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University of Nebraska–Lincoln

CSE Day

What is the Design Contest?

CSE Day: Design Competition

The Next Generation iPhone and Applications for Education

Overview

Imagine walking into your classroom and a sign is posted that reads: “New iPhone application ready for download” instead of “NO CELL PHONES ALLOWED.”  Imagine being encouraged to text and surf and “Facebook” or “MySpace” during your English or Math classes. 
With technology becoming more and more integrated into our daily lives and the lives of everyone around us, we’d like to explore the productive uses of one such technology tool.  The theme of this year’s design contest is “The Next Generation iPhone and application for Education.”  Design teams are to use technologies that will exist OR should exist in the near future to enhance education through iPhones and their applications.  How can we use these to help in the classroom and at home to improve the educational experience?
Your design should assume only physical restrictions based on the human body.  Any technologies that you can think of can and should be included without regard to cost. Assume that the basic infrastructure components such as broadband wireless networking, telecommunication and satellite equipment are readily available.

Here are a few criteria that you should consider during the design process:

  • Determine the targeted user (i.e. teachers, students (elementary, high school, etc.), parents)
  • Take into account the social, psychological, and behavioral impact of the design
  • Consider how the Quality of Learning (QoL) is impacted
  • Other technological infrastructure that must be in place for interaction (school, home, other students)
  • Consider how this design will help the disabled student
  • How will these interface with other technology in the classroom

The competition is intended to promote teamwork. Designs will be judged partially on a team’s ability to work together. The rest of the design criteria include:

  • Design functionality
  • Creativity
  • Originality
  • Design rationales (why you chose each component)
  • Presentation and organization of the final design
  • Motivation
  • Background research (existing solutions to address the previously mentioned design criteria)

Presentation Guidelines

We will provide the following items for each team to support the presentation:

  1. One Poster board 36” (h) x 48” (w)
  2. One Easel
  3. One PC with one monitor running Windows XP or 2000 with Microsoft Office Suite

Our judges will visit your area and spend no more than 15 minutes evaluating your design. Thus, you should plan to efficiently present your work within this time period. Consult with your mentor to develop a plan to effectively and convincingly present and discuss your work. We strongly suggest that you use multimedia presentations (e.g. PowerPoint or/and video) for this part.

Tips

You may want to look at some of the following Web sites to get preliminary ideas of the technologies that are CURENTLY available.

  • http://www.getjar.com/software/Apple/iPhone/Applications/Education
  • http://www.changinged.com/2008/07/10/spotlight-iphoneitouch-applications-for-education/
  • http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/02/iphoneitouch_as_classroom_tool.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

You may also want to Google “iPhone” and “educational applications for iPhone” for relevant articles as well.

Rules

Coach:

  1. Acts as a mentor to the team, not a technical design resource. That is, the faculty mentor provides guidance and advice, but does not materially participate in the design and implementation of the project.
  2. Certifies that the team members were the ones who actually designed the project and prepared the report, and that no other persons were involved in any aspect of the work.
  3. Accompanies the team to UNL on April 24th.

Team Members:

  1. Will submit only materials that are originally authored, or for which you have the owner's implicit or explicit permission to generally distribute to others and you agree to identify those components authored by others.
  2. Understand that if chosen as the top winners, the team may have the opportunity to participate in a presentation during the award ceremony.
  3. Understand that you extend permission to use your name, likeness, high school affiliation and status, in CSE and UNL sponsor promotional material that mentions CSE Day.