RESEARCHABLE QUESTION
How can we utilize interactive design to make digital learning environments more cohesive and user-centric? (February 14)
How can we rethink classroom experiences by optimizing technology to engage students and augment the learning process?(December 7)
This week I had hoped to jump into primary research, but something else happened. I would not say that mydirection has changed, for the project, but I believe I now have a much better way of framing my idea. Up until now I had been stuck in a “lecture” environment. Last week had some really fantastic revelations, but the best was right here in last week’s crit:
This idea of a cohesive educational experience has really been exciting for me. Rather than make my life harder, it actually solves a lot of my problems. The more research I have done, the more I find out that the things I want to do have been done a million, gazillion times. BlackBoard Learn+ is the closest thing to what I want to make. It currently has three free open source competitors in Moodle, Claroline, and ATutor, and while functional, none of these are without major issues. And these are just the Learning Management Systems.
Beyond these are some really fantastic sources for educational interactive simulations available for free online. I was really blown away by the University of Colorado’s PhET collection of free, quality material. Connexionshas free “modules” that go over all kinds of source materials in a text-book-like format. However, these digital resources all live separately, now.
My goal is to create a digital learning environment that unifies all of the disparate digital resources into a single, cohesive, simple product.
