Summary
We created a digital platform meant to give students a standardized education in technology so that they are ready for the constantly evolving workforce. This goal was definitely ambitious, especially in a Sprint setting, but it was a great experience to better understand the Sprint process.
Problem Space
"How might we use technology to improve digital literacy?"
Research
Team Ideation
Survey Results
We used an investigative survey to find about people's different levels of technology-based knowledge when exiting high school, and what they learned on their own. A majority of respondents learned very basic technological skills, mainly pertaining to using Microsoft Office. The odd ones out went to private schools, which encouraged them to use more intensive applications, like the Adobe Suite.
Approximately 90% of respondents felt that they walked out of high school without the necessary technological skills to succeed in their professional future. This helped our decision to do two things.
1. Students needed to learn technological skills beyond basic Word processing. Examples are coding and the Adobe Suite.
2. Adoption by educators needed to be simple and friendly, so they could easily encourage their students to learn.
Approximately 90% of respondents felt that they walked out of high school without the necessary technological skills to succeed in their professional future. This helped our decision to do two things.
1. Students needed to learn technological skills beyond basic Word processing. Examples are coding and the Adobe Suite.
2. Adoption by educators needed to be simple and friendly, so they could easily encourage their students to learn.
Vision
To empower all Canadian youth with the digital skills necessary to enter the workforce.
My Role
For this project, I had the opportunity to be both a Decider and Stitcher.
Decider
Holding this role during a Sprint for the first time was interesting. It encouraged me to work on a skill that I have been meaning to improve - my ability to listen and comprehend the ideas of everyone around me. This role has two main aspects, recognizing the best ideas available and executing a decision on those ideas if the team seems to be talking in circles. My decisions left the team comfortable with each milestone moving forward, as I only intervened once everyone had shared their piece.
Stitcher
Being a decider and a stitcher fit fairly well together. As a stitcher, my team sent over their designs, assets, copy, and anything else we might need to put together for the final prototype. I then put everything together in a matter that made sense with everyone's content, and the end-product. This meant working in Sketch to place, size and format everything to similar formats, and working in Invision to create a final prototype.
The main challenge was keeping visual design coherent, all the while working within a tight timeframe to create the prototype. It was rewarding to complete this sprint alongside a great team, and it taught me how to put many great ideas into one solution.
The main challenge was keeping visual design coherent, all the while working within a tight timeframe to create the prototype. It was rewarding to complete this sprint alongside a great team, and it taught me how to put many great ideas into one solution.
Solution & Designs
What We Came Up With
Our team felt that the current state of information technology at a high school level needed to be supplemented. We agreed that we cannot teach every educator how to code, but they could easily track and run a pre-exisiting course.
Our App, named Ditter (Digital Literacy), aims to ensure every high school graduate walks out with enough technological proficiency to enter the workforce and further their own education independently. Below, the wireframes are from the teacher's end, as they track and assign courses, lessons, assignments to their students. As the student would no doubt have questions about the material, the app has an "Ask Experts" feature that allows the teacher to connect with experts who can answer questions that they can't.
Ditter can be compared to services like Udacity & Udemy. Instead of many courses that teach the same material, Ditter would have standardized courses. This means that every classroom using Ditter would learn the same material through the same format and complete the same assignments. This ensures a high standard of quality and leaves all students on an equal footing once they are finished with the course.
Our App, named Ditter (Digital Literacy), aims to ensure every high school graduate walks out with enough technological proficiency to enter the workforce and further their own education independently. Below, the wireframes are from the teacher's end, as they track and assign courses, lessons, assignments to their students. As the student would no doubt have questions about the material, the app has an "Ask Experts" feature that allows the teacher to connect with experts who can answer questions that they can't.
Ditter can be compared to services like Udacity & Udemy. Instead of many courses that teach the same material, Ditter would have standardized courses. This means that every classroom using Ditter would learn the same material through the same format and complete the same assignments. This ensures a high standard of quality and leaves all students on an equal footing once they are finished with the course.
