Welcome to The Dream Team

An Introduction To Our Work

The Dream Team’s goal was to help incorporate methods of design thinking, transmedia knowledge, and project-based learning into the English curriculum of a 9th grade English class at Ithaca High School. We accomplished our task by engaging in critical discussions in the classroom and implemented our ideas by going on field visits to work with students at the IHS. For every field visit, our goals included:

Helping students incorporate transmedia knowledge and design thinking into project-based learning assignments
Being an additional resource for ideas, and
Reflecting on our field visits and creating transmedia/ helpful resources for future students and teachers.

Throughout our visits, students were introduced to different ways to incorporate project-based learning like creating pechakucha videos and writing a research paper. During our first visit, we helped students brainstorm ideas for their upcoming videos. Although it was challenging at first, once students had a list of ideas down, they were quickly able to create strong arguments. Students weighed the pros and cons of their argument and did research to argue against the cons. It was ultimately a thought-provoking field visit that allowed students to get a head start on their assignment.

The unexpected happened, and the Covid-19 crisis forced instructors to reframe their coursework, and this inadvertently redefined our design challenge at hand. However, this hurdle did not stop the Dream Team from inspiring new ideas to help the students. Our subsequent projects involved creating alternative media forms for the students to educate the students on how to create and share content.

Project Illustrated Report

For Project 3, Dream Team had to create an illustrated ten-page report that described and reflected on the community work that has been done thus far. Due to COVID-19, academic institutions and their students have had to turn to remote learning to finish the semester. This also meant that Dream Team would no longer be able to complete their fieldwork with the Ithaca High School students. In times like this, it is paramount to adapt to the new digital learning landscape and virtual assignments allow teachers, as well as students, to do just that. The team had to extrapolate Ithaca High School’s 9th graders’ project into new virtual learning assignments. Project 3 incorporated two additional genres and considered factors like types of online resources for research, production, collaboration, and publication/sharing. Instructional videos created from Project 2 were edited and used as resources for the students’ virtual learning experience.

Proposed Virtual Assignments

Create an infographic using research done by students
- Utilize presentation skills to present data using charts, graphs
- Slack can be used for communication (website or app)
- Free infographic creator websites available

Create a digital collage using research done by students
- Utilize creativity to artistically present their research
- Technology available (free or paid)
  - Collage Maker, PhotoShop, Canva

Check out this cool video explaining how Infographic can be a useful tool for students as schools switch to online learning:

A copy of our full report can be found here.

PechaKucha Instructional Videos

Dream Team was tasked to provide instructional videos to the high school kids after the switch to online learning. We worked together to come up with viable topics to share with the students. The videos below represent some core principles we learned in class and we thought they were critical to project-based learning and transmedia knowledge. These are meant to be used as resources for both students and their teachers.

Sparkline

By Sosna Gellaw

CAT Design Frame

By Nana Antwi

PechaKucha

By De’Vonte Parker

Deliverables

Dream Team was assigned to brainstorm three solutions or experiences we hope to create with our partner school, Ithaca High School, and its 9th-grade students. Using these solutions, we were to create a storyboard for each. From the three solutions, Dream Team chose the topic of promoting digital literacy as a pragmatic and essential solution to be utilized in the classroom.

Dream Team Storyboards

Dream Team was assigned to use our chosen storyboard as a template for an info comic created in the comic creator app, Comic Life. The info comic had to target our partner school and focused on our team’s consulting work. The info comic is also meant to depict the design challenge in a symbolic way and address a potential need of the partner school. Dream Team created an info comic about promoting digital literacy and highlighted technology and presentation methods students can utilize in the future.

Dream Team Info Comic

See the Resources page for our Instructional Videos.

Meet The Dream Team

The Dream Team is composed of a diverse group of students from different colleges in Cornell. The Dream team is always excited to come together and brainstorm ideas and help integrate transmedia knowledge, and project-based learning into school curriculums.