Storyboard and Second Meeting

Our group met on October 7 to flesh out some details for a storyboard in preparation for our second meeting with Madlyn and Heather. I was unfortunately sick that evening, so my group members filled me in the following Monday night after class. The story board looks good, and I think there are some really good ideas in it. I especially like one idea there that has the children act as an assistant curator and help classify new arrivals to the museum. What a great authentic activity!

We met with our clients on Oct. 21 to discuss our storyboard and further refine our ideas. It was a really productive meeting. They liked the storyboard but wanted to change some of the things around. Specifically, they wanted the curator activity to be earlier in the site, almost as an introduction to the things we will be doing there. I think this will be a better way to organize the site, and I'm beginning to see the vision of how this will all come together! We also decided to focus mainly on having the students classify plants. The museum is in the process of digitizing photographs from the Herbarium, and since these resources are already available, it will save us the time and trouble of photographing more artifacts. Madlyn also stressed the importance of developing one area of the module (plants) really well, and then if we have more time, we can always go back and add another area to the final product. I agree that simpler is better, especially in web design. It is so much easier to design and develop one piece of the module, make sure it works and meets expectations, test it out with the intended audience, and then build from there. One final thing Madlyn stressed is that if last year's observation module is any indication, the thing that is going to take us the longest is developing language (feedback) for the students responses. She wants us to dive into this as soon as possible. Heather is going to get us digital photos of plants within the next few days, so we can begin brainstorming.