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.

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