R&D 1

The second task we are faced with this semester is to do a 7 minute pitch for an app that could potentially be carried through to level 3. Our starting point is to pick a catagory of our choice from the european youth award and research possible avenues that could build from an idea to a working product with the catagory in mind.

However there are two areas that interest me at the moment;

Smart Learning Smart Learning: education | e-skills | open science

This category is about finding new, creative approaches to education and learning. Many high schools and universities report tremendous drop-out rates and a social education-gap remains reality in most countries. Smart Learning innovations may, for example, provide free-access training courses, foster ICT competence, create scientific understanding, support international knowledge exchange, or open up new capacities for scientific research. This also includes tools that boosting learners’ motivation to study, platforms for open-access education and other solutions for making scientific progress beneficial to all.

Connecting Cultures Connecting Cultures: arts | games | diversity

This category is for all the unusual, crazy, digital projects that manifest a creative approach to contemporary culture. United in diversity has to be more than just a motto! Projects submitted to Connecting Cultures may combine programming, artistic and musical skills, find ways to preserve customs and traditions, or create awareness for mutual understanding and intercultural communication. The category also comprises infotainment apps, valuable games, interactive exhibitions, performances, animations, e-music and digital art – everything is possible!

The first area that interests me is “Smart Learning” this is based around eductaion, though it seems almost impractical to persue a method of providing free degree-level courses and create a sylabus that can be made widely avaliable there are a few ideas that spring to mind straight away, one idea that I had early on was to design an app that would have links to various tutorials. I based this idea on our current class enviroment, For example working with after effects there are times where I personally forget everything I just learned, sometimes within minutes of being taught how to do an effect or create something new. The main thing that I would try to impliment is a video archive with tutorials ranging from beginner to advanced classes. The downside of this idea is why create something like this when sites such as youtube and vimeo exist with a wide range of tutorials avaliable already?

The second idea that came from “Smart learning” was the idea of an network soley used for colaboration and networking. Essentially this would take the form of a forum and have projects that peple have made publically available to everyone on a global scale, for example someone from the UK, say an ‘Indie’ film maker needing a soundtrack composed, someone connected to the same forum in another part of the world say in mainland Europe or further such as Australlia etc shows an interest via an private message that could be linked to their social media accounts. THis could potentially serve three or more goals. First networking, secondly the colaboration of several people, thirdly  this gives the project that could have been far to difficult form one person a global audience with ideas different insights. THe main downside that immediately jumps out are the various language barriers. although translations are getting more accurate there are still occasions where syntax and local dialects can create a totally different meaning, aside from this there are issues regarding timezones and in some cases different laws that should be taken into consideration.

My final idea is to create an app to sign in and out of a work place more educational areas such as schools and universities. The idea itself would rely on users being able to sign into an area or if used in a university would be used to register for attendence purposes. This would record attendence faster than waiting to sign a register and could possibly improve the system already in place but there should be an extra point for motivation. For this I conld try to impliment a rewards system, the downside of course to this is ballancing fees and funding to make the rewards scheme work.

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