CastiKisaruniSlide.pptx

Joy Wong Daniels
Emily Goligoski
Alexis Hiniker
Heidi Williamson

Figure 1. Rapid Prototype of Exchange Box

Figure 2 and 3. Castilleja Time Capsule

Figure 4 and 5. Kisaruni Time Capsule

CONCEPT NOTE

1. Project Title: Dance Dance World Solution


2. Client: Castilleja, an independent school for girls grades 6-12 in Palo Alto, California


3. Brief Description

In the interest of leveraging Castilleja’s partnerships with schools outside the US, we’ve imagined the cross-continental sharing of two parcels between 11-year-old girls in Palo Alto and Emori Joi, Kenya (where collaborators at the Kisaruni Girls School are located). Part time capsule, part creative kit, these medium-sized boxes are intended for exchange starting when the girls are in sixth grade through their junior year. Music-making, dance, multimedia arts, and sharing original creative work are all encouraged.


4. Project Strategy/Timeline

• 6th-Grade Girls at Castilleja:
• Choose a song that represents them
• Write new lyrics
• Put together a time-capsule to represent them as a group at this point in time, including a recording of their song

• 11th-Grade Girls at Castilleja:
• Fly to Kenya for their junior-year trip
• Bring time capsule to Kenya, deliver to 6th-grade girls at Kisaruni

• 6th-Grade Girls at Kisaruni:
• Choose a song that represents them
• Write new lyrics
• Use music from Castilleja to choreograph an original dance
• Make a video recording of themselves performing the dance using the Flip camera included in the box from Castilleja
• Put together a time-capsule to represent them, including a recording of their song and a (separate, unrelated) video recording of their dance performance

• 11-Grade Girls at Castilleja:
• Bring the box from Kisaruni back to Castilleja at the end of their trip

• 6th-Grade Girls at Castilleja:
• Use music from Kisaruni to choreograph an original dance
• Make a video recording of themselves performing the dance

• Five years pass with the girls in regular contact.

• 6th-Grade girls from Castilleja are now 11th-Grade girls; they take their own journey to Kenya; both groups of girls meet and bond over opening their time capsules and watching the videos of the dances they created for each others’ songs years ago.

5. Rationale for the Proposed Project

We aim to empower girls as designers and innovators to create media (music and videos) that captures distinctive elements of their cultures and own ingenuity. This idea is partially inspired by Quest To Learn’s learning model which is “carefully designed to enable all students, with a diverse range of learning styles to contribute to the design and innovation necessary to meet the needs and demands of a global society.” In addition, our objective is to enrich youth identity development in relevant and meaningful contexts. Once the girls design their artifacts, they take part in an ongoing cross-cultural gift exchange centered around 21st century skill-building: creativity, collaboration and communication.


6. Project Goals and Objectives

• Build empathy between 11-year old girls from different countries
• Encourage cross-cultural understanding and creativity
• Nurture willingness to be agents of social change
• Design for “inclusivity”
•  Unite girls through something they have in common (music and dance) that transcends language

7. Expected Results

• Co-creation of music (song + lyrics) & dance
•  Video recording featuring song and dance which will be shared with partner schools
•  Time Capsule (11-year olds create → 17-year olds open/reflect)

8. Reference Learning, Business and Design Strategies

• Social Learning (Vygotsky)

Vygotsky describes the zone of proximal development (ZPD) as the “distance between the child’s actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the higher level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance and in collaboration with more capable peers “ (Vygotsky 86). This idea captures the notion of scaffolding, which includes the interaction between parents, mentors, and more capable peers as well as the prompts and hints that are built into learning tools. We chose to implement a scaffolded approach to learning in which the girls are assisted in cross-cultural experiences with the aid of adults and trusted and older peers.

• Community of Practice (Lave & Wenger)

Lave and Wenger argue that learning is not solely the transfer of knowledge from one person to another, which we tried to incorporate in making good use of the sharing of the box across geographies. Through situated learning, the learner engages in observation, participation, and immersion where “learners inevitably participate in communities of practitioners and that the mastery of knowledge and skill requires newcomers to move toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community” (Lave, Wenger 29). The program that we developed brings groups of girls into this cross-cultural “community of practice” by introducing sharing, different levels of participation and engagement (with adult and peer supervision), and full immersion in the arts.

• Play (Rieber)

Reiber’s argument for reconsidering the value of play starts by identifying misconceptions, including ideas that play is only important to young children (something we disagree with in trying to create a valuable experience for middle schoolers), is easy, and is inconsequential to formal or informal learning. He shares that play (which is usually voluntary, physical, intrinsically motivating, and involving a “make-believe” quality) is not to be confused with leisure and in fact involves the learning of something useful.  For something to meet this criteria, “knowledge must be meaningful and relevant to the individual to be useful” (Rieber 3), and we hope that learners will take responsibility for gaining that knowledge in ways that create opportunities for self-regulated learning. Intrinsically motivating learning environments can be characterized by these common elements: challenge, curiosity, fantasy, and control, each of which we considered for this program.

• Identity Development (Hartner)

Hartner describes the shift from concrete to abstract descriptions of self-identity that occurs in early adolescence.  She also explains the many factors influence identity development and how these become more complex at this age.  We hope to provide an opportunity for girls to take on the empowered identity of a “creator” during this critical period of identity development.

• Multimodal and embodied interactions (Hutchins)

Hutchins discusses “embodied thinking” and the importance of considering the culturally-situated way in which cognition is manifested in the body during human interactions.  This motivated both our desire to use dance as a medium for understanding culture and for capturing the dances on video.  He discusses the “rich systems of interaction that are visible in video recordings,” and also laments that we “do not yet have a tradition of thought that appreciates the profoundly situated character of embodied thinking in complex culturally organized settings.”  We hope that by co-constructing culturally-relevant music and dance performances the girls in this program will have the opportunity to more deeply understand their own culture by deliberately embodying it in their dance performance, and more deeply understand another culture by witnessing their co-created video performance.

9. Innovation: How different it is for other or earlier projects?

Building on Castilleja’s current Global Program which fosters cross-cultural engagement, compassion, and awareness through a week-long visit abroad, we are excited about the possibility to enrich peer-to-peer interactions by enabling the girls to develop a much stronger bond with the Kisaruni girls. Dance Dance World Solution is a five-year long project where the girls will maintain frequent and continuous communication with one another.  We also provide a structured opportunity for the girls to create an evolving, original work in a medium that is both relevant to teenagers world-wide and also culturally-specific.  We hope that this will give them a richer understanding of the things they share as well as their cultural differences.

10. Budget Estimate (if applicable)

Flip camera: $100
Plastic box for time capsule: $5
(2) Blank DVDs: $5
Sheet music: $5
Shipping: n/a (hand-delivered by girls)


11. References

Harter, Susan (1990).  Self and Identity Development.  In S.S. Feldman & G.R. Elliot (Eds.)  At The Threshold: The Developing Adolescent.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hutchins, Edwin (2006).  Imagining the Cognitive Life of Things.  Paper presented at Cambridge University.

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, UK.

Quest 2 Learn. Accessed at http://q2l.org on 23 April 2012.

Rieber, L. P. (1996). Seriously considering play: Designing interactive learning environments based on the blending of microworlds, simulations, and games. Educational Technology Research & Development, 44(2), 43-58.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.


12. Team Members & Backgrounds

• Alexis Hiniker: LDT Master’s student, engineer/software design, specialist on assistive technology/students with disabilities
• Emily Goligoski: LDT Master’s student, user researcher/needfinder, video producer, journalist
• Heidi Williamson: LDT Master’s student, project manager, informal science educator & curriculum developer, web developer
• Joy Wong Daniels: LDT Master’s student, user experience/visual communication designer, media producer, non-profit/tech marketer

Rejected ideas

• We initially considered whether a "message in a bottle" concept might help convey the time capsule concept, but we realized that this idea might not translate well beyond the US.
• We considered whether girls be assigned a reporting and writing 

Feedback

Great images here, I (Dan) really like how you have documented your process. Describing your own process is critical for clients to understand why you are recommending a specific intervention for them.  I like your descriptions of the theories that inspire you, this was very helpful for me to understand where you are starting from - I think this could even go under "rationale" sections in future proposals, maybe tighten it up to a sentence or two with a link.   I also really like the expected results section, that helps the client connect their ideas about outcomes with your vision about how to get there.  In future papers for this class and for other clients please add a little more explicit language about why those actions connect with the learning goals.  For example, "producing a video that connects local dance with another culture's music will challenge students to reflect on their own culture, research other cultures, and create a project/performance where the connections are clear.  The stronger those connections and reflections, the more the students will have demonstrated what they learned from the project."

Great work, I really liked your presentation.  For the future, share all of your slides/work as .pdf; that will solve a lot of the display problems,