With some other classmates at HGSE, I’ve been building a website to facilitate informal learning about music for tweens. The website will work, ideally, in conjunction with a television program for tweens (also in development) about the members of a young rock band and their efforts to improve as musicians. This program idea came about because of observations about the popularity of television programs and video games that give tweens an illusion of being involved in music, but not the real experience. Nor do they give viewers or users any useful information about music or how to make it. The media my colleagues and I have been producing are an attempt to change that paradigm.
My proposed final project for MAS 714 will be as follows: I will build a new Flash learning game to add to the site. The curricular agenda behind this particular game will be to introduce and familiarize players with an array of Western orchestral and world music instruments. In addition, I will build a number of Scratch projects to introduce Scratch users to the site, and to encourage them to create their own music projects in Scratch.
I am going to design an new digital instrument.
First of all, it can record sound, which could be the sound of the wind, the crying sound of a cat, the singing of the birds and so on.
this instrument is very portable, so kids could bring it everywhere and always ready to record the sound they like.
After get the sample of the sounds, children could play with those sounds. For example, after recording a note of the crying sound from a cat, that sound will be automatically defined as "do". So, if you play this instrument, like " so do do do, so re xi do, so do mi so mi re do si do re...." , actually you are imitating a cat singing this song.
It is the same with any soundd you record.
So actually this instrument is a tool for children to touch the nature. All the sounds around them are becoming tangible and can be played with.
they can share and exchange the interesting sound they recorded, or the song they made. And this instrument can be connected to the computer, thus, children can play together and share them online. Furthermore, I do think that it could develop a audio version of "scratch", which is specially for dealing with those music generated from this instruments.
Wow Huang, this sounds really wonderful! The kids could get really creative and record the sounds of the ocean, or their living room, etc... are you actually going to develop this? I have so many projects I want to do with sound recordings and something like this would be amazing. Are you going to do an accompanying software at some point too?
hey, April, thanks. yeah, actually i will build the working prototype of it. I think the software and online community are also very important to this idea. So this instrument is not only a tool for playing music, but also for collaboration, sharing and so on .
Note: I have quite a few ideas, and this is just one of them. If anyone is interested in helping, I'd be more than happy to collaborate/merge projects. Also, this project might be aimed at too young of an audience for this class, in which case I'll be more than happy to proposing something else.
Background:
An infant can hear the differences between all the consonants and vowels used in any language throughout the world, as they age the brain optimizes for their locale and it becomes difficult for them to tell apart sounds used in foreign languages. [1] This also happens with faces, different locales around the world focus on different aspects in areas with little variation in hair and eye color facial structure plays a more dominant role.
Idea: If we create building blocks, the little wooden blocks with letters on them, that can trigger an audio sample of the letter children will maintain the ability to demarcate between the sounds. If we could embed the blocks with RFID, theoretically we can track them in 3d space (multiple sensors). In this way when a child combines the letters in a row the system can pronounce them correctly. When the child spells a word and can pronounce, define it, and even tell a short little story using it.
Alternate Modes: Build things that spell words, try to spell the words the system tells you to, by spelling words you can drive the story the system is telling. It can also keep track of the structures the children are building, and challenge them with new physical ideas.
Plan of Attack:
I don't know much about RFID in practical terms so this may not be feasible, at the very least we can do the theoretical portion and fully explore this idea. I would like to build a prototype if possible.
Will it work? I have no idea, I don't know anything about babies or how they learn. This may even backfire and stunt their development. Though on the other hand, its probably better than watching television which most children do.
The motivation for this effort is to introduce educators to alternative methods for teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts using robotics.
Background
Artbotics, http://www.artbotics.org, is an ongoing program focused on revealing art and computing concepts using robotics. STREAM, http://stream.cs.uml.edu, is an annual educator workshop exploring how to use robotics in teaching STEM. Dr. Holly Yanco directs Artbotics and the STREAM Workshop. Artbotics exists as a semester-long course for middle school, high school, and undergraduate students. A two-day Artbotics workshop for educators does exist. However, Dr. Yanco would like to include an artbotics exploration in the 2010 STREAM Workshop; this would complement the other robotics methods on the agenda.
Question
Is it possible to give educators a motivating and useful introduction to the artbotics concept in a three-hour time frame?
Challenges
1. Using the artbotics class as inspiration, design a three-hour workshop for approximately 50 educators.
2. Incorporate progressive techniques discussed in class and utilized in the artbotics class: project-based activity, group collaboration, and intrinsic motivation.
3. Evaluate the level educator involvement through solicited feedback and observed behavior.
It seems as if music is the trend of the MAS714 class.
I also want to design a music learning tool:
Building on the concepts and technological capabilities of Apple's GarageBand Learn to Play, I would like to design an interactive lesson plan for beginning string instrument players. It will be targeted towards children, ages 5-8, and will focus on the first week of the introductory lesson. These lessons will involve comprehensive introduction to the instrument, basic theories on music, historical context, and interactive sound samples. I'm considering the mobile platform (e.g. iPhone application) as the main technological tool.
Well, the idea is still in the development phase, but I'd love to get some of your inputs, especially those who are considering the mobile platforms and/or musical teaching materials.
I am going to extend the Remixing capabilities of Scratch… in order to foster creativity, understood, here, as the process by which we find new ideas by combining and reframing old ones.
-Proposed Solution: combining two or more projects/ideas to create a new one.
(2) Background
The main objective of Scratch is to teach/train children how to be more creative (question I asked to Mitch last class). The programming environment of Scratch constitutes the methodology to achieve the goal but not the goal in itself. Even though users learn programming skills --which is a useful and powerful problem-solving tool-- the main goal behind Scratch is to teach how to be more creative and not how to program. Scratch teaches you how to use rules and how to organize a sequence of actions to produce unexpected outcomes --shapes, behaviors, stories or games-- that did not exist before. This is what creativity actually means. We imagine, construct, play, and reflect (Resnick) to create new ideas and new problems: in a process of reflection-in-action that enables us to “reframe” the initial idea in “a new and unexpected way” (Schon) …
*this it is just a starting point. The objective of the background is to understand how new ideas come into being in order to find methods to promote the process of discovery. The main hypothesis is that new ideas emerge from ambiguous situations, in which one thing can be understood as something else: if we “remix” or combine two things together, the outcome would be neither of them and therefore would constitute something new.
(3) Idea
The aim is to combine the DNA of different projects to engender a new one. The initial idea (this is a draft I still don’t know exactly how to implement it) is to have an interface in which different projects can be opened at the same time. Particularly important is to be able to see the DNA, in this case the script, of each project in parallel and be able to copy from one to the other.
I made an experiment: I opened two Scratch projects at the same time and I realized it is not possible to copy code from one to the other. Until now, the only “remixing” feature is to download a file (only one) from the Scratch website and edit it on the Scratch software (only one project at a time and without been able to see different processes and ideas in parallel). My idea is to enable opening different files (from the website, or from previous individual projects… could incorporate get “surprise project”) and been able to “remix” them in parallel.
One important feature to be restudied in my proposal will be the “Sprite,” used in the current Scratch program as a unit of work (Bamberger). Most of the current Scratch projects show the repetition of units, moving around, reacting to each other, changing costume, rotating, and sometimes deforming a bit. Yet, they always correspond to the same unit or component, which in a “remixing” platform should be redefined. The goal, here, will be to enable the combination of units to create new ones: to transform them according to ambiguous and variable units of perception instead of determinate and invariable units of work.
(4) References (concepts)
Bamberger (units of work and units of perception)
Dewey (learning by experience)
Polanyi (tacit knowledge and discovery)
Resnick (creative thinking spiral)
Schon (reflection-in-action and reframing)
Stiny (emergence, ambiguity and embedding)
Sawyer (creativity by improvisation)
I'm working on a project for a Educational Product Design class at Harvard called Jumpseewow, which is essentially a website of professionally-produced, curated, age-appropriate, documentary videos for preschool children. The idea came from my classmate, a mother of preschool-age children, who had trouble finding age-appropriate documentary style videos to show her kids.
After doing some research, our idea turned more towards teaching parents of preschoolers how to talk to their children in a way that encourages school-readiness. There's a method to talking to kids: you have to ask them lots of questions that encourage dialogue and expose them to your adult vocabulary. It turns out that kids develop most of their vocabulary from their parents, and kids who enter kindergarten with smaller vocabularies never actually catch up to their peers with larger vocabularies. This gap widens as the kids progress through school. Performance on literacy tests in 1st grade accurately predict school performance in 11th grade.
So our website has now morphed into a site of videos designed for parent-child co-viewing, where videos are followed by questions that prompt the kind of discussions that are good for developing vocabulary. Our research shows, however, that parents use the computer/TV as kind of a babysitter. They aren't interested in watching children's television (and let's be honest, it's painful to watch). They drop their kids off in front of the screen so they can do chores or cook dinner.
I'm interested in developing some kind of creative space related to the videos such that kids can do some sort of project and share it with their parents, encouraging kids to instigate this dialogue with parents. It has to be done in a way that a pre-schooler could do it independently and share it with their parents afterwards. This isn't a question my group has examined (they're more concerned with user interface for the overall site) but I think this class would provide a great opportunity to think about different ways you can get kids to start conversations with their parents. I am not wedded to one form or another, so I would be happy to work with other people (Danny, your project might be an interesting fit).
I’d like to build upon the existing repository of LilyPad Arduino tutorials and evaluate how well they support end-users with no previous electronics experience. This will initially entail updating the current tutorials and expanding them to include more information on introductory sewing, basic electronics concepts, and sensor calibration. I would then migrate the tutorials to their future home, the LilyPond website. (LilyPond will be a collaborative web community for young people and educators using the LilyPad Arduino, although the rest of its development is beyond the scope of this final project.)
Once I’ve updated the tutorials and resituated them within the context of the LilyPond site, I propose gathering feedback from users in a couple of ways. Firstly, I’ll send out LilyPad kits to a couple of interested middle school students with whom I’ll have no face-to-face contact. I’ll ask them to make something of personal interest, relying solely upon the tutorials. I’ll then follow up in the form of an interview and/or survey, asking the students to reflect upon what was challenging and/or empowering about the experience. Secondly, I’ll send updated tutorial information to an instructor at the Digital Youth Network charter school in Chicago who has specifically expressed interest in e-sewing tutorials for her after-school program on soft circuits. In order to get feedback on the usefulness of tutorials within an after-school setting, I hope to connect directly with this instructor and/or poll her students using a survey.
At Harvard, I am working on an interactive web-based timeline of US History that includes key historical events in politics and society but also allows for user generated information. For this class, I hope to examine the potential of the website's design in fostering the greatest interactivity (being user-friendly), informational access, and clarity of its functionality. I am currently researching different data-visualization capabilities and other existing timelines. I will describe my initial ideas about the design of this website, but is just a rough sketch at this point. As I am not a programmer, I am just describing ideas.
I warmly welcome any suggestions from you all!
Reason:
This project was born out of my own need for an historical timeline to reference various events and sociocultural movements, as I have difficulty remembering dates and the sequence of history. Additionally, I am very interested in addressing civic engagement with youth through creative education. I therefore wanted to create an interactive timeline, where students can embed their own history among common/national history. Ideally this website will teach students new media skills at the same time as providing fun and personally meaningful entry points into actively learning about US history and their place within it.
Application:
Ideally, I would connect with an existing historical timeline from a source such as PBS or perhaps the National Constitution Center for the key national events. Every item will be tagged. Individuals, organizations, social movements, etc. will be able to add their history to the larger timeline. For example, the Media Lab might create their own timeline starting from "1980 - Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Weisner conceive of Media Laboratory at M.I.T." and continue on to include other historical events and inventions from the Media Lab. Each event can be clicked on to show further information/urls.
How to use it:
What the student sees upon first visiting the site is a page with dates. With a google earth type of web application built in, they can zoom in to see more dates and events. They can use the site in a few ways:
1. Search for existing events, eras, etc. by zooming in and browsing the larger timeline.
2. Search using the search options. Here the student can type in dates, events, ideas, people, inventions, places, cultures, songs, art movements, etc. to begin to shape their personalized timeline.
3. Search a separate page that lists all of the "popular" tags (i.e. women's suffrage, bill of rights, ice cream, etc.) to get ideas of what already exists on the timeline.
4a. Create their own timeline. As they search, they can begin to select from different existing events and actively construct their timeline based on their interest. The events they choose will automatically display a selection of surrounding events. This feature will allow them to make connections with other important events in history.
4b. They can add personal events to their timeline as well. For instance, if a student is born on April 20, 1990, they might create a new event called "birthday", which they can set to private or public. When this event appears on the timeline, they will see the related events on that day, such as "The Hubble Space Telescope is launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery."
* Perhaps they might even be able to order a copy of their completed personal timeline to be printed out and mailed to them.
What's currently available:
I have been looking for other interactive timelines, but have only been able to find very un-engaging and information-limited examples. Again, I welcome any innovative interactive timelines that you know of.
I am open to working with someone on this as well. :)
I will try to use Scratch to control a 3d library for Processing. I am interested in using this setup as a way to teach programming to architectural designers.
Data flow languages have been used as plug-ins for 3d modelers, but they still "hide" what's going on in terms of computation in the control boxes and thus do not convey what the logic instructions actually are. Scratch, being a control flow language has its advantages in that respect and I think would be a great way to teach algorithmic thinking for 3d structures.
I am interested in making toys in which sensors, renewable energy devices are imbedded. I want to make them programmable by connecting with Scratch. Energy is difficult to teach children and scientific knowledge does not influence on children’s sustainable behaviors. By designing interactive toys, children can learn sustainable concepts easy and the learning experience can be enjoyable.
For the final project I am interested in developing what is an ongoing project involving expressive robot characters. I am currently developing a robotic character which builds on an existing robot named Tofu. The new character will be able to move around the floor as well as generate simple expressions.
Using one of these robot characters, I am interested in developing a way for children to design stories which can then be acted out by the robot. This control mechanism is still taking shape, but I believe it should incorporate elements of puppeteering, as well as programmatic control. Through a puppeteering interface, children could intuitively drive the robot around and create expressions with a device such as a game controller. Through programmatic control, using scratch or other possible interfaces, robot expressions and movements could be replayed or possibly generated algorithmically. Although a wide range of control techniques are possible, I am most interested in creating ways for younger children to access this technology. Ideally children in the 5-8 year old range would be able to craft stories with the system. As a deliverable, I intend to build a working prototype of the system which includes one robot and the story development interface.
I’d like to design an interactive Scratch module for the iPhone, based around wayfinding. I’d like for users to explore and learn about where they are in the world, in the solar system, how to navigate in these very abstract environments, and how space and time are related. But of course the module has to be fun and engaging for Scratch-ers. In thinking about a celestial navigation class I took a decade or so ago, and the sextant, my object-to-think-with in that learning environment, I realized that the iPhone can approximate a lot of the capabilities found in a sextant, plus some. (For example: compass application, motion and position sensors, time keepers, etc.)
A user would both learn and create content in this module. The module should build on the programming skills that Scratch-ers have developed, and on the social networking aspects of the community. I am partially inspired by Ocarina, the beautiful iPhone application that imitates the ancient flute of that name. Ocarina allows the user to learn to play the instrument, record their own music, upload it to the Internet, and share their opus with other Ocarina musicians around the world, the network of people who happen to be playing and creating at the same moment. It’s a very powerful sharing experience. It would be terrific to duplicate this kind of real time experience for Scratch-ers.
I’m a bit fuzzy yet on the game itself, but it will probably involve a sort of “treasure” hunt (but a challenge more engaging to teens) involving clues, and requiring some sort of programming on the Scratch website to be uploaded to the user’s iPhone. (Or maybe we create a micro-Scratch programming environment for the iPhone itself.) It should be possible to play in constellations/teams or alone. Players might create their own avatars and motion characteristics to navigate in this macro-micro-world. It should have a low floor and a high ceiling for learning and encourage collaboration.
My research at Harvard looks at scientific thinking patterns of scientists. I would like to incorporate the concepts and technologies we've learned in class to write a "design" project on how specific technologies like Scratch can be used by teachers and students to foster these previously identified thinking skills in the science classroom. Thus, what I am designing is an idea of how the nature of science and scientific thinking, contextualized in the 21st century, can be taught in the classroom using specific educational technologies like Scratch as detailed examples.
Specific thinking skills to be addressed include:
Systems thinking
Mechanistic/Engineering thinking
Quantitative thinking
Interdisciplinary thinking
Distributed thinking
I am not familiar with the plethora of (educational) technologies out there, so any suggestions of technologies (that would help students foster the above thinking skills) that you think I should investigate would be much appreciated!
As a final project, I would like to propose a new software tool for sharing pattern languages, which is collections of tacit knowledge for a certain domain. The case I will take up is "Learning Patterns: A Pattern Language for Creative Learners", which is a pattern language for learners who want to learn better without killing their creativity.
There are two main advantage of using patterns. One is that it can make beginners easier to solve problems in the most effective way, since the skill acquired by experts is described. Another is that it can provide common vocabulary on the way of solving problems, therefore it makes people to mention the problems and solutions. Thus, pattern languages can be considered as the method for supporting thinking, action, and collaboration.
While we have applied the idea and method of “pattern language” to learning design, it was originally proposed in architectural design and it has been applied and well known in the software design. However, I believe that the method of pattern language is good way to help the student to design their learning, because it focuses on providing a new view for the reader so that they can think. It is quite important that the method is not easy way to get the result without thinking by themselves. It is not, however, irresponsible way to leave all up to individual ability. It is considered as the way that tolerates individual ability while making a good use of abstract rules of past experience.
Booklets of Learning Patterns, which consists of 40 patterns, have been handed out to more than 3 thousands students in Keio university, Japan. Also we provide a pattern everyday for 360 people on twitter so far. The problem is that there is no good tools to share Learning Patterns related to the learning process in school. So new tools are required for further effective use.
My final project is to create a new software tool for sharing Learning Patterns, where the tool provide the contents of Learning Patterns. The contents provided by the tool is based on the process of semester. The language for programming it may be Java.
For my final project, I want to reinterpret a project I've been working on since last spring given the new tools and contexts I've learned in this class. A history of this project is here: http://classroom.mit.edu/about/history/ The main idea was to design and build a temporary outdoor classroom that could be built, rebuilt, designed, and redesigned by the students who use it.
When I began this project, I knew nothing about Papert's constructionism; I was working from my own intuition and experience alone. I would like now to analyze and adjust my design from a constructionist viewpoint. Additionally, I want to incorporate other ideas we've talked about in this class, specifically those about supporting/creating communities of learners and the different roles of tangible and virtual learning.
My current thinking is to re-conceive the project as an open source hardware toolkit of architectural-scale building systems. Perhaps I will suggest it be used as a community showcase space for Michael Eisenberg's tangible "Mindstuff."
I am very interested in finding new collaborators on this project and this class seems like a great group to work with, so I invite you to join in! I have skills in the design of physical/visual things, but I would really appreciate working with someone who can contribute to ideas on curriculum and the realities of situating this in a school or other scenario.
As my final project I would like to conceptualize a system to create, edit and share short stop motion films.
The process of creating a stop motion film is, in my opinion, a very interesting activity from a pedagogic perspective. There are a lot of powerful ideas behind the frame by frame animation system; I am not talking only about timing, speed and motion but also simulation and fake amongst many other.
The experience of creating a stop motion animation is also very rich from the creative point of view. It usually happens that people, the first time they try, focus more on the constrains than in the possibilities. However, their fairly simple initial ideas rapidly evolve into more complex ones and eventually -- even within the first attempt -- they get to challenge the initial constrains.
Since the experience is rich enough as it is the idea will be to create a very simple plug'n'go technology -- using the computer build in web cam or any web cam you can plug to the computer -- to enable everyone with an idea -- or without it -- to get involved. The resulting video will be uploaded in to a shared web space so that people can easily share their creations, get inspiration and contact other people whose work they admire to share techniques and tips.
My project would help students acquire a basic skill set for creating meaning in time-based media.
While it's become less difficult to create time-based pieces, many people are unaware of the rich language of TV and film that can be used to convey meaning. By providing examples from TV and film, students would gain exposure to such things as Mickey Mousing, cutting to continuity, the 4th wall, Kuleshov effect, etc. as well as an understanding of preferred reading and aberrant decoding.
The concepts would either be taught as individual exercises or incorporated within stories created in Scratch by the students. The end result would provide a tool kit of examples created by the student.
Final Project Proposal – Open Park Collaborative Workstation for Learning and Practicing News-reporting
Background & Goals
As part of my research for the Center for Future Civic Media at the Media Lab I am developing an online platform for collaborative news production for journalists, media professionals, citizen journalists and communities to cover the/their news called ‘Open Park’.
The platform is an open source news-reporting toolbox for collaborative synchronized coverage of hyperlocal, national and global news. It contains all the news-reporting tools required to produce original, high-quality, professional news-coverage, including techniques for using new social media such as Facebook and Twitter, and a Code of Ethics for Collaborative Journalism.
For my final project, I propose to develop, in collaboration with Kumiko, one feature of the Open Park platform, namely, its collaborative workstation which OP reporters and editors will use to work in real time on multiple-authored stories, collaborative photo essays, group Facebook reports, etc. This shared workspace will be developed as a Drupal Wiki.
As OP is a all-in-one toolbox for the practice of news-reporting, I am very interested in extending its applications to students and even schoolchildren for them to use and learn not only the basics of journalism, but also simply how to produce a good piece of writing or multimedia product [such as audio, video, etc].
Design & Development
The section for this shared space has just been very recently created in Open Park’s Workshop section at the following link: http://openpark.media.mit.edu/node/172
As you will see, it is so far a blank section ready to be developed and put to good use.
Field Tests
For the purpose of my research at the C4FCM, I am planning to test the OP’s news-reporting functionalities with journalism students from colleges and universities in Boston and around the country. I am currently building the teams of student OP reporters who will work together on selected beats and news stories, and interviewing potential participants. The idea is to have them cover one national issue or topic from their various locations around the country, and then putting together their news products into one finished collaborative piece that would show how this national large-scale issue is being experienced at the local levels and in various different states and cities, how the authorities are reacting, etc.
For the purpose of our final project assignment, I would like to essentially conduct a similar experiment in collaborative use of OP’s new media features but on a smaller scale, namely with a local school or college here in Boston. I would propose that the students or schoolchildren form teams of anything from two members to bigger groups and cover a story or event that matters to them in an original way using multimedia tools, and of course – their friends, partners, and anyone who is collaborating with them – and all this while maintaining standards of good writing, editing and other ethical standards.
In many of our readings and in our activities, we have explored how new technologies can engage children in creative learning experiences. Robots also have this powerful potential to invoke creative learning and produce lasting experiences. A vision in which many roboticists share is to create lifelong robot companions that can share experiences with a person, especially educational ones.
In the "Reading with Rover" program, children with reading difficulties actually read stories to a dog and the dog loves to listen! A child that may be hesitant to read aloud to his peers is typically less stressed when reading to a dog and the dog never judges the child's reading ability.
I would like to see if Robots can also assist children in helping to develop their reading skills.
The scenario that I am imagining is for a child to read a simple short story to the robot, which is being teleoperated in a back-room. I would assess the child's experience with the robot. Hopefully, they will find that robots are fun companion to read to just like the dogs!
I would LOVE to have help in this project for anyone that is interested :) You do not have to techy!! Harvard kids are especially welcomed. I would love to get your perspective.
I have a few ideas, this is my current favorite:
As a community grows and becomes more diverse and pluralistic, it becomes more important to create spaces where sub-communities can gather based on shared interests. Such a space will allow participants to identify with one another, forge new connections, and find interesting projects. At the same time, it should expose community members to other "adjacent" groups with similar, but not identical interests.
I want to explore the creation of such a space on the Scratch website based on the principles discussed in this course.
I'm currently working on some data mining and visualizations of the activity on the Scratch website. For example, looking at how the activity (posting comments, creating projects...) on the website breaks down by age, looking at how frequently individual Scratch blocks are being used in projects, exploring how active the community is (how many people created x number of projects, posted x number of comments), and seeing how these metrics have progressed over time.
These statistics speak about the Scratch community as a whole, but I'm also interested in exploring Scratch activity at a more micro level - looking at statistics about each individual users. Additionally, I'm also interested to see how we can enhance a user's experience by providing them with these statistics and visualizations 'services'. For example, seeing how you've used blocks in all your projects may help you pinpoint new blocks that you have not explored previously. I'd like to explore what kinds of 'services' would be most useful for Scratchers and in what ways we can best integrate these with the Scratch website.
Kathleen Kouril Grieser: Final Project Proposal
With some other classmates at HGSE, I’ve been building a website to facilitate informal learning about music for tweens. The website will work, ideally, in conjunction with a television program for tweens (also in development) about the members of a young rock band and their efforts to improve as musicians. This program idea came about because of observations about the popularity of television programs and video games that give tweens an illusion of being involved in music, but not the real experience. Nor do they give viewers or users any useful information about music or how to make it. The media my colleagues and I have been producing are an attempt to change that paradigm.
My proposed final project for MAS 714 will be as follows: I will build a new Flash learning game to add to the site. The curricular agenda behind this particular game will be to introduce and familiarize players with an array of Western orchestral and world music instruments. In addition, I will build a number of Scratch projects to introduce Scratch users to the site, and to encourage them to create their own music projects in Scratch.
I am going to design an new digital instrument.
First of all, it can record sound, which could be the sound of the wind, the crying sound of a cat, the singing of the birds and so on.
this instrument is very portable, so kids could bring it everywhere and always ready to record the sound they like.
After get the sample of the sounds, children could play with those sounds. For example, after recording a note of the crying sound from a cat, that sound will be automatically defined as "do". So, if you play this instrument, like " so do do do, so re xi do, so do mi so mi re do si do re...." , actually you are imitating a cat singing this song.
It is the same with any soundd you record.
So actually this instrument is a tool for children to touch the nature. All the sounds around them are becoming tangible and can be played with.
they can share and exchange the interesting sound they recorded, or the song they made. And this instrument can be connected to the computer, thus, children can play together and share them online. Furthermore, I do think that it could develop a audio version of "scratch", which is specially for dealing with those music generated from this instruments.
Wow Huang, this sounds really wonderful! The kids could get really creative and record the sounds of the ocean, or their living room, etc... are you actually going to develop this? I have so many projects I want to do with sound recordings and something like this would be amazing. Are you going to do an accompanying software at some point too?
April Lee
hey, April, thanks. yeah, actually i will build the working prototype of it. I think the software and online community are also very important to this idea. So this instrument is not only a tool for playing music, but also for collaboration, sharing and so on .
Danny Gagne: Final Proposal
Note: I have quite a few ideas, and this is just one of them. If anyone is interested in helping, I'd be more than happy to collaborate/merge projects. Also, this project might be aimed at too young of an audience for this class, in which case I'll be more than happy to proposing something else.
Background:
An infant can hear the differences between all the consonants and vowels used in any language throughout the world, as they age the brain optimizes for their locale and it becomes difficult for them to tell apart sounds used in foreign languages. [1] This also happens with faces, different locales around the world focus on different aspects in areas with little variation in hair and eye color facial structure plays a more dominant role.
Idea: If we create building blocks, the little wooden blocks with letters on them, that can trigger an audio sample of the letter children will maintain the ability to demarcate between the sounds. If we could embed the blocks with RFID, theoretically we can track them in 3d space (multiple sensors). In this way when a child combines the letters in a row the system can pronounce them correctly. When the child spells a word and can pronounce, define it, and even tell a short little story using it.
Alternate Modes: Build things that spell words, try to spell the words the system tells you to, by spelling words you can drive the story the system is telling. It can also keep track of the structures the children are building, and challenge them with new physical ideas.
Plan of Attack:
I don't know much about RFID in practical terms so this may not be feasible, at the very least we can do the theoretical portion and fully explore this idea. I would like to build a prototype if possible.
Will it work? I have no idea, I don't know anything about babies or how they learn. This may even backfire and stunt their development. Though on the other hand, its probably better than watching television which most children do.
[1] http://raisingreaders.org/resource/d/42136/position_born_to_learn.pdf
ARTBOTICS EXPLORATION FOR EDUCATORS
Motivation
The motivation for this effort is to introduce educators to alternative methods for teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts using robotics.
Background
Artbotics, http://www.artbotics.org, is an ongoing program focused on revealing art and computing concepts using robotics. STREAM, http://stream.cs.uml.edu, is an annual educator workshop exploring how to use robotics in teaching STEM. Dr. Holly Yanco directs Artbotics and the STREAM Workshop. Artbotics exists as a semester-long course for middle school, high school, and undergraduate students. A two-day Artbotics workshop for educators does exist. However, Dr. Yanco would like to include an artbotics exploration in the 2010 STREAM Workshop; this would complement the other robotics methods on the agenda.
Question
Is it possible to give educators a motivating and useful introduction to the artbotics concept in a three-hour time frame?
Challenges
1. Using the artbotics class as inspiration, design a three-hour workshop for approximately 50 educators.
2. Incorporate progressive techniques discussed in class and utilized in the artbotics class: project-based activity, group collaboration, and intrinsic motivation.
3. Evaluate the level educator involvement through solicited feedback and observed behavior.
It seems as if music is the trend of the MAS714 class.
I also want to design a music learning tool:
Building on the concepts and technological capabilities of Apple's GarageBand Learn to Play, I would like to design an interactive lesson plan for beginning string instrument players. It will be targeted towards children, ages 5-8, and will focus on the first week of the introductory lesson. These lessons will involve comprehensive introduction to the instrument, basic theories on music, historical context, and interactive sound samples. I'm considering the mobile platform (e.g. iPhone application) as the main technological tool.
Well, the idea is still in the development phase, but I'd love to get some of your inputs, especially those who are considering the mobile platforms and/or musical teaching materials.
Marie
REMIXING SCRATCH!!
(1) Summary
I am going to extend the Remixing capabilities of Scratch… in order to foster creativity, understood, here, as the process by which we find new ideas by combining and reframing old ones.
-Proposed Solution: combining two or more projects/ideas to create a new one.
(2) Background
The main objective of Scratch is to teach/train children how to be more creative (question I asked to Mitch last class). The programming environment of Scratch constitutes the methodology to achieve the goal but not the goal in itself. Even though users learn programming skills --which is a useful and powerful problem-solving tool-- the main goal behind Scratch is to teach how to be more creative and not how to program. Scratch teaches you how to use rules and how to organize a sequence of actions to produce unexpected outcomes --shapes, behaviors, stories or games-- that did not exist before. This is what creativity actually means. We imagine, construct, play, and reflect (Resnick) to create new ideas and new problems: in a process of reflection-in-action that enables us to “reframe” the initial idea in “a new and unexpected way” (Schon) …
*this it is just a starting point. The objective of the background is to understand how new ideas come into being in order to find methods to promote the process of discovery. The main hypothesis is that new ideas emerge from ambiguous situations, in which one thing can be understood as something else: if we “remix” or combine two things together, the outcome would be neither of them and therefore would constitute something new.
(3) Idea
The aim is to combine the DNA of different projects to engender a new one. The initial idea (this is a draft I still don’t know exactly how to implement it) is to have an interface in which different projects can be opened at the same time. Particularly important is to be able to see the DNA, in this case the script, of each project in parallel and be able to copy from one to the other.
I made an experiment: I opened two Scratch projects at the same time and I realized it is not possible to copy code from one to the other. Until now, the only “remixing” feature is to download a file (only one) from the Scratch website and edit it on the Scratch software (only one project at a time and without been able to see different processes and ideas in parallel). My idea is to enable opening different files (from the website, or from previous individual projects… could incorporate get “surprise project”) and been able to “remix” them in parallel.
One important feature to be restudied in my proposal will be the “Sprite,” used in the current Scratch program as a unit of work (Bamberger). Most of the current Scratch projects show the repetition of units, moving around, reacting to each other, changing costume, rotating, and sometimes deforming a bit. Yet, they always correspond to the same unit or component, which in a “remixing” platform should be redefined. The goal, here, will be to enable the combination of units to create new ones: to transform them according to ambiguous and variable units of perception instead of determinate and invariable units of work.
(4) References (concepts)
Bamberger (units of work and units of perception)
Dewey (learning by experience)
Polanyi (tacit knowledge and discovery)
Resnick (creative thinking spiral)
Schon (reflection-in-action and reframing)
Stiny (emergence, ambiguity and embedding)
Sawyer (creativity by improvisation)
Victoria Chao
I'm working on a project for a Educational Product Design class at Harvard called Jumpseewow, which is essentially a website of professionally-produced, curated, age-appropriate, documentary videos for preschool children. The idea came from my classmate, a mother of preschool-age children, who had trouble finding age-appropriate documentary style videos to show her kids.
After doing some research, our idea turned more towards teaching parents of preschoolers how to talk to their children in a way that encourages school-readiness. There's a method to talking to kids: you have to ask them lots of questions that encourage dialogue and expose them to your adult vocabulary. It turns out that kids develop most of their vocabulary from their parents, and kids who enter kindergarten with smaller vocabularies never actually catch up to their peers with larger vocabularies. This gap widens as the kids progress through school. Performance on literacy tests in 1st grade accurately predict school performance in 11th grade.
So our website has now morphed into a site of videos designed for parent-child co-viewing, where videos are followed by questions that prompt the kind of discussions that are good for developing vocabulary. Our research shows, however, that parents use the computer/TV as kind of a babysitter. They aren't interested in watching children's television (and let's be honest, it's painful to watch). They drop their kids off in front of the screen so they can do chores or cook dinner.
I'm interested in developing some kind of creative space related to the videos such that kids can do some sort of project and share it with their parents, encouraging kids to instigate this dialogue with parents. It has to be done in a way that a pre-schooler could do it independently and share it with their parents afterwards. This isn't a question my group has examined (they're more concerned with user interface for the overall site) but I think this class would provide a great opportunity to think about different ways you can get kids to start conversations with their parents. I am not wedded to one form or another, so I would be happy to work with other people (Danny, your project might be an interesting fit).
I’d like to build upon the existing repository of LilyPad Arduino tutorials and evaluate how well they support end-users with no previous electronics experience. This will initially entail updating the current tutorials and expanding them to include more information on introductory sewing, basic electronics concepts, and sensor calibration. I would then migrate the tutorials to their future home, the LilyPond website. (LilyPond will be a collaborative web community for young people and educators using the LilyPad Arduino, although the rest of its development is beyond the scope of this final project.)
Once I’ve updated the tutorials and resituated them within the context of the LilyPond site, I propose gathering feedback from users in a couple of ways. Firstly, I’ll send out LilyPad kits to a couple of interested middle school students with whom I’ll have no face-to-face contact. I’ll ask them to make something of personal interest, relying solely upon the tutorials. I’ll then follow up in the form of an interview and/or survey, asking the students to reflect upon what was challenging and/or empowering about the experience. Secondly, I’ll send updated tutorial information to an instructor at the Digital Youth Network charter school in Chicago who has specifically expressed interest in e-sewing tutorials for her after-school program on soft circuits. In order to get feedback on the usefulness of tutorials within an after-school setting, I hope to connect directly with this instructor and/or poll her students using a survey.
At Harvard, I am working on an interactive web-based timeline of US History that includes key historical events in politics and society but also allows for user generated information. For this class, I hope to examine the potential of the website's design in fostering the greatest interactivity (being user-friendly), informational access, and clarity of its functionality. I am currently researching different data-visualization capabilities and other existing timelines. I will describe my initial ideas about the design of this website, but is just a rough sketch at this point. As I am not a programmer, I am just describing ideas.
I warmly welcome any suggestions from you all!
Reason:
This project was born out of my own need for an historical timeline to reference various events and sociocultural movements, as I have difficulty remembering dates and the sequence of history. Additionally, I am very interested in addressing civic engagement with youth through creative education. I therefore wanted to create an interactive timeline, where students can embed their own history among common/national history. Ideally this website will teach students new media skills at the same time as providing fun and personally meaningful entry points into actively learning about US history and their place within it.
Application:
Ideally, I would connect with an existing historical timeline from a source such as PBS or perhaps the National Constitution Center for the key national events. Every item will be tagged. Individuals, organizations, social movements, etc. will be able to add their history to the larger timeline. For example, the Media Lab might create their own timeline starting from "1980 - Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Weisner conceive of Media Laboratory at M.I.T." and continue on to include other historical events and inventions from the Media Lab. Each event can be clicked on to show further information/urls.
How to use it:
What the student sees upon first visiting the site is a page with dates. With a google earth type of web application built in, they can zoom in to see more dates and events. They can use the site in a few ways:
1. Search for existing events, eras, etc. by zooming in and browsing the larger timeline.
2. Search using the search options. Here the student can type in dates, events, ideas, people, inventions, places, cultures, songs, art movements, etc. to begin to shape their personalized timeline.
3. Search a separate page that lists all of the "popular" tags (i.e. women's suffrage, bill of rights, ice cream, etc.) to get ideas of what already exists on the timeline.
4a. Create their own timeline. As they search, they can begin to select from different existing events and actively construct their timeline based on their interest. The events they choose will automatically display a selection of surrounding events. This feature will allow them to make connections with other important events in history.
4b. They can add personal events to their timeline as well. For instance, if a student is born on April 20, 1990, they might create a new event called "birthday", which they can set to private or public. When this event appears on the timeline, they will see the related events on that day, such as "The Hubble Space Telescope is launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery."
* Perhaps they might even be able to order a copy of their completed personal timeline to be printed out and mailed to them.
What's currently available:
I have been looking for other interactive timelines, but have only been able to find very un-engaging and information-limited examples. Again, I welcome any innovative interactive timelines that you know of.
I am open to working with someone on this as well. :)
April Lee
April, you should check out the exhibit framework from MIT: http://www.simile-widgets.org/exhibit/
Here's an example about noble prize winners: http://www.simile-widgets.org/exhibit/examples/nobelists/nobelists.html
the majority of the work is just entering the data... I can provide you with more info if needed.
I will try to use Scratch to control a 3d library for Processing. I am interested in using this setup as a way to teach programming to architectural designers.
Data flow languages have been used as plug-ins for 3d modelers, but they still "hide" what's going on in terms of computation in the control boxes and thus do not convey what the logic instructions actually are. Scratch, being a control flow language has its advantages in that respect and I think would be a great way to teach algorithmic thinking for 3d structures.
Sustainable Toys: Physical Scratch
I am interested in making toys in which sensors, renewable energy devices are imbedded. I want to make them programmable by connecting with Scratch. Energy is difficult to teach children and scientific knowledge does not influence on children’s sustainable behaviors. By designing interactive toys, children can learn sustainable concepts easy and the learning experience can be enjoyable.
For the final project I am interested in developing what is an ongoing project involving expressive robot characters. I am currently developing a robotic character which builds on an existing robot named Tofu. The new character will be able to move around the floor as well as generate simple expressions.
Using one of these robot characters, I am interested in developing a way for children to design stories which can then be acted out by the robot. This control mechanism is still taking shape, but I believe it should incorporate elements of puppeteering, as well as programmatic control. Through a puppeteering interface, children could intuitively drive the robot around and create expressions with a device such as a game controller. Through programmatic control, using scratch or other possible interfaces, robot expressions and movements could be replayed or possibly generated algorithmically. Although a wide range of control techniques are possible, I am most interested in creating ways for younger children to access this technology. Ideally children in the 5-8 year old range would be able to craft stories with the system. As a deliverable, I intend to build a working prototype of the system which includes one robot and the story development interface.
I’d like to design an interactive Scratch module for the iPhone, based around wayfinding. I’d like for users to explore and learn about where they are in the world, in the solar system, how to navigate in these very abstract environments, and how space and time are related. But of course the module has to be fun and engaging for Scratch-ers. In thinking about a celestial navigation class I took a decade or so ago, and the sextant, my object-to-think-with in that learning environment, I realized that the iPhone can approximate a lot of the capabilities found in a sextant, plus some. (For example: compass application, motion and position sensors, time keepers, etc.)
A user would both learn and create content in this module. The module should build on the programming skills that Scratch-ers have developed, and on the social networking aspects of the community. I am partially inspired by Ocarina, the beautiful iPhone application that imitates the ancient flute of that name. Ocarina allows the user to learn to play the instrument, record their own music, upload it to the Internet, and share their opus with other Ocarina musicians around the world, the network of people who happen to be playing and creating at the same moment. It’s a very powerful sharing experience. It would be terrific to duplicate this kind of real time experience for Scratch-ers.
I’m a bit fuzzy yet on the game itself, but it will probably involve a sort of “treasure” hunt (but a challenge more engaging to teens) involving clues, and requiring some sort of programming on the Scratch website to be uploaded to the user’s iPhone. (Or maybe we create a micro-Scratch programming environment for the iPhone itself.) It should be possible to play in constellations/teams or alone. Players might create their own avatars and motion characteristics to navigate in this macro-micro-world. It should have a low floor and a high ceiling for learning and encourage collaboration.
More to come soon...
My research at Harvard looks at scientific thinking patterns of scientists. I would like to incorporate the concepts and technologies we've learned in class to write a "design" project on how specific technologies like Scratch can be used by teachers and students to foster these previously identified thinking skills in the science classroom. Thus, what I am designing is an idea of how the nature of science and scientific thinking, contextualized in the 21st century, can be taught in the classroom using specific educational technologies like Scratch as detailed examples.
Specific thinking skills to be addressed include:
Systems thinking
Mechanistic/Engineering thinking
Quantitative thinking
Interdisciplinary thinking
Distributed thinking
I am not familiar with the plethora of (educational) technologies out there, so any suggestions of technologies (that would help students foster the above thinking skills) that you think I should investigate would be much appreciated!
As a final project, I would like to propose a new software tool for sharing pattern languages, which is collections of tacit knowledge for a certain domain. The case I will take up is "Learning Patterns: A Pattern Language for Creative Learners", which is a pattern language for learners who want to learn better without killing their creativity.
There are two main advantage of using patterns. One is that it can make beginners easier to solve problems in the most effective way, since the skill acquired by experts is described. Another is that it can provide common vocabulary on the way of solving problems, therefore it makes people to mention the problems and solutions. Thus, pattern languages can be considered as the method for supporting thinking, action, and collaboration.
While we have applied the idea and method of “pattern language” to learning design, it was originally proposed in architectural design and it has been applied and well known in the software design. However, I believe that the method of pattern language is good way to help the student to design their learning, because it focuses on providing a new view for the reader so that they can think. It is quite important that the method is not easy way to get the result without thinking by themselves. It is not, however, irresponsible way to leave all up to individual ability. It is considered as the way that tolerates individual ability while making a good use of abstract rules of past experience.
Please see the following paper for the details about Learning Patterns:
"Designing a Pattern Language for Creative Learners" (Takashi Iba)
(http://www.mit.edu/~iba/Creativity_LearningPatterns_revised.pdf)
Booklets of Learning Patterns, which consists of 40 patterns, have been handed out to more than 3 thousands students in Keio university, Japan. Also we provide a pattern everyday for 360 people on twitter so far. The problem is that there is no good tools to share Learning Patterns related to the learning process in school. So new tools are required for further effective use.
My final project is to create a new software tool for sharing Learning Patterns, where the tool provide the contents of Learning Patterns. The contents provided by the tool is based on the process of semester. The language for programming it may be Java.
For my final project, I want to reinterpret a project I've been working on since last spring given the new tools and contexts I've learned in this class. A history of this project is here: http://classroom.mit.edu/about/history/ The main idea was to design and build a temporary outdoor classroom that could be built, rebuilt, designed, and redesigned by the students who use it.
When I began this project, I knew nothing about Papert's constructionism; I was working from my own intuition and experience alone. I would like now to analyze and adjust my design from a constructionist viewpoint. Additionally, I want to incorporate other ideas we've talked about in this class, specifically those about supporting/creating communities of learners and the different roles of tangible and virtual learning.
My current thinking is to re-conceive the project as an open source hardware toolkit of architectural-scale building systems. Perhaps I will suggest it be used as a community showcase space for Michael Eisenberg's tangible "Mindstuff."
I am very interested in finding new collaborators on this project and this class seems like a great group to work with, so I invite you to join in! I have skills in the design of physical/visual things, but I would really appreciate working with someone who can contribute to ideas on curriculum and the realities of situating this in a school or other scenario.
(Oh, and I've been obsessing over better names so maybe let me know what you think of this: http://classroom.mit.edu/tingbing/)
As my final project I would like to conceptualize a system to create, edit and share short stop motion films.
The process of creating a stop motion film is, in my opinion, a very interesting activity from a pedagogic perspective. There are a lot of powerful ideas behind the frame by frame animation system; I am not talking only about timing, speed and motion but also simulation and fake amongst many other.
The experience of creating a stop motion animation is also very rich from the creative point of view. It usually happens that people, the first time they try, focus more on the constrains than in the possibilities. However, their fairly simple initial ideas rapidly evolve into more complex ones and eventually -- even within the first attempt -- they get to challenge the initial constrains.
Since the experience is rich enough as it is the idea will be to create a very simple plug'n'go technology -- using the computer build in web cam or any web cam you can plug to the computer -- to enable everyone with an idea -- or without it -- to get involved. The resulting video will be uploaded in to a shared web space so that people can easily share their creations, get inspiration and contact other people whose work they admire to share techniques and tips.
Some stopmotion examples:
http://eatpes.com/moth.html
http://vimeo.com/4347460
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY
My project would help students acquire a basic skill set for creating meaning in time-based media.
While it's become less difficult to create time-based pieces, many people are unaware of the rich language of TV and film that can be used to convey meaning. By providing examples from TV and film, students would gain exposure to such things as Mickey Mousing, cutting to continuity, the 4th wall, Kuleshov effect, etc. as well as an understanding of preferred reading and aberrant decoding.
The concepts would either be taught as individual exercises or incorporated within stories created in Scratch by the students. The end result would provide a tool kit of examples created by the student.
Final Project Proposal – Open Park Collaborative Workstation for Learning and Practicing News-reporting
Background & Goals
As part of my research for the Center for Future Civic Media at the Media Lab I am developing an online platform for collaborative news production for journalists, media professionals, citizen journalists and communities to cover the/their news called ‘Open Park’.
The platform is an open source news-reporting toolbox for collaborative synchronized coverage of hyperlocal, national and global news. It contains all the news-reporting tools required to produce original, high-quality, professional news-coverage, including techniques for using new social media such as Facebook and Twitter, and a Code of Ethics for Collaborative Journalism.
The OP platform can be accessed at http://openpark.media.mit.edu/
For my final project, I propose to develop, in collaboration with Kumiko, one feature of the Open Park platform, namely, its collaborative workstation which OP reporters and editors will use to work in real time on multiple-authored stories, collaborative photo essays, group Facebook reports, etc. This shared workspace will be developed as a Drupal Wiki.
As OP is a all-in-one toolbox for the practice of news-reporting, I am very interested in extending its applications to students and even schoolchildren for them to use and learn not only the basics of journalism, but also simply how to produce a good piece of writing or multimedia product [such as audio, video, etc].
Design & Development
The section for this shared space has just been very recently created in Open Park’s Workshop section at the following link: http://openpark.media.mit.edu/node/172
As you will see, it is so far a blank section ready to be developed and put to good use.
Field Tests
For the purpose of my research at the C4FCM, I am planning to test the OP’s news-reporting functionalities with journalism students from colleges and universities in Boston and around the country. I am currently building the teams of student OP reporters who will work together on selected beats and news stories, and interviewing potential participants. The idea is to have them cover one national issue or topic from their various locations around the country, and then putting together their news products into one finished collaborative piece that would show how this national large-scale issue is being experienced at the local levels and in various different states and cities, how the authorities are reacting, etc.
For the purpose of our final project assignment, I would like to essentially conduct a similar experiment in collaborative use of OP’s new media features but on a smaller scale, namely with a local school or college here in Boston. I would propose that the students or schoolchildren form teams of anything from two members to bigger groups and cover a story or event that matters to them in an original way using multimedia tools, and of course – their friends, partners, and anyone who is collaborating with them – and all this while maintaining standards of good writing, editing and other ethical standards.
Florence Gallez
In many of our readings and in our activities, we have explored how new technologies can engage children in creative learning experiences. Robots also have this powerful potential to invoke creative learning and produce lasting experiences. A vision in which many roboticists share is to create lifelong robot companions that can share experiences with a person, especially educational ones.
Reading with Rover is a program where volunteers take dogs into libraries and schools to have children read to them. http://www.readingwithrover.org/default.asp
In the "Reading with Rover" program, children with reading difficulties actually read stories to a dog and the dog loves to listen! A child that may be hesitant to read aloud to his peers is typically less stressed when reading to a dog and the dog never judges the child's reading ability.
I would like to see if Robots can also assist children in helping to develop their reading skills.
The scenario that I am imagining is for a child to read a simple short story to the robot, which is being teleoperated in a back-room. I would assess the child's experience with the robot. Hopefully, they will find that robots are fun companion to read to just like the dogs!
I would LOVE to have help in this project for anyone that is interested :) You do not have to techy!! Harvard kids are especially welcomed. I would love to get your perspective.
I have a few ideas, this is my current favorite:
As a community grows and becomes more diverse and pluralistic, it becomes more important to create spaces where sub-communities can gather based on shared interests. Such a space will allow participants to identify with one another, forge new connections, and find interesting projects. At the same time, it should expose community members to other "adjacent" groups with similar, but not identical interests.
I want to explore the creation of such a space on the Scratch website based on the principles discussed in this course.
I'm currently working on some data mining and visualizations of the activity on the Scratch website. For example, looking at how the activity (posting comments, creating projects...) on the website breaks down by age, looking at how frequently individual Scratch blocks are being used in projects, exploring how active the community is (how many people created x number of projects, posted x number of comments), and seeing how these metrics have progressed over time.
These statistics speak about the Scratch community as a whole, but I'm also interested in exploring Scratch activity at a more micro level - looking at statistics about each individual users. Additionally, I'm also interested to see how we can enhance a user's experience by providing them with these statistics and visualizations 'services'. For example, seeing how you've used blocks in all your projects may help you pinpoint new blocks that you have not explored previously. I'd like to explore what kinds of 'services' would be most useful for Scratchers and in what ways we can best integrate these with the Scratch website.