Monday, September 20, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Concept sketches for Toy
We wanted to re-adapt the traditional alphabet book into something more interactive and dynamic and the form we chose was a toy. A toy as a teaching aid has a number of advantages.
1. It cancels out the monotony of reading ( which is essential to children of our target audience who are primary school kids, but have not progressed much beyond the nursery levels)
2. It also develops assemblage faculties of the child as well as polishes up co-ordination and motor skills of the child.
3. It also engenders a more creative and problem solving approach in thinking in the child.
The first ideas that we came up for the toy was ether a jigsaw puzzle or a set of building block form for the alphabets. We then thought of integrating the two forms into a simpler form and came up with the idea of having the Kannada alphabets be broken down into its essential forms in the form of building block like pieces, which could be formed and re-formed in various arrangements to form the various alphabets.
Materials we were thinking about included rubber sheets and wood. But we have currently settled on wood as our primary choice.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Drawing Workshop-Part 1
We held a drawing workshop with the children of one of the school we had chosen to survey, to get them drawing about anything they liked and also have them handwrite kannada alphabets and numerals so that it can be used on the teaching aids being designed in some way. This way there is a direct connect with every child involved and also would generate more interest.
Final Project Brief Development--2
Refining our intent and currently we are at a point where we narrowed down our deliverables down to 3 options.
1) an educational toy/teaching aid: We want to put our own spin on the traditional alphabet book. Our concept is that, since children respond best to interactive learning more than the top down by rote mechanisms (this we observed from our time at the schools), we would try to design a toy, like building blocks or a jigsaw puzzle which would enable them to learn the vernacular alphabets/numbers/etc in a more of a problem solving approach, and also give them a co-ordination challenge.
2)a book on vernacular semiotics: we also want to design a more interesting and fun book on various local semiotics and connections made from it. it is very important for children to know the basic signs and symbols, and it is better to introduce to them all of this at this stage rather than waiting for them to discover all of it by themselves( if at all) at a later date.
3)environmental info graphics: we would finally like to tackle about three areas of the schools we have researched in to develop sign-age which is simple and effective.
Our idea is also that we want to involve the children of the school in this process so, we have planned a workshop in the school for 2 days which will be a drawing workshop related to their basic lesson plans, the out come of which we are planning to use in our final product, so that it will give an instant connect to the children.
a small section of references that we are looking at:
Final Project Brief Developement-1
From the last week's research the the foremost needs of the student we found out and the area we can work on are:
1. Development of the teaching aids for kids
2. Environmental information graphics inside school premise.
How can we develop teaching aids
We are thinking of conducting an observational and information drawing workshop with the kids and then use their drawings in order to develop their teaching aids. This will make a direct connection and involvement between objects ( structured or unstructured), images, language and symbols and identification of the material they study. We think the use of interactive way of building up the teaching aids will help the kids to relate with their subject matter easily.This will contain both visual and typographical elements to make it more inspiring and easy for kids to understand.
Purpose
Currently they have a number of teaching aids present inside classroom but they are not up to the mark quality wise and not inspiring and communicative enough for the children.
So in order to make the existing things better we chose to work on the teaching aids.
Environmental information graphics inside school premise
Convenience is the key word.The intention is to make the environment whether interior or exterior, day-to-day functional needs more communicative and systematic.....starting from the place the common tap is located, the place where they keep their food plates, the place they keep their shoes and the place they play or spend time inside school. This will include direct approaches, and uses of color, imagery, and design elements.
Purpose
Purpose is to represent the information in a way so that kids can use the place with efficiency and effectiveness.
Research and Survey-2
Concluding Need Analysis
Challenges Faced
•Better Storage, especially for bags
•Better designed furniture for students
•Waste Management design
•Attractive display for the teaching aides
•Toilet design for the primary school
•Classroom Acoustics in the high school
•Design Lunch area space for the high school
•Improve the natural lighting & ventilation in class
•Better designed furniture for students
•Waste Management design
•Attractive display for the teaching aides
•Toilet design for the primary school
•Classroom Acoustics in the high school
•Design Lunch area space for the high school
•Improve the natural lighting & ventilation in class
•Communication due to the Language Barrier
•The locals living around the schools were not included in the research
•The behaviour analysis was of a single day
•Making sense and verifying the different quality of data
•Handling the prestige bias, ambiguous & middle responses
•Balancing work styles
•The locals living around the schools were not included in the research
•The behaviour analysis was of a single day
•Making sense and verifying the different quality of data
•Handling the prestige bias, ambiguous & middle responses
•Balancing work styles
Research and Survey-1
GOVERNMENT LOWER PRIMARY SCHOOL PUTTENAHALLI
•Established- 1985
•No. of Teachers- 2
1. Headmaster: Rajanna
2. Teacher: Suresh
•Total No. of Students- 39
•Age of Student (std. 1-3) - 5 to 8 yrs
GOVERNMENT AIDED HIGH SCHOOL
•
Established- 1992
•No. of teachers- 9
-Head mistress: Mrs. Gayatri Devi
•Total no of Student- 169
8th class: 60
9th Class: 64
10th Class: 45
•Age of student (Class 8th) - 13 to 14yrs
WANTS
•Small table & chair for the children
•
‘Eco-friendly, well-build mats will be nice‘
•Teaching aids- science models
•Library & Reference books
•Cupboard & Fans
•More toilets needed
•More bright colours in class
•More greenery in the school campus