TKSham – More than just a Developer

Actually it is another FYP topic offered by some professors. (Well…combine Information Engineering into Education is a kind of good business…Parents would spend lots of money on developing their own children)

Well, here I am to offer some inspiration. Not only for myself or schoolmates, but also for a special team that I am going to work with. They found me for advice but hardly could I have time to write something about the project. Never mind, just let me write this to kill two birds with one stone.

Basically for every single project we have, I suggest to have an analysis on the target audience first.

Who are the target audience?

Primary? Secondary? or Kindergarten?

How about stakeholders?

I would say Teachers and Parents are stakeholders. (If your system is implemented to suit teachers’ need, it should be able to save them affords, maybe help marking paper, preparing materials for classes etc.)

Take a look of the following examples for kids:

http://www.kidthing.com/

http://www.friv.com/

http://www.kerpoof.com/

I would say that One uses the professionals as gimmick, providing a platform to learn and play, One for fun(basically fun of games),  One act as baby sitter (consuming kids’ time).

From my point of view, using Technology in Education can be classified into 4 different types.

1) A Learning Platform (for students, parents and teachers)

2) Game (having fun and learning from games, have question or quiz after quiz)

3) Daily basis, Short and Easy task (Practice makes Perfect.)

4) Tools (for effecitve learning, e.g. online dictionary, online slideshow for presentation etc.)

Different types has different characteristic.

For the Platform, be reminded that content provider is a great consider.
Are you going to buy the content? or preparing the content yourself? Preparing content would be very complicated as you have to dig into the syllabus of schools.

You may have a look of the open source that many are using now :
http://moodle.org/

http://www.hkedcity.net/

Teachers here act like an administer to manage the content for users.

You may also like to have more reference -

http://www.mynoteit.com/

http://www.schooltool.org/

http://www.engrade.com/

Maybe I should stop here, so much information/reference to read
I will continue the remaining type : Game, Daily basis and Tools in the following posts.