Hey everyone, welcome to my repo!
My name is Manasvi and I work as a UX Designer and Data Visualization practitioner in New Jersey. This project is a continuation of my Master's project work at Georgia Tech, where I went to school.
If you are here because of Mozilla's Global Sprint you can join the chat channel for this project here.
This repository aims to capture the curriculum for a maker-oriented course offered at Georgia Tech– CS 6452, also known as Prototyping Interactive Systems, which aimed to provide basic technical efficacy to PhD students who came from a variety of backgrounds. The syllabus for this curriculum drew heavily on the concepts and spirit of the DIY (do-it-yourself) culture and could be seen as a maker-oriented approach to prototyping. It was developed by the following pioneering team at Georgia Tech-
- Gregory Abowd
- Aman Parnami
- Elizabeth DiSalvo
- Zane Cochran
This class was made possible by a NSF grant NSF DUE 1431984, titled,'Designing and Studying Maker Oriented Learning to Transform Advanced Computer Science'.
This class was offered over the course of a full semester and taught two major modules: Introduction to Physical Computing and Introduction to Mobile Phone Programming. This repo focuses purely on the first module i.e. Intro to Physical Computing.
In Fall of 2014, I took the course Prototyping Interactive Systems with Dr. Abowd in the instructor’s capacity and Aman Parnami (now Dr. Parnami) as his Teaching Assistant(TA). I came from a software background with an engineering degree in Information Technology and had sworn off any hardware engineering during my four years as an undergraduate, deeming it esoteric and outside of my interest and understanding.
However, this class changed my perspective in many ways by making hardware programmable and accessible. My very first project for this class was a prototype of an interactive lamp that pulled weather information using web API's and displayed it to the user. I would not say that it made me an expert in hardware prototyping but it helped me overcome a huge mental-block that hardware was not for me to tinker with.
I was able to transfer many of the skills I learned in this class to other classes in MS-HCI where I was able to push my skills and learn more about tinkering with electronics.
Fig 1. Prototype of a wearable I made for another class
Not only that, I was also able to use these skills towards my internship where I independently prototyped a wearable using an advanced micro-controller that I had no exposure to.
In fact, the biggest takeaway for me was not learning a particular skill but rather ‘learning how to learn’ by doing, reaching for low-hanging fruit, seeking help from online open source resources, etc.
I got even more exposure to this curriculum when I served as a Teaching Assistant for a similar course in Spring of 2015 and was part of the instructional team for CS-6452 in Fall of 2015 as part of my Master's project where I aimed to capture the curriculum so that it could be taught by other professor's at Georgia Tech.
You can read more about my Master's Project in my final report.
Currently, as part of Mozilla's Open Leadership Training I aim to publish the work I have done and make it available to the community so they can adapt the existing curriculum to suit their context– whether it is a workshop, a week-long sprint, targeting a different user-base etc.
I am currently working to move the content from Google Docs to Github so it can be collaborated on more easily. If you are interested in helping, reach out to me via email at manasvi.lalwani@gmail.com.
I am also working with two makers based out of Mumbai, Abrar and Zubin, who conduct 'making' workshops regularly for a variety of audiences ranging from middle-school children to adult teachers. The goal is to identify activities that could be remixed for their upcoming Intro to Arduino workshop in Ahmednagar and support them in any way I can.
While a majority of the course has been documented using Google Docs there is a long way to go before it can be truly open. This is a place to start to capture all the things that need to be done to make the documentation more visible so people can start commenting on not just the content but also the Information Architecture of how things have been organized.
The following is a link to Mozilla's Participation Guidelines that we will abide by.
- Content currently lives in Google Drive and Google Docs but we need a platform that better affords collaboration.
- Add Powerpoint/Keynote slide decks to respective folders
- Add Editable Word files to respective Assignments folders
- Add some notes on 3D modeling in Week 5
- Add notes on working with accelerometer during Week 7
- Refine notes on Final Project facilitation and grading
E.g. in places it references resources on the GT campus, we could either strip those details or de-emphasize them
Proofread material to make sure content reads well and that all links work. There are instances where other work may have been referenced and needs to be cited properly.
Need design research to obtain feedback on the existing IA of the course material.
Some portions of the course have in-class activities that need step by step instructions. Here is a sample design that has already been created that can be used to fit other activities.
Have someone actually use the curriculum or portions of the curriculum in a class or workshop form
Collaborate at Global Sprint (May 10-11)
While work is still underway to redevelop the curriculum to a general-use repository, in the meantime, you can get started with this:
- Start with the Course Overview Document. This is a lengthy document and the outline should pop-up in the sidebar automatically. But in case it does not, go to Add Ons>>Table of Contents>>Show in sidebar. Pay special attention to Physical Computing Modules and Milestones as it links to major milestones in the class such as assignment prompts and sample student work.
- Read Class Philosophies and Mindset as it shows higher level concepts that need to be kept in mind throughout the course this document also links to some of the final physical computing projects. (These links are currently private pending approval from the owners of the project)
- Refer to the Week by Week Class Outline for a more detailed agenda for 8 weeks of Physical Computing
- Find detailed notes in the Curriculum Planning folder that correspond to the Weeks outlined in the previous document. Some lessons have supplementary video resources that can be viewed to see a demonstration of a technique in our class. There is also a folder showing sample student work under 'Out of Class Assignments Examples + Code' but it is currently private pending approval from students about sharing their work.
- There are also supplementary Powerpoints that can be used in-class. These are yet to be added to the weekly folders but they do exist as a teaching resource.
Please note that the guidelines contained here should not be followed exactly. Some of the exercises require use of resources on the Georgia Tech campus. But educators are encouraged to find alternative resources in their community or tweak exercises such that they use readily available resources. For example, there may be sessions where we use a 3-D printer to prototype a case for a prototype but that can substituted by a manual exercise such as forming a cardboard box case. Each module should be tailored to the individual class.