Project Proposal

My project proposal for Technicity is currently being evaluated and improved upon by other students taking the course.  Here is an interview-style discussion about the project. 

I want to explore a few new technologies to see which the community would most like to see in a new elementary school and how each new technology could benefit the school community.

First, since this is my first time seeking online engagement from a community, I hope to learn how to best engage the community and respond to comments online. I am a new Twitter user, so will Twitter and a blog provide the type of input I am seeking? 
The people who could benefit the most from new technologies at the school site are those who I would like to engage. This primarily includes the school staff, students, parents, neighbors, and the community at large.

So far, participation on Twitter has been abysmal. I am discouraged that people have not been using Twitter to follow the project, even when directly invited.

Secondly, I want to see what new technologies are most of interest to this community, whether it be sensors to alert the school staff as to when a particular bus or car arrives to pick up or drop off a student, or whether it be sensors to help track movable assets such as mobile computing devices and smart boards as they are moved around the building, or between buildings, or whether it be technologies that more directly improve the learning environment. Finally, since this is going to serve as a pilot project for the school system on this topic, I want to be able to report back as to how much time was involved, what resources were involved, what worked well, and what could be improved upon.

One important piece to note is that we are just exploring ideas here and anything additional would have to be considered and approved by the school system and would likely be considered an "Add Alternate" to the project.  This means that it would be a seperate line item from the "base bid" for the school modernization.

 I am exploring this issue because as an educational facilities planner, I view a school and its site as a microcity, or a micro-neighborhood, with similar needs and challenges that any community may face, including but not limited to traffic, pedestrian safety, access for persons with disabilities (Americans with Disabilities Act), stormwater management, tree preservation and other environmental impacts, wayfinding, and program adjacencies that are similar to zoning. For example it is desirable to locate the public uses of the building such as the gymnasium close to parking and playfields, while it would not be desirable to locate the loading dock and trash and recycling area directly adjacent to the main entrance. I believe that a school can greatly benefit from the introduction of new technologies such as RFIDs and sensors to enhance the learning environments as “smart classrooms”, to enhance safety, and to streamline daily operations such as pedestrian traffic.

I also hope that findings from this project could be applicable to other schools in this system and throughout the world.

I am primarily hoping to obtain survey data from polls and a visual preference survey. This feedback will help me to prepare a recommendation to the design team as to a preferred new technology that could be explored as part of the modernization of the school. I also hope to gain general input to supplement the input the school system will soon receive through public community meetings to design the new building and site.




The key design elements I hope to include in my project are about 70% short polling surveys each targeted at a specific group of stakeholders and 30% longer more exploratory surveys, similar to methodology used by the U.S. Census. The short surveys will be in both Spanish and English. One survey will be targeted at students and will ask a few general questions. Another survey will be targeted at school staff. A final survey will be targeted at parents and neighbors. The longer survey type will include open-ended questions and may be more of a discussion that could be videotaped.
 
Timing is going to be tricky. In order to give stakeholders adequate time to respond, I am going to run short on time to evaluate the results and meet the project deadline.  For example, the principal needs to approve survey questions before they can be distributed to students.