Gentech IA
Criterion G
Currently for the Chinese class at Capital High School, there is a communication problem between the students and teachers. This class has a 15 people in the class. The problem is that students are getting confused about what the homework is in the class, and are not able to contact the teacher to ask questions. This means that most of the students are not able to do the homework or are doing the homework wrong. This class needs to be more organized for the students to get their work done.
Criterion H
Two Possible solutions for solving the problem expressed in criterion “G” are creating a blog, or creating a website. The blog will be posting upcoming events and the homework. The teacher will update the blog daily, and the students can always post questions on the blog if any questions are needed to answer. A blog is good because, the students can subscribe to the blog and get a notice on their email that something has been posted. Also, all the students in Chinese class have access to a computer with Internet. The disadvantages to a blog are that if the teacher forgets to update the blog, then the students will not know what the homework is. Another disadvantage is that if the Internet is not working, there is no way in communicating to the teacher. The advantages to a website is that it can be accessed anywhere with a computer and Internet, or a phone. You can also print out the homework if needed, so you do not need your computer the whole time. Another advantage is that you can put a blog onto the website. A disadvantage for a website is that if the student or teacher cannot access the internet, then the blog either cannot be updated or the student cannot get their homework. A poll to the end users was done, and 9/14 voted for blog and 5 voted for website. So I will combine the two solutions and make a website and a blog.
Criterion I
The solution I chose was to make a blog and a website. By posting a blog on the website, the two solutions that were chosen by the end-users have been answered.
The schedule in creating a blog and website was fairly easy. The only hard part was starting it out in the beginning and creating a sidebar on the website. I was able to work on in during class and finished in no time.
Building the website started out with starting a Google Site. I made four Google Sites until I found one that I liked. I choose a basic template, and started to edit the content. Then I moved on to changing the logo. At first, it was an “OSD Students” logo, it was fitting for the website, but there could be better. So the new logo for the website is zhongwen, the characters meaning Chinese.
The rest of the time, I had to make a blog for the class. This was really hard because I did not know what blog to use. I asked the teachers and got the answers. Blogger, WordPress, and Edublogs. But because most of our districts blog uses WordPress, I used that. I then set up a WordPress account and started the blog. I started with the previous homework assignments, and then updated the rest accordingly to the upcoming events.
There were many tools that I used to create the website and blog. I used Google sites to finish up the website, and WordPress for the blog. The school’s computer was also used, an iMac, which consisted of a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, and a 1TB, 7200-rpm Serial ATA hard drive.
The collection of data came from Skyward. All the previous assignments were posted on Skyward. For the more recent homework assignments and activities, the teacher told me what the upcoming events and homework were.
Criterion J
The first person that tested my website and blog was an outside source, Daniel Yang. He looked at my website and told me that it was unorganized. This was when I did not make my final site yet. After his opinion, I made a new site that was a little more organized. He said the blog was fine, and easy to follow. So I left the categories and tags the same for the blog, and continued adding post for homework assignments.
Another tester was Vivek Sandhinti, a fellow classmate in Gentech. He said my site needed a sidebar. Taking his advice, I made a sidebar for this site. It helped because my site was now a bit more organized, and not just a scattered front page. Vivek also said that it would be a lot more beneficial to him if all his homework were posted online. Because not only can he access whenever he want, his parents can also remind him.
The end tester was Luke Olson, he is qualified because he is currently a student enrolling in the Chinese class and knows that it is really hard to figure out the homework assignments in Chinese class because of the lack of communication between student and teacher. He says that the blog was very easy to navigate to find his homework because of the categories and tags. He also said that he could do his homework now because he knows what it is. He believes that the blog and website will help him keep up in the fast pace class of Chinese. Luke also mentioned some refinements that could be made. He said the wording of some of the posts were a little off. Hearing this, I reworded the posts and some of the content in the website to better fit the end-users.
Criterion K
The purpose of this project is to make communication between the students and the teacher of Capital High School’s Chinese class. This is significant because the students in Chinese will now be able to keep on, and not have misunderstandings about the homework. So the website and blogs will help with the students doing their homework and resulting in better grades.
A social impact about this project is that the teacher also teachers other classes outside of Chinese. So the teacher can make other blogs or join the classes together. She can also suggest to other teachers a great way to stay in touch with their students, resulting in better communication between student and teacher.
