What is topico

Topico is an online dictionary for the individual classes to use. It is aimed for the pupils in a sixth grade English class, designed on the basis of observations and empirical data that we have gathered and analyzed. It is used to store verbal descriptions of relevant words and topics learned in class in audio files. This project fits in the category of EduTech, which covers the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources

Brief demo

How it works

The game works as following. Four pupils sit around the device. Then they push the main button on the top of the device, which makes four different words appear, where they only can see one word each. These are the main words. They all have three corresponding help words, which is related to the meaning of the main word. Then they push the button again, and the device will choose one of those four words. The pupil that the word is displayed for, will be instructed to explain that. When they press the button again, there will appear a help word, connected to the chosen word, on the three other screens.

Help words will appear one at a time, to secure that they can discuss and connect it to the chosen word. After this is done, they can press the button again, to record the explanation of the word. When this is done, the explanation is stored on the website, where they can find it connected to the chosen word. From the teacher’s perspective, we learned that she has had some quite struggling experiences with new technology, so we have made our website it in a way, where she only redefines the main words and help words.

Interaction with four students

Device / Cloud model

Scenario interaction

Concept

It is the pupils themselves, who records these audio files. The game is suppose to encourage the pupils, to collaborate with their classmates, to make the most substantial description of every word, that they receive. The goal for this game, is not to make a flawless sentence, without any grammatical mistakes. It is suppose to make you practice your verbal skills, to gain experience in explaining specific things. It is equal to what is expected of you in the demands from the ministry in Denmark. From our collection of empirical data, we have learned that they use their native language more frequently, when discussing the meaning of words.

Empirical data

From the observations we made visiting an Elementary school, sixth grade english class, we got different views on the pupils and their work methods. We wrote notes about how they acted and used the English language compared to the Danish. We also saw, how they cooperated with each other and how they helped each other. Furthermore, we saw how the the pupil’s relation with the teacher was like. Information was gained with the methods from Ethnographic field methods, Guiding Principles of Ethnography(NaturalSettings). We also had small conversations and semi-structured interviews with the teacher and pupils which gave an insight in their daily work and activities.

Findings

Topico has been designed with the pupils learning abilities in mind. As a concept and product, the idea has essentially been to make a product that can aid learning among elementary school pupils. Putting this pursuit to fruition has taken then form as device and webapp solution, where both the relation between the pupils and teacher has been a major focus. From the field studies, several challenges raised to the surface in terms of how to teaching could be enhanced. One of these challenges was how some pupils was left of the discussions and dialogs in English class, and the dynamics of words exchange were mainly constituent of a few active pupils and the teacher.

Furthermore, the same issues were visible during group work, as the same active pupils would conduct the dialogs, and thus exclude the less active students.

This is where Topico fills in the blanks, enabling and encouraging an active learning space for all types of pupils, focusing on language exchange. Furthermore, the teacher can also assist more pupils at the same time as he/she can correct and set the degree of difficulty of the words used in each game round.

Whether this smart connected learning tool has a place in the classrooms of today remains to see, this will be up to further investigation and testing to clarify, however the analysis of the demand of such a tool is without doubt existent.

Application goal

The application will enable the user to connect with other users to engagein various social activities together. The goal of the application is to help the users connect with likeminded users in activities of their choosing, whether it would be going to a bar, attend a sports game, or watch a movie. A central feature is the ability to connect users that don’t know each other prior to the social activity, matching them based on location and a common interest.

We propose that users can ’host’ events, and then other users in the immediate area can ’sign up’ for events if they feel like meeting new people, and the proposed event interests them. After attendig an event or hosting it, the participants of the event will be displayed as acquaintance in the Connections room, where each acquaintance is presented as to which common event you last attended.

Target user

The target user are younger people that are new in a city, either they are there tostay or just on vacation - and want to meet up with other people. Moreover, the target group does notexclude younger people moving from other countries. Young people, are more likely to travel alone to anew city, as they are more adventurous and often don’t have commitments back home, such as family and career compared to middleage people.

Mobile features

We envisioned that all nearby available events should appear on the map, relative to the users position. Hence, location service provieded by the Android Map API is central. Furthermore, the possibility to follow up on event and people with common interest, the ability to chat and recieve notifications is vital.

Personal profile page (Frame.1)

Chat window (Frame.2)

Creating event (Frame.3)

Event appears on map (Frame.4)

Paper mock-ups

Our first pair of paper mock-up ('Personal profile page & Chat Window'), is going through the interaction where a danish girl for Aarhus, Anna, comes back to her hometown, and gets in contact with a former friend, Mike. In the first frame [Frame 1], Anna has an overview of her profile, as well as the last people she has been in contact with. She presses on Mike as he is the only one also located in Aarhus. The second frame [Frame 2], show a small profile section in the top covering general info about mike. Below that we can see the recent messages they have exchanged. Furthermore, it depicts Anna having sent a message asking Mike out for coffee the next day, and Mike have just become active, currently typing a response to Anna.

In our second mock-up [Frame 3], a man named Chris have just moved to Copenhagen from Stockholm, and have just set his profile up with the app. Being new in town he want to socialize and invite some people out on dinner. Hence, he creates an event that will be displayed on the map in the Happenings section of the app, that people in the nearby location can see and join. He has some options to specify the event, What is the event, For whom, At what time and the following location of the event. Completing the post he press the "Post" button. Following that action, the app gives him an alert dialogue, informing him that his post was successfully uploaded (This Frame is not included). He presses the "Ok" button on the alert dialogue and is the redirected to "Happenings" section of our app [Frame 4], where the map shows him that location of the event as well as a description of the event.

Personal profile page

Chat window

Creating event

Event appears on map

Fragments HiFi prototype

The design from the paper mock-ups where revised and put throught different types of analysis such as Heuristic Evaluation and Expert Review Analysis. These methods eventually crafted the HiFi prototype, AdobeXD that is a simple but detailed visualisation of what design we strived to accomplish with the Cleaver application. For further interest, click the link in the header above to check out the prototype. FYI: the name Cleaver has its origins from a typo, were the actual name should have been Clever.