Digशिक्षा

INNOVATIVE SOFTWARE DESIGN PROPOSAL

FOR IMAGINE CUP 2010

Application Name:   Digशिक्षा

Team Name:              Team Nepal, represents enthusiastic Nepalese young developers.

Team Members:

1. Anish Shrestha, Nepal College of Information Technology, Pokhara University
2. Archana Maharjan, Kathford International College, Tribhuvan University
3. Kushal Gautam, New Summit College, Tribhuvan University
4. Sadiksha Dhakal, Kathmandu College of Management, Kathmandu University

1. SHORT DESCRIPTION

In developing countries that have weak economic foundation to support educational materials in schools of rural areas, there is a need of community driven sustainable solution that let the stakeholders of teaching-and-learning profession to create dynamic contents, store it for future reference, and share with other right parties.  Digशिक्षा aims to provide a platform where learners with minimal skills of computer literacy can create dynamic contents (graphical objects, texts, audio, and video) and integrate them in a logical order to create their own applications such as notes, lesson plan, wiki, booklets, presentations etc.  The contents developed are exported to an XML file that can easily be shared with other parties for peer review.  The localized contents and learners engagement in content creation enables quality learning in schools and hence reduction of the churn rates from schools at rural areas.  Support for flexible content creation enables freelancer developers at rural areas to develop localized contents and hence guarantees sustainability in product ecosystem.

2. USER SCENARIOS

The primary uses of the applications are teachers, students, and content developers.  The pre-requisite computer literacy to use the system is significantly minimal.

The users of the systems are divided into two categories.

• Component creators
• Application creators

At first, a user is engaged with the system as an application creator that reuses existing components available in the system.  Application creators have specific content creation problem in hand such as creating a note, creating a lesson plan, creating a presentation etc.  They use the components available to create specific solution to their knowledge problem.

After sufficient practice of application creation, the users are oriented towards creating their own components.  The underlying functionalities such as object drawing, custom animation, voice recording, other media import etc. enable a component creator to create components of their own which can later be shared with peers and reused to create larger set of applications.

Teacher:

Mohan Singh is a primary teacher in a school of the remote village. As a science teacher, he finds it difficult to teach students just by the raw contents of the book. The problem gets even worse when every student cannot afford to buy books. Digशिक्षा assisted him making the dynamic content when he needs it. He can add pictures, animations, videos, sounds as a learning content in the classroom. Because of the multipoint feature incorporated in Digशिक्षा, collaboration in the classroom has increased and every student understands. Now, students are excited to learn and Mohan Singh is happy teaching.

Student:

Going to school was never fun to a Grade III student, Anil Thapa. He loves to play with colors, draw images and enjoy with music. The books and the teachers in class never contented him to go to the school which he didn’t like to. But Digशिक्षा changed his idea about school and education. Now he enjoys in school and learns his best in the collaborative environment. Now, he is one of the intelligent students of his class.

Content Developer:

Hari Kurmi is a high school graduate student. He doesn’t have a job to sustain himself. He has a basic knowledge in using computers but couldn’t find a job anyhow. He happened to know the Digशिक्षा being used in a school. He agreed with the school to develop a course content using the software. He could make course materials with the easy and dynamic software and in return he could get a handsome sum of money.

Use-Case Diagram

3. FUNCTIONAL AND NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

Functional Requirements

• Object creation : Based on .Net platform attributes of the objects will be serialized to an XML dataset. User interactions in an ink canvas and object libraries will be serialized to XML.
• Artwork: Using WPF, objects will be created in an ink canvas. Moreover, external objects can be imported.  
• Search:  It provides the provision to search objects through the internet.

Data Requirements

• The components and applications created are represented by an inter-operable representation mechanism.  Currently, XML is used to represent the properties of components and applications.  It enables easy sharing of the contents developed with other similar systems.

Non-Functional Requirements

• User engagement: It engages maximum number of users through the collaborative participation.
• Simple learning curve: It provides easy user interface and descriptive graphics that enables users to get acquainted to the system easily.
• Templates/themes for customizable look-n-feel: Appealing templates and themes are available to gain the psychological advantage in learning.
• Generalizations of the contents: It provides a platform/framework to embed various contents dynamically.
• SCRUM compliance

4. SUMMARY OF APPLICATION COMPONENTS

• Dashboard
• Component library
• Story line/logical flow
• Data formatting and parsing component (for XML)
• Presentation component

5. Technologies/Resources Used in the Application

Technologies

• Graphical object creation
• Windows Presentation Foundation
• …

Tools

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
• Blend
• Microsoft Multipoint SDK
• …

6. Architectural Overview

  

 

 

7. User Interface Prototype/Examples

A thread represents a single service request.  For example, ‘create component’ is a service request. To complete this request, where the user clicks, what is entered till the end, that sequence of events creates a thread.

Let’s represent at least three threads for component creation, application creation, and content sharing.

Proposal for Software Design

1. Short Description

More than 90% of children in developing countries are enrolled in primary schools and 54% attend secondary school. School dropouts are the major issues prevalent in rural areas. Multipoint Education Package (MPEP) is the software project that aims to improve the remote education system by “learning through playing or doing”. It provides teachers with the tools to gain real-time assessment information to deliver their personalized learning experience to their students. It enhances student learning comprehension through interactive methods. Moreover it engages students with interaction as well as overall cognitive and social skills within an interactive environment.

Objectives:

1. Maximize access to universal primary education and minimize school dropouts in rural areas via interactive multimedia learning process.
2. Awakening student interest in pursuing education.
3. Empowering teachers by making learning more dynamic.
4. Improving student collaboration through strategic learning tools.
5. Transform the learning process into a new paradigm.

Features

1. MPEP as class room resources for the teacher:
   1. I.  Teacher can teach using books but the MULTIPOINT EDUCATION contains all most all of those educational resources so that the teacher can teach interactively using Multimedia.
   2. II. Teachers can also add the contents as per the requirement. He can add the rich text, images that can give liveliness to teaching.
   3. III. Of MPEP, with the mouse being handy with all the students, they can click the mouse to have the attention of the teacher to raise the question. Teacher too can freeze the mouse of every student not to get disturbed during the lecture time.

2. Three user groups in MPEP:

3. Student Attendance:
The first thing that happens in the classroom is the student attendance.With the single mouse assigned to every student in Multipoint, attendance has never been so easy.

4. Multipoint games:

• 4.I.  Many Multipoint educational games are embedded in the whole package of the MULTIPOINT EDUCATION. Students and play the multipoint games that would teach them to learn and play in the team.
• 4.II. The games as per the extra- curricular activities are meant to each the life learning skills, the knowledge that can help the students learn at real time that can be helpful in the daily life and expand the horizon of knowledge.

5. Create test and Take test:

• I.  After the subject chapter is taught in the classroom or at any suitable time, teacher can set the question and take a test immediately using advantage of Multipoint. MPEP provides the required environment and suitable process for it.

1. II. The results of the test, students’ progress can be evaluated soon after the test is over. The students ’progress can be shown in the graphical form. Students can be motivated and encouraged. That is its motive.

6. Evaluation:

• I.  Students can evaluate the teacher after the class with the evaluation feature of MPEP.
• II.  Even for the voting/polling or brainstorming during the classroom, MULTIPOINT provides the excellent features.
• Powerful database

MPEP provides the extremely powerful database of:

1. I.   Teachers of all subjects
2. II.  Students of every classroom
3. III. Educational contents of every chapter of all the subjects
4. IV.  Attendance of everyday classes
5. V.   Progress reports of all the students

Age Group:

This application is more focused on the school going children from the age group of 6 to 16.

As the application scope grows, students of many other age groups can also be included.

Social Advantages:

1. Fostering the education for the Society
2. Providing the equal education and making accessible to everyone.
3. Creating a good society with better education.
4. Multimedia education through the computer even to the remote schools.
5. A new teaching and learning approach for the schools.
6. Equal and accessible education to everyone.
7. Making sure that everyone gets the same opportunity in life.
8. Helping the students to learn to use computers from the early age.
9. Education software like this can change the teaching and learning approach in the schools. Because of the outstanding features, it can take the market in the medium level schools that buy them for the affordable amount.
10. There are hundreds and thousands of the schools that require the software that can ease the classroom activities and school management. This software can provide the complete educational and extra-curricular package for such schools.
11. Once the software is sold to the school, the enhancement, maintenance and addition of new features can be other source of business outputs.
12. MPEP can be upgraded and used for the higher level of education besides the school. To the place for the higher education, new business goals can be achieved.
13. To provide the MULTIPOINT EDUCATION to all the age group, classrooms for the school to colleges.
14. To add the features that can enrich the interactive study in the classroom.

Effects on Education:

Business Benefits:

Future enhancements

Conclusion

MPEP is the obvious technical solution that is used to provide each child with a mouse and cursor on screen, thus effectively multiplying the amount of interaction per student per PC for the cost of a few extra mice.  It is the one and only software that can take care of all the classroom and student related activities effectively and efficiently and can indeed become the COMPLETE EDUCATION PACKAGE.

PrePlan for our Software

Team Nepal, the one and only team formed and fully geared up for the preparation of Imagine Cup, which is going to be held at Poland this year. It has already been about four months since this team is formed. There are altogether four members in this team according to the requirement of the Imagine Cup and more significantly all of the members are the finalists of the national level multipoint software competition.

Since, the establishment of this team there are lots of activities that has been done for the fulfillment of its objectives.  The main objective of this team is to develop education related software providing a complete package for the education system that facilitates both the teachers as well as students using the multipoint concept.

In order to integrate all the plans and innovative ideas of the team members we had two special meets. In our first meet we discussed about what our software should contain and at which areas we need to focus. Here, we decided that we would develop some kind of package for the students so that multiple users could access it at the same time with multiple mice. Our main intention was to focus on making it in a way that it could be accessible by both the teachers as well as students.  So in our first meet we decided about the layout, the control flow and the contents of the software.

Similarly, in our second meet we sat together to discuss our progress and the new updates of the software. Until that time all of us (members of team Nepal) had created some content which could be integrated together to complete the software as a whole. At this point of time the basic contents were almost complete and remaining job was to integrate all the contents together and give the final finishing touch to our work.

At present, the team is fully prepared to move ahead and compete at the Imagine Cup. The only thing that we require at this point of time is the support and co-operation from the Microsoft MDP Nepal as well as the Regional Headquarter of Microsoft to provide us with the opportunity to compete and let us share our creation with the whole world.

Multipoint

Think Big!
Develop Love in learning

14th Oct 2009

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.   Similarly, Team Nepal was also full of doubt during chat conference called in 14^th October. “The major problem is that we do not have problem yet, so first of all we need a problem…and then, the way of accomplishing it would be our vision”. All of us were worried for not knowing the vision yet despite of investing a month! However, we were succeeded to ascertain that Multipoint is typically focused for the Education. Does, this means we should be focused on education if we are bounded by Millennium Points? All of us were haunted by dilemmas about the way to be chosen! Luckily Cooshal suggested to visit Central Bureau of Statistics plus to consider about promoting the rural health!! Although everyone have better ideas and better solutions, all seems to be worthless since they were already presented in previous competitions. Decision about the concept seems complicated than before. So, finally we decided to call a round table on coming Friday with Mr. Allen Bailochan Tuladhar and Mr. Ravi Chandra Koirala. But we are sure that the whole ball of problem was because Computer can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don’t add up.

Microsoft MultiPoint SDK 1.1 don’t get installed in Windows 7

When  tried to install  Microsoft MultiPoint SDK 1.1 n my Windows 7.. the error message  pops up:

“Microsoft MultiPoint SDK only runs in windows XP with service pack 2 (or greater) or Windows Vista.”

Solution:

You should Edit the MultiPointSDK.msi with Orca(http://www.technipages.com/download-orca-msi-editor.html).

just edit under field “LaunchContition”

the line:

(VersionNT = 600 AND MsiNTProductType = 1) OR (VersionNT = 501 AND ServicePackLevel > 1) OR (REMOVE)

with:

(VersionNT >= 600 AND MsiNTProductType = 1) OR (VersionNT >= 501 AND ServicePackLevel > 1) OR (REMOVE)

and re-save the msi.

Introduction to Microsoft SDK 1.1

The Microsoft® MultiPoint™ SDK version 1.1 is a development framework that allows developers to build applications that enable up to 250 individual mouse devices to work simultaneously on one computer. As a developer, you can use the MultiPoint SDK to create educational applications for schools with limited technological infrastructure, thus increasing the amount of time any one student can spend on a computer. Initial pilot programs conducted in India by Microsoft Research show that for certain subjects, collaborative learning technologies like MultiPoint enhance learning when compared to a 1:1 computing scenario .

MultiPoint should not be confused with applications that allow multiple people to control multiple mouse devices to perform standard operations. In those cases, the system traditionally cannot identify which mouse has made which changes, and there is normally no option for controlling the permissions of the various devices. MultiPoint is a development framework that enables developers to build applications to take advantage of multiple mouse devices, including the ability to handle mouse clicks from different users independently and to assign different permissions to each mouse. For example, the mouse belonging to a teacher in a learning application might need additional permissions to control the activity).

The MultiPoint SDK can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=A137998B-E8D6-4FFF-B805-2798D2C6E41D&displaylang=en.

Team Nepal into Work.

Times of general calamity and confusion create great minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms. So does the great softwares are designed by great concepts! Regarding Imagine Cup 2010, Live Conference was initiated by Team Nepal in 9^th of October. By the rules and code of conducts of Imagine Cup, Team Nepal made sure of fulfilling requirements of United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Therefore to grip the firm of the concept, each member started pouring their intellect.

1. Educational software using Multipoint.

2. Climate Change

3. Waste Management

4  Agriculture