more and more products everyday, but nothing on the product or industrial design courses comes close to utilising the potential of that skill.
Sure we have lectures on coding and on interface design, but this guy is so beyond what they teach its stupid for him to go on them.


And this is just one guy, I know of loads of other people who have taken a product design course, and they are really good at something design related but at something that is either not taught at the school, or is taught but at a depth shallower than their skill. Designing has no set rules of what you need to know, so why are modules set up in this way? Sure, there are ‘optionals’, but they still are too restricting with not enough options.


So this is what I propose: One optional module that looks for people with curricular/un-curricular but advanced knowledge in a skill that’s applicable to a design process. You will end up with a group of most likely differing skill sets, so team them up and get them to design something. If you provide the resources for them to do it, just watch and be amazed at what they do. You will end up with a well designed product all round, and a well made prototype, most likely demonstrating all of its features.
It will exercise their own skills, increase the ability to work in a team, and will drive the quality of output of the university up. Initially this increase in quality will come only from this module, but I feel that they will set a standard that the final year projects may likely follow.

And this brings me to how this realtes more to my studies.
Its not a lack of ideas that slows innovation, it’s a lack of skills needed to get those ideas out. But there is not enough time to teach everyone how to do everything. People who can do it should be encouraged to, people who can’t should be shown ways to get a similar outcome with easier methods.