Symphysis
Kinnari Thakker's Personal BlogDesigning for Converging Cultures
PROJECT ABSTRACT
We are slowly becoming more aware of the relevance of information and communication technologies in the area of pedagogy. Emerging tools with embedded blogs and social networking services are becoming common in schools and classrooms (more abroad as compared to in India). These concepts need considerable design if they are to work in India in the local language mediums and with those with little access to technology.
As an artist and designer I am trying to understand the process by which design and technology benefit and reach a larger number of children. How can these new tools for communication made through an inclusive process that involves the community within its design as compared to a top-down designer approach?
Design For Converging Cultures is the design of a summer camp for under privileged children from the Drishya Kallika Kendras. The design includes the localization of a Classroom 2.0 tool such as Ning, and its introduction through the exercise of paper prototyping. Ning formed a collecting and networking platform for the children and and the different aspects of the camp. Through slow design, the camp created a synthesis for local folk cultures of puppet making and storytelling with media tools such as Scratch and the mobile phone. It concluded in the form of a Transmedia Puppet Show resulting from the dynamic interactions of digital and traditional environments, systems and artifacts.
This is the homepage of the Kathegala Khanaja (A Bank of Stories) network. It saw a total of 30 participants where the children collected and banked their stories, media, writing, conversations, documentation etc.
To understand the concepts involved in social networking such as email, public message walls, forums, blogs, and even documentation on the computer were new to the children. A technique used to understand email, was a paper prototyping exercise where they built the familiar structure of a mailbox, and used it to send messages to each other physically, before they repeated the process slightly differently on the web.
The process collaborated with the local folk cultures of puppet-making and storytelling, along with a media tool, scratch which allowed for dynamic digital environment for the process of storytelling.
To download a pdf file of the documentation of the project click here (7Mb)
If there are any problems with the download please contact kinnarithakker@gmail.com
2 Comments»
Nursery Decoration wrote @
mobile phones that have built in cameras are my favorite because they can capture those special moments and events -`,
[...] Vision (htt p://symphysis.wordpress.com/designing-for-converging-cultures-a-diplo…) is an ongoing project here in Bangalore that uses new media (i.e. web 2.0, sensors, physical [...]