Final Reflection

At the beginning of the semester, we were all focused on learning JavaScript on our own as a means to develop the apps we chose to prototype as the semester went on. While each of us is still interested in being better programmers, we felt that our inexperience with javascript was precluding us from doing the other things that we were passionate about, namely education and design. As soon as we put the idea of needing code behind us, we were able to examine these topics more thoroughly. By doing this, we were given the freedom to explore the literature around student motivation and actually try to incorporate what we found into our our designs. We made a lot of significant design decisions that we may have ignored if we had focused on coding. In the beginning stages of developing this prototype, we weren’t sure about giving points or badges for skills learned, but the research showed that this wasn’t a good idea.  

In addition, we also were able to think about the situation in schools and why a piece of technology made specifically for the classroom may not be the best approach to solving problems. This is due namely to the lack of proper integration we saw in the classroom and the amount of bureaucracy involved in getting any technology adopted. Teachers needed someone to go in and explain how to turn on the device, how to make lesson plans involving it, etc. This in and of itself isn’t really taking full advantage of the wonderful things these devices can do. Overall, we found that we weren’t particularly driven to try to make something for the classroom.

For many of us, this was the first really research driven designing we’ve done. We noticed that we have definitely grown as designers in terms of processing information and deciding how to use it. This is an imperative skill for any engineer or designer and we’re proud of the way we were able to incorporate what we learned into our final design. Our coding may not be our strongest front, but we’ve certainly learned about many of the difficulties surrounding making apps. As a whole, we would have appreciated a more balanced team formation. Both of the Javascript teaching assistants were placed in the same group making our group start off far behind and with far fewer resources at our disposal. Overall, we learned a lot about design, education, and the introduction of new technology to the educational world.