Teaching assignments app

Most teachers (adjuncts) have very little time to be as creative as they would like to be in the classroom, and creativity is part of the main teaching strengths when teaching literature to non-literature majors. This mobile friendly app will be an exchange of technology-based assignments. It will also provide a very user-friendly platform to upload assignments, teaching methodology, etc. as most great ideas happen in the classroom and are later forgotten.

1. Personas:
   1. Floridian Paper – is a fourth year 31 year old English grad student at NYU, he has been exploited as a teaching assistant for the past three years and is ready to jump into a classroom all for himself. He has a tattoo on his forearm of a very obscure James quote, which reminds him of why he is doing what he is doing. He taught kindergarten in Maine right after college while he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. He overthinks the teaching he wants to do, preparing for an undergrad class three months in advance.
   2. Chelsea Piers – Is a 23 year old in her second year in her French Masters at Hunter College. She has been working as a restaurant manager in Queens, which is where she grew up. She is starting to teach next year and is very confused as to what is expected of her. She has been doing a lot of research online to figure out what it is she needs to do, reading sparknotes and finding a few discussion points she can use.
   3. Trillian Potter – is a 42 year old Comp Lit PhD student at the GC. She got married very young and her kids are now in college, so she decided to do what she had always wanted to do. She taught grade school when she was raising her kids, but now wants to go in deeper. She is about to start her second year and has been assigned to teach at BMCC. Her two boys make fun of her fear of technology. She is scared regarding the technology generation gap with her students.
   4. Adam Douglas – is a 29 year old Comp Lit PhD student at the GC. He moved to NY from Colombia where he used to teach college. He is in his third year and has already taught for one year at Baruch. He feels very overwhelmed by the teaching and the studying and feels he is designing things in such a way that he spends most of his time grading. He would like to change that but still give his best to his students.
   5. Use case scenario:

–        Adam Douglas and Trillian Potter meet at the comp lit lounge. They are both teaching “Things fall apart” in the respective colleges. They both disagree with how to enter the discussion, while Adam wants to bring in videos of Nigeria, Trillian wants to do a close text analysis. They see the strengths in each others views but have to rush out before they can actually sit and exchange methodologies. They decide to use the app. As they are both on their way to teach they upload the teaching approaches to the apps o the other can access it and take a peek.

1. the full version would be have both app and website versions. The app would have several options, a search window in order to find assignments according to a specific reading, author, or by school, or even by grade. the user would have to sign in and provide an .edu email address in order to do so. The app would have a 2.99 dollar cost and would also be subsidized by a few scholarly institutions (such as digital humanities things).
   1. It would also have a button for “quick upload”, this button can be pressed right after class to upload ideas and teaching methods which came up during the said class. It would have very specific blanks to fill in:

i.     Reading – text discussed

ii.     School – students level

iii.     Class size

iv.     Smart classroom yes or no

v.     Form of discussion: in small groups, in pairs, class activity.

vi.     Use of technology yes or no

vii.     Question based assignment yes or no

viii.     Production based assignment yes or no (by this I mean that the students need to ‘produce’ something at the end  of the class in regards to the text)

ix.     Homework based yes or no

x.     Goals:____

xi.     Difficulties:____

xii.     Innovativeness in five words

xiii.     Hashtags

xiv.     Category

1. This would all be in a user friendly setup that would take less than three minutes to fill out.
2. The app would have several ways of ‘accessing’. By buying it for 2.99 you have full access. A free version would let you access just two assignments per reading. A free version with exchange feature would allow you to access as many assignments as you upload. (since the uploading process does require the assignments to be real, it would not be a problem)
3. The website would be a little more complete, with assignments divided by specific categories, more advanced search engines, links, and advertisements.
4. This would take about 200 hours. I need to know how to develop an app, how to design it, monetize it, upload it. how to keep it up. I need a lot of skills.
5. The strip down version is just a User-friendly website into which teachers can type in their assignments to look at them at a later date or to exchange them. (I have no idea what tools to use for this) You can ‘befriend’ other teachers who have teaching methodologies you are interested in. the way of uploading the assignments would be based on five questions:
   1. Text
   2. Group size
   3. Technology yes or no
   4. Goal
   5. Description
   6.  I need to learn everything. I don’t even know what I would need to do this. I don’t think a wordpress would work, but who knows? If it is wordpress then tinkering with it more. 200 hours.

 

 

Wiki-Spanish

Wikipedia is the largest Encyclopedia and yet there is a huge disadvantage and imbalance between the wikipedias in different languages. Wiki in Spanish is very poor, it has very few cited works and is quite unserious, although students keep using it as a primary source of information. Thru awareness, workshops and events with universities in Mexico, we will promote a change in the Spanish Wikipedia.

1. Personas:
   1. Luis – Is a full professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana. He teaches in the Latin-American Literature department teaching research. He is also part of the Library. One of his biggest problems with his students is that they don’t believe research is necessary, or useful, in the way that he thinks of it, and that they use Wikipedia as a primary source when he knows it is not useful in that way.
   2. Dany – works in the communication department at the Universidad Iberoamericana. He is the coordinator of the largest undergrad group and also teaches radio. He is a bit anachronological since he just acquired a smart phone a year ago, but he knows how important technology is for his students.
   3. Triny – is a second year communications undergrad at the Universidad iberoamericana. She failed a class last semester because most of her research was done online and she still does not see why her teacher didn’t think it was appropriate.
   4. Jesus – is a third year undergrad in Media design at the Universidad Iberoamericana. His writing skills are terrible, but he is an ace where technology is involved.
   5. Luis gives his students the assignment of looking up an article in Wikipedia which is not well researched and asks them to edit it by going to the library and researching in books. Jesus gives them a workshop on how to do the editing beforehand. Dany sees how cool this is and wants to implement a whole wiki editing program.
   6. Full version: wiki editing workshops as a requirement in all programs at the Universidad Iberoamericana. It would later spread to other universities, public and private. There would be massive wiki editing events all over the country and would later spread to the rest of Latin America. Wiki in Spanish would be as good as it is in English.
   7. 50 hours. I need to get a handle on more wiki editing skills. Contact people, organize workshops. Implore.
   8. Stripped sown version: organize a few workshops at the said university (my alma mater) with professors and then with students. Organize at día ibero (the public day of the university) a few editing sessions with specific focus (feminist session, music session, etc). Assess and re-do. Propose more workshops and more editing assignments to professors.
   9. 50 hours. Bit more wiki skills