This section of my portfolio provides an overview of, and links to, descriptions of some development projects I have been involved in.
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  With My Design Team [+]
2. PT3@ASU Video Case Database & Interface

Context
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I joined the PT3@ASU research group in 2001 while I was a Masters student at Arizona State University. This research group comprised of three subgroups: teacher educators who conducted workshops based on a field experience model, video camera persons and editors, and instructional designers. I was the manager of the design team that built the Best Practices site.

The Best Practices site was a database of video case studies of teachers integrating technology at different academic levels and in different content areas. The design team was responsible for building the front end (interface) and back end (database).

 
Conditions
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The design team worked closely with the video team in order to establish standards for the videos and the database. In order to edit the classroom videos, the video team occasionally relied on the teacher educator team as subject matter experts.

To accomplish our tasks, all teams relied on a PT3 grant of US$1.15 million over a three-year period starting in 2000.

I was recruited by the lead principle investigator (PI) to build the Best Practices database and interface. The Best Practices database and interface was built from scratch. To do this, I recruited a graphics and web designer and two programmers.

 
Roles
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My primary role in this project was team manager. I would on occasion help in the visual design elements or provide resources to my graphics designer. I was also the person who translated the project needs from the lead PI to my programmers and the explained issues the programmers had to the PI.
 
Contributions
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Below I highlight just two of several contributions I made to the team.

1. Interface design
I designed a few layouts for the video case interface and, in collaboration with my graphic designer, created static, working prototypes for the principle investigators to test.

Click to see larger screen shot of interface layout 1
Click to see larger screen shot of interface layout 2

I provided the wireframe, storyboard, and Dreamweaver add-ons for the designer. I left the designer to create the pages with my specifications. The designer also created the Flash-based introduction to the Best Practices site.

The final version of the video case interface is virtually identical to Layout 2 and persists to this day at this site (skip the introduction and select any case).

The site was eventually populated with several video cases after I left the team. It no longer under any development following the end of the PT3 grant.

 

2. Experts notation tool
The lead PI had expressed a vision of being able to highlight and notate pedagogically significant parts of a video clip. The goal was to allow novice teachers to watch and reflect on these cases with the benefit of expert comments.

In collaboration with my programmers and the video team, we designed a tool that identified timestamps in a video and associated it with comments from content, technology, and other experts.

Click to see larger screen shot of an example result of the experts notation tool.

I left ASU to pursue my Ph.D. at IU shortly after this tool went online. It did not seem to undergo any further development or use thereafter. This was a pity because it was a very powerful way of scaffolding the experiences of teachers who were new to integrating technology. However, the idea of annotating objects was transferred to a PIHnet tool which I also helped design and develop.

 
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