Update to project proposal

Since the original project proposal there have been updates.

The original document stated "The primary aim of the project is to raise awareness of the problem of children being recruited into armed forces in African countries, these children are known as child soldiers. "

The update specifies which African countries the project aims to raise awareness of and why.

Countries:

- Uganda

- South Sudan

- Democratic Republic of Congo

- Republic of Central Africa

Why:

- the LRA are active in these countries (explained below)

- the LRA abduct children and force them to become soldiers

LRA (Lords Resistance Army)

The LRA, Lords Resistance Army have been terrorizing the country of Uganda for the past 23 years. The LRA left Uganda in June 2006 when the Juba Peace Talks began. Ever since the peace talks fell apart in 2008, the LRA has been active in the border regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. Joseph Kony is founder and leader of the LRA. Joseph Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The LRA are an unbelievably brutal rebel group. They abduct children and indoctrinate them into their ranks and they murder, rape, beat and mutilate men, women and children. Under Kony's leadership the LRA has displaced 2 million people, abducted 60,000 including 30,000 children. It is estimated that more than 90% of the LRA’s troops were abducted as children. It is normal that children being introduced into the group are forced to murder their own parents.

Formatting Of Project Proposal

The format guidelines of the project proposal is on notes.cit.ie in direction concepts

see:

http://notes.cit.ie/index.cfm

Project proposal Roles and responsibilities

Both: Aim, objectives.

Linda: Project description, Research and design methodologies.
Lauren: Conceptual background, Timescales

Feedback on first draft proposal

Feedback from Trevor:

- Fix aim, doesn't cover everything, needs method etc. see notes and tips in previous post.

- objectives too general, think about SMART

- conceptual background: make sure to reference, reason good but relate to ourselves or speak in 3rd person, define empathy in context of your project not what others say, too many quotes, dont use obama due to political views, location can be covered in the aim, main contributors not correct are they really main contributors? word it differently.

- project description completely new should be mentioned in aim, imagery needs to be higher standard, is it really interactive?, took meaning of empathy too literally, fundraising technique not media related, can say we did project in conjunction with a charity and share the link to their donation website or come up with better way of integrating it digitally.

- research and design methodologies ok- ish but will be easier to write when first three sections are fixed, think of action verbs again see notes in previous post.

- proposed timescales not mentioned.

* on the topic of fundraising trevor told me about a guy called Aaron Koblin.

He looked at how amazons mechanical turk works, how you can get someone to do tasks for you or do tasks for someone.
















here is a link to amazons mechanical turk site https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome

Aaron Koblin used this idea in a few different interesting ways..

1: to get people to draw sheep see the video below.




instead of sheep maybe people could draw children?

check out the site http://www.thesheepmarket.com/

2: http://www.tenthousandcents.com/index.html

"Ten Thousand Cents" is a digital artwork that creates a representation of a $100 bill. Using a custom drawing tool, thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of the bill without knowledge of the overall task. Workers were paid one cent each via Amazon's Mechanical Turk distributed labor tool. The total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase (to charity) are all $100. The work is presented as a video piece with all 10,000 parts being drawn simultaneously. The project explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, "crowdsourcing," "virtual economies," and digital reproduction.



3: http://www.bicyclebuiltfortwothousand.com/

Notes and Tips on Project Proposal

Notes

• Must have some sort of evaluation to measure your success in relation to your project.
• Get qualitative analysis of project.
• Document has a number of sections
• There is a lack of comprehension of what is expected for the project proposal.
• Not what you did this semester, it's what you'll be doing next semester!
• You can reference certain areas of research
• It's a forward document
• Your performance will be evaluated by you on the quality of the document.
• Be great if this was the final proposal
• There is always room for improvement
• Used as a helper to start you off in the second semester
• If your making drastic changes to your project in 2nd semester they will ask you to change your proposal
• Exhibition will be around the 5th of June or the next week.
• Get user studies over and done with before this date as you'll have no time to evaluate.
• Use graphs, images etc where appropriate!
• Make sure visuals are of extremely high quality
• Present it well, format, type (consistency)
• 1 and a half spacing times roman
  
• Sub headings, headings, consistent!!!
• Keep control of style of your document!
• Don't hand up something that is visually unattractive.
• They want more than a proposal
• They want us to engage with the technology
• Start using design methodologies!
• Sketch pads, note pads, videos, collection of demo files that you've executed!
• Proposal document shouldn't be the only element your handing up in Dec.
• Referencing something that you've created, you can talk about the work where appropriate, and then reference
• You can also reference films

Aim

• First body of text when the reader reads your document (will assess quality of pro pro on the aim- this shows the importance of the aim)
• Every key area of your project should be introduced in the aim.
• Should not be described here.
• Everything further on in the doc is for you to argue ..this is the most appropriate medium to use because..
• Ask family to read your aim then ask them to reitterate it to you. If they tell you what your doing correctly then aim is getting there.
• Needs to be 150 words(so your introducing the various aspects of your project, don't describe why!)
• It should not be your opinion
• Doc overall should be of an objective proposal that will be completed made by a body of work.
• Don't say "I think" don't be in first person!
• No I/We!!!! The project team-if you want to reference us!
• It was tested instead of I/We!
• Not My project - THE PROJECT
• Stylistic approach - title your document - helps structure. You can then refer back to the name.
• Alternative advice will be given-it's up to us to see what we want to do from this

Objectives

• Five objectives each!
• Developing a writing skill in writing proposal
• Needs to go through many iterations to get it correct.
• When analyzing obj - smart?
• Specific
• Measurable - can you measure the success or not and what can you measure it against. Create/Submit a written report to understand the workings of blackrock castle. Action Verb Objective!
• Achievable - flying to the moon - dramatic but unachievable.
• Realistic
• Time Managed - Is there a completion for this??
• Not task related - a distinct area within your project.
• Will 20% of my time get this objective done -yes - then it's not an objective!
• Hierarchy
• If your successful in these they will meet your aim

Conceptual Background

• You give context to your project
• Your putting yourself within an area
• A domain that is out there already
• Cultural sociological background
• They must get a clear understanding of what your project is about
• Make sure to reference!!!! Any fact must be backed up with a reference!!!!
• SEM/Harvard method - every reference is a number and references are at the end. Numbers in [square brackets].
• Impossible to get around turn around!!! DON"T PLAGIARIZE!!!
• Target Audience is to be put in here.

Project Description

• From general broad statements into the more specific of the document
• Could be very explicit about what or project is going to be
• Where its going to be located, what technologies your using etc.
• Give two or 3 examples of possible implementations of my aim if your project is not specific or if it's not clear.
• Worthy of four months of work
• Give the reader a deep understanding of what it is your going to do.

Research & Design methodologies

• forward looking document
• Everything your writing about will happen in the 2nd semester
• Proposing what are the method techniques that will be used int he 2nd semester and how will they benefit your project, how is it going to move your project forward.
• Should be very personal to your project.
• Design methodologies - what methods are you going to utilize to move your project forward at the start or to evaluate the effectiveness or the quality at the end
• Declare specific objectives - try not to use a survey/questionnaire if you have no reason to. if you can declare why you need to use these then it will be utilized because we have thought about it. It have to reference a part of your project
• You can incorporate your objectives into your research & design methodologies. They can clearly see that we have thought about these objectives as it shows that we have thought about what we need to do and how we're going to do it.
• We need to know what techniques we're going to use in the 2nd semester.
• Person got on so well that they could refer to a document to see where they should be now: Tourism in touch! multi touch table that was to be used inside in hotel lobbies so people could plan what they're going to do that day.

Time Scales

• Gantt chart
• Not so specific that it's every single task your going to do
• It gives the reader the understanding of how long it's going to take you to do your project
• Design phase, other phases all incorporated into your time scales
• Analytical phase
• What are the methodologies to carry out specific areas/phases.
• Mark it from Jan to start of June on Gantt chart / Feb to May
• officially on module for 13 weeks, practically we'll be working on this project for 23 weeks!
• Get on top of it early!
• You can become very distant from your project over Christmas so keep looking at it and develop it!!