Sojourner Middle School Research Wizard

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Sojourner Middle School Research Wizard

• Anna Welch
• James Barkley
• Susan Bogner

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What is the Project?

• On-line research tutorial
• Targeted for middle school students
• Most of content bilingual (English/Spanish)
• Main topics
• Starting Your Project
• Links by Topic
• Academic References
• Understanding Your Computer
• Local Resources
• Putting it Together

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Who is Anna Welch?

• Anna Banana
• Major(s)
• Spanish literature, News/Editing and TAM
• Graduation Date December, 2001
• Future Plans Law school, September 2002
• Contributions
• Content (research, compilation, translation)
• Design (graphics, layout)

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Who is James Barkley?

• Jimbo
• Major
• Computer Science
• Graduation Date May, 2002
• Future Plans Grad school? Career? Whatever
• Contributions
• Webmaster (HTML, JavaScript)
• Project Site Manager
• Design (graphics, layout)

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Who is Susan Bogner?

• Sea Cow
• Major(s)
• Spanish literature, Secondary education, and TAM
• Graduation Date December, 2001
• Future Plans Student teaching grad
  school?!!
• Contributions
• Content (research, compilation, translation)
• Design (graphics, layout)

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Sojourner Middle School

• A new charter school.
• Sojourner lacks the resources to maintain a full
  library.
• Sojourner integrates technology in the classroom.
• As a project-based school, they wanted an on-line
  research tutorial.

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How was Sojourner involved?

• Met with school director to gauge needs and
  understand school philosophy.
• Communicated with school director throughout
  project.
• Met with students and teachers
• Usability testing
• Content evaluation
• Overall feedback

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What is task-centered design?

• Task-centered design
• Create tasks based on real life scenarios
• Storyboard the tasks
• Develop prototypes
• Decide on final prototype
• Client evaluation using tasks and iteration

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Sample Tasks

• Kelly, a 6th grader, just finished her research
  paper on African music. She has over six sources
  but doesnt know how to cite her work.
• Anna, an 8th grader, doesnt have an Encyclopedia
  at home and needs to do some research for her
  social studies class.

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Our Inspiration?

• Research
• School websites (I.e. Baseline Middle School)
• Childrens search engines (I.e. Yahooligans!)
• Internet tutorials
• Safe and ethical on-line behavior
• Reliable reference material
• Kid-friendly design
• Kept track of useful sites via project site

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Our Prototype?

• Kid-friendly design
• Lots of fun graphics and colors
• Chalkboard maintains school theme
• Very simple navigation
• Graphic representations
• Rollover images
• Consistency
• Page Headers

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Usability testing?

• Reflect on design problems and inconsistencies
• Home page
• Rollovers given embossed shadows
• Rollovers needed explanation text
• Internal pages
• Decided to use text-rollovers in place of
  graphics on navigation bar
• Redesigned pop-up windows for links outside our
  site
• Navigation
• Clear consistency in page headers with both
  graphics and text

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Final Result

• TOUCHDOWN!

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No really, Final Results

• English and Spanish versions
• Clean page layout with consistent navigation
• Extremely useful collection of resources for kids

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