A secret to success in this environment is the creation and distribution of 'Design Briefs'. Students get bored unless they have a purpose - surprise, they actually love structure! Provide design briefs that allow them to be creative and innovative.
The partners in our project will use a Wiki to collaborate around a variety of possible tasks. Once we agree on the components of the task we will develop design or project briefs which can then be posted to the students (the pic is of Bryce, Mike and I with Claudia Linden next to the Design Brief Pods.)
We can level those tasks into easy, medium or difficult etc Students can then elect to do one or several tasks, by themselves or with others, with students from their schools or work with mixed groups from our community.
Chris Fesuras from Kyoto and I have been thinking of around the idea of shopping centres. This is a pic of what Meg from MLC has done with a brief on creating the actual mall. But what other briefs can we ask for around this? Can kids design there own gear? Should they sell it or share it? How can they display it? Should shops have themes? What would be the curriculum links?
Whilst we are at beginning stages I am posting this in the hope that it sparks thoughts and ideas in your head. We would appreciate you thoughts and ideas. Our next step would be to create those design briefs for each part or the entire project.
Here are Chris's great ideas so far....
The Shopping Mall
1. Domestic Brands - While the world is globalized,
and all of us have the same fashion brands available to us, I think
many students don't know the nationality of the brands they wear. We can create a couple of window arrangements that homage famous Japanese
brands, and will leave the rest of the space for the students to
design. We will encourage the students to pay homage to the brands but create their own work. In this way we will be compliant with the requirements set down by Linden Labs.
I really want the kids to think about what makes their style
unique, and where some of these designers come from. For example, I
used a Japanese jeans company called Evisu, and the athletic wear
companies Asics and Mizuno. The Modesto kids could make a homage to Ralph Lauren or
Nike stuff. Australian kids could make a homage to Billabong, Rip Curl, etc.
2. Original Brands - The most obvious option is for the students to make brands of their own, or some generic style of clothing that mimics the latest fads in each respective country (though some of the styles here are a bit disturbing).
3. Traditional Wear - This is mainly for the Japan area, but I think America and Australia could do something similar despite being New World countries. The KG students will be making kimonos and yukatas, and I will probably house those items in a different shop with other traditional accessories available. You could combine some sort of historical project with this and kill two birds with one stone.
4. Music - Though we can't sell songs, we may be able to find a way to stream music to the island and set up small music shops that display the top artists in each country with samples of their music. Plus, they could design posters of the pop artists. This would be fun for the kids to do, though I will have the SL music player turned off.
5. Electronics - On the PRX Island, we've build apartments (flats) for the kids to use. Maybe we could set up electronics shops to sell computers, video game consoles, etc. that kids use just for decoration.
6. Texture Sharing - I designated a large area on one of our islands for a texture "forest" with free texture dispensers that Stan picked-up from the main grid way back when. We have plenty of space for them now, but I need some ideas as far as how to organize them so that it's easy to locate a texture you are looking for.
Anyhow, as much as pop culture irks me these days, the kids are really interested in this stuff, and I thought it would be cool to keep our fashion areas domestic in terms of style and brand. The Kyoto kids will want Nike or Billabong apparel, but I don't want our shopping area to be filled with foreign brands as the idea of the project is to learn more about each other's cultures and where things come from. Some of the students here think everything comes from England or the US including some of the more popular Japanese brands.
I think the music idea is really good, but so far I haven't heard of a music player that will play a user's mp3 files, only internet radio stations. Maybe we can figure something out for this because there are many artists in Japan and Australia who are never heard in the States and it would be fun to share that with everyone. Overall, this type of thinking will make the students decide exactly what pop culture icons represent their generation the most, and I like the idea of them arguing or voting over who should be included on the island. SL is currently undergoing some maintenance, but I will send pics of the shopping mall I am building once it's back online again.
Yes we do have so copyright issues to sort but wow are there some great ideas and potential for learning. Building, scripting researching, collaborating, international understanding, design... Our task is to give it some structure and evaluate how we can achieve rigorous learning outcomes for our students.
Comments