Month: February 2015

Project Concepts, Teamwork & Presentation Skills

Announcements

  • Next week, March 5, you’ll present your initial project concepts with your team.
  • Thurs, March 12, with your group, you’ll present your project concepts to our partner representatives from Bonner, Mediatech, the Ewing Public Library and MakerJawn
  • Midterm Papers are due Thurs, March 26
  • Group Design Briefs are due Thurs, March 26

Midterm Papers

Let’s talk about your midterm papers for a few minutes:

What’s the subject?

Starting with bare walls, design a Youth Center at a fictitious library.

When’s it due?

Thursday, March 26, right after Spring Break.

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a few minutes to share some of your Design Notebooks from last week.

Finalize Teams

Let’s continue our discussion about project ideas and finalize our teams.

Teamwork

  • Once you have formed your groups, take a few minutes to review the 10 Characteristics of Successful Teams, and the Design Notebook part of next week’s assignment below.
  • Make sure you all understand what needs to be done, who will do what, and how you will work together to complete the assignment. Understand and anticipate some of the natural advantages and challenges that come with team projects.
  • Watch Drew Davidson’s YouTube talk on ingredients of teams  (on YouTube); also posted on the class G+ site in case you feel like leaving a comment.

Project Concepts

Working our way around the room, each group will present a 2 minute “elevator pitch” for their project concepts.

Presentation Skills

Let’s discuss some basic presentation skills in preparation for next week.

Assignment

Reading

In preparation for your mid-term papers, read the following:

Design Notebook

  1. Create a new page in your Design Notebook and title it with your team’s name (e.g. “The 3Dster’s” or whatever the focus of your project is) and today’s date. List the members of your team, including what role each will play on the team (e.g. designer, programmer, videographer, writer, researcher, content developer, etc), and include a one paragraph description of your team’s project concept.
  2. Create another page in your Design Notebook and title it with your team’s name, your role (e.g.“The 3Dster’s – Curriculum Designer”) and today’s date. Provide a one-paragraph description of what your role will be on your team.
  3. Next week, each team will present their Design Notebooks together as one. Combine all of your slides into one “team” presentation, nominate one team “spokesperson” to present slide 1, and then cycle through the team, with each team member presenting their own ‘role’ slide.
  4. Practice your Project Concept presentation together as a team before class next week!

*Assignments are due before class begins on Thursdays. Be prepared to present your work in class for discussion.

Initial Project Ideas

Announcements

  • Tim Wisniewski, Chief Data Officer of the City of Philadelphia speaking at this week’s Brown Bag Lunch, Friday 12:30-1:30
  • Next week you’ll present your initial Project Ideas with your team
  • Also need to start thinking about your Mid-term papers, more on this next week

Design Notebooks

Let’s work our way around the room and talk about your ideas for projects.

Project Ideas

  • Projects to facilitate consuming media
  • Projects to facilitate creating new media
  • Projects that do both

Partner Organizations

  • Ewing Branch of the Mercer County Public Library
    • Needs help engaging teens and young adults in the Teen Center
      • Create a YouTube Channel and videos to promote the Summer Reading Program
      • Prototype a 3D printing workshop session
      • Prototype a workshop where kids can create vinyl stickers of their favorite characters from books in the library
      • Create a Social App for Middle Schoolers to find volunteer High Schoolers to help them with their homework
      • Create a Video Game to teach kids/teens how to use the library’s resources
      • Create a Scavenger Hunt App that promotes a new group of books each month – what about badges?
      • How about a fully immersive video of some aspect of the history of the community the library serves on Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard?
  • The Free Library of Philadelphia
    • Any new workshop ideas for Brandon? Prototype a new session or curriculum for him to try out in the branches.
  • MediaTech & The Free Library of Flemington
    • How could you improve the experience at MediaTech?

More Ideas

Idea List Generated in Class

Here’s the list of ideas from the Design Notebooks this week.

Break

Working as a Team

Let’s go around the room and identify what we think are characteristics of a good team. I’ll create a Google doc to take notes.

Now let’s compare our list with the 10 Characteristics of Successful Teams.

Break Up Into Teams

  1. First of all, let’s split up by class section.
  2. Now, based on whether you’d like to develop a new approach to consuming media and information, or creating new forms of media/information, let’s split each class section into two groups.
  3. From there, based on your project ideas, let’s divide up further as necessary. We want to end up with 3 or 4 teams per class section.
  4. When dividing up into teams, remember that successful teams are diverse – you should have a range of skill sets represented on your team.

Assignment

Reading

Review Project Ideas

Design Notebook

  1. Create a new page in your Design Notebook and title it “Teamwork” and today’s date.
  2. In your own words, define what “teamwork” means to you.
  3. Create another page in your Design Notebook and title it “Teammate”.
  4. Make a list of characteristics you would expect from a good teammate. Write a paragraph about how you can best contribute as a teammate on a project in this class.

*Assignments are due before class begins on Thursdays. Be prepared to present your work in class for discussion.

Possible Futures

Announcements

  • This week’s guest speaker is Brandon Klevence from Maker Jawn
  • Next week, Feb 19 we will brainstorm project ideas and form groups for your projects – Professor Buckleitner will be traveling
  • Tim Wisniewski, Chief Data Officer, The City of Philadelphia – Brown Bag Lunch Feb 20, 12:30-1:30 & 3:00-4:00 @ IMM
  • Feb 26 your group will formally present your project concept
  • Sat, March 21 – NJ Maker Day

Design Notebook Discussion

First, let’s give a few of you an opportunity to present your Design Notebook entries for last week.

Next, let’s go around the room, sharing your ethnographies:

  • Can we build a set of common patron types?
  • Who did we expect to see but did not?
  • Why not?

How about library resources you all identified?

  • Can we create a master list of common (and not-so-common) library resources?
  • Were there resources NOT there that you expected would be?
  • How do you explain their absence?

Break

Take 5 to stretch our legs and reflect on what we’ve worked on so far today.

Guest Speaker

Brandon Klevence – Maker Jawn Initiative of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Here is a video of Brandon’s talk.

Brandon is Lead Mentor and Prototyper at the Free Library of Philadelphia with a background in Industrial Design, Interactive Installations and the Built Environment. He helped pilot maker programming at the Free Library in 2013 working within a variety of different spaces and contexts. Currently, he acts as a resource to library staff, artists and mentors to develop and implement new projects and programing. This is done through the Maker Jawn Initiative, a working group at the Free Library which he has helped form, grow and maintain.

Assignment

Background Research

  1. Review your Design Notebook, notes on your library visits, patron ethnographies and resource inventories, as well as the presentations about Mediatech, the Free Libraries of Trenton and Flemington, and Marker Jawn at the Free Library of Philadelphia.
  2. Start thinking about final project ideas.
  3. Think about the difference between new ways of accessing information at the library vs. libraries as places to create. Will your project be about media consumption, media creation, or both?
  4. Jot down a few keywords, make a napkin sketch or two, get something representative of your ideas on paper.
  5. Come to class next week prepared to share your project ideas. We’ll sort through all your ideas and organize into project teams.

Design Notebook

  1. Create a new page in your Design Notebook and title it “Project Ideas” and today’s date. Make a list of your ideas, representing them in words, images, sound and/or video.
  2. Create another page in your Design Notebook and title it “Projects In the Wild” and today’s date. Search the web for existing projects similar to yours that have been tried elsewhere. How successful have they been? How is your idea similar? Based on the experiences of those projects, what would you do differently?

*Assignments are due before class begins on Thursdays. Be prepared to present your work in class for discussion.

What is a Library?

Announcements

  • This week’s guest speaker is Dr. Shawn Armington, Director, the Free Public Library of Flemington
  • Feb 12, next week’s scheduled speaker is Brandon Klevence from the Maker Jawn Initiative of the Free Library of Philadelphia
  • The week of Feb 19 we will brainstorm project ideas and form groups for your projects.
  • Feb 26 your group will formally present your project concept

Guest Speaker

Dr. Shawn Armington, Director, the Free Public Library of Flemington

Break

Take 5 to stretch our legs and reflect on what we’ve heard so far today.

Design Notebook Discussion

Let’s take a few minutes to share and  discuss some of your design notebook entries from last week.

Workshop

Ethnography 101

What is ethnography? In groups of 3, look around the room. Based on the evidence around the room, characterize the people who have used this room in the days and weeks before us.

Look up Clifford Geertz. What did he mean by “thick description?”

Part of this week’s homework will be to visit your local public library and use your powers of observation to do two things:

1. Inventory the Resources of the Library

What sorts of things would you expect a modern library to have available for its patrons? Make a checklist of resources, mapping each to the type of patron would likely use it. What resources are for librarians to use?

2. Observe and Record Patron Count & Characteristics

What types of information would we want to capture about our library’s patrons to get a sense of the library’s community? Age, education level, ethnicity, interests, are they part of a group? What kind of group (family, friends, class, club, etc)?

Assignment

Next Week’s Guest Speaker

Please review the MakerJawn Initiative website and come prepared with questions for next week’s speaker.

Background Research

  1. Read Library as Infrastructure in Places Journal
  2. Visit your local library (see below for some suggestions).
    • Using the checklist we constructed in class, make an inventory of what the library has to offer its patrons (and librarians. Speak with the librarian to find out what’s most popular among patrons. What primary issues do the librarians face?
    • Stake out a strategic spot, make a note of the library, it’s location, the time and a brief description of your stakeout spot. Observe the patrons as they come and go, keeping a tally of the number of patrons you see, as well as the characteristics of each as we discussed in class.

Design Notebook

  1. Create a new page in your Design Notebook and title it “Library Visit” and today’s date. Summarize your findings from your visit and include links to your inventory and patron observations.
  2. Create another page in your Design Notebook and title it “Library as Infrastructure” and today’s date. Building on the discussion last week about Mediatech in Flemington, discuss the role you feel the library you visited plays in its community. To what degree is your library part of its community’s infrastructure as outlined in the Library as Infrastructure article?

*Assignments are due before class begins on Thursdays. Be prepared to present your work in class for discussion.

Suggested Libraries to Visit