Keywords
|
| Chords, Platform, Social, Interaction, Event, Assignment, Discussions, Educational Material |
INTRODUCTION
|
| The software product being developed is named Chords. This product is basically a web application which will be beneficial to school students. The Users (Schools, Student, Teachers and Parents) who use this website can interact with each other and share their ideas, educational methods and study skills. Using discussion forum provided by the website, user can discuss various technical and non-technical topics among themselves. Schools can organize events in which other schools can participate. Student will be able to avail assignments provided by teacher which can have remark of teacher as well as parent. Hence, parents can easily keep track of their son/daughter’s progress. The students, teachers as well as parents can share posts and comment on them. In addition to posts various types of educational material, quizzes etc. can be shared and the accessibility can be specified. What triggered the idea of this application is that most of the people have started using social networking sites over the internet, Facebook being the most popular in India. Moreover, the young generation is using it on a relatively larger scale. So, taking into account this fact, the application targets these users. |
LITERATURE SURVEY
|
| Current generations of students are growing up with the internet as an integral, central and normalized part of their lifestyle. Many school students have had access to personal computers in their homes. In coming of age concurrently with the internet and in confluence with the economic boom the student group that now dominates the majority of Facebook commands both a native and latent understanding of these technologies [4]. Growing up hand in hand with the internet has impacted youth perceptions and factors of socialization in regards to self, family, real communities, and virtual communities. Greater reliance on online interactions for social and emotional support was in some cases, found useful for high school students [2]. New forms of media enact as a conduit to understanding, an altered form of language, and a robust platform for both personal and cultural development. Social network sites can serve as direct and indirect supports for learning, such as providing an emotional outlet for school-related stress, validation of creative work, peer-alumni support for school-life transitions, and help with school-related tasks [1]. Social networking may have started out as a way for students to keep track of their friends, but it has expanded in just about every direction. These days, you can find at least one related social networking site on just about any general topic, including music, photography, television, books, shopping, and bookmarking. But it isn’t all fun games. Job sites like Monster and LinkedIn began the evolution from social networking to professional networking. |
| Here’s an overview of the major academic networking sites and their features [3]:- |
| All of the above websites are connected with academics but none of them is solely targeted on overall development of all the schools across a country, in a way that our system “Chords” is! |
BACKGROUND
|
A. Registration
|
| All the users of Chords first need to register in the website. |
| The registration process is as follows: |
| 1) Schools from various regions register in the site. |
| 2) Site admin verifies the schools and approve their requests and add the school in one cluster. |
| 3) School admin get all these details in email and using given credentials, she/he is able to log in the system. |
| 4) Teachers, students and parents sign up their accounts with chords using a unique school pin code. |
| 5) Respective School administrators approve their accounts. |
| 6) Now the school, teachers, students in that school and parents are part of Chords and they have access to different functionalities provided by Chords. |
| 7) For every new user, profile is created in Chords and all the users which belong to same cluster can interact with each other using various platforms. |
B. Cluster
|
| A cluster is a group of schools grouped on some definite criteria. For the school registering for site, it is mandatory to get attached with any cluster. Site admin assigns the cluster to school during registration process. School has rights to get release from existing cluster depending on the feasibility. |
PLATFORMS FOR INTERACTION
|
| After getting the login details, a user can login to the website and interact with the various platforms which are as follows: |
A. Discussion Forum
|
| Each User initiates posts and discuss topics, queries as per different level of accessibility which is decided by the person who initiates it. |
| ? Public: Accessible to any one |
| ? Access restricted to Cluster |
| ? Access restricted to School |
| ? Access restricted to Role (Only teacher can view the forum or only students can view) |
B. Sharing Quizzes
|
| Each user is provided a quiz generation module where he/she can create quizzes by their own, both teachers as well as students. He/ She then assign those quizzes to his/her friends. |
C. Sharing Assignments
|
| Teachers from schools in cluster assign various assignments to Students in cluster. For students, such assignments appear as “To Do Items”. Students also get deadlines along with it. Students complete the assignments and submit them to teachers. Then teachers post their remarks on the assignment. Parents are also able to view status of the assignments and give remarks on it. |
D. Organizing Event
|
| Schools in cluster plan events for other schools in the cluster e.g. drawing competition, workshop and exchange tour. Everyone can view these events. They participate in them and post their comments. |
E. Sharing Educational material
|
| Chords have a space in system where everyone in cluster posts: |
| ? Blogs |
| ? E-books |
| ? Files |
| ? Audio Files |
| ? Video Files |
| The person posting decides accessibility of the material, if the material should be viewed by specific group of people or all. Viewers download & comment on the material. All material which is being posted is moderated by some moderator assigned according to the role. For students, the material is moderated by teachers. For teachers, it is done by school admin and for School; it is done by site admin. |
F. Monthly/ half yearly web meetings
|
| Teachers/ students who are parts of chords are able to conduct web meetings with each other. They can plan various sessions on specific topic and invite users. |
G. Gaming zone
|
| Chords also have its own gaming zone where users have access to different interesting games. Chords user is able to play games, records scores, share scores and challenge their friends. |
BENEFITS
|
| The system is beneficial to both the students and school in a great way. The benefits are as follows: |
| 1) It is a great platform for mutual learning for students from anywhere in the country. |
| 2) The system will provide a means for students from schools across the country to expose their skills and talent. |
| 3) Schools get to know what all progress is going on in other schools leading to overall development of all schools. |
| 4) Students, Teachers and Parents can share a common platform of interaction which can contribute to overall development of students. |
| 5) Parents can keep track of day to day progress of students and activities in school easily. |
LIMITATIONS
|
| Every system, in spite of being beneficial in some context to its users, does have some limitations in some other context. On the same ground, Chords also has some limitations as follows: |
| 1) Students and Schools in the rural areas may not possess the required infrastructure like PC’s or sufficient Internet connection. |
| 2) Moderation of posts at each level puts limitations to real-time publishing of posts. |
| 3) Delay in moderation of posts may reduce importance of some posts which are time dependent. |
| 4) Use of the system is dependent upon the activeness of the responsible authorities at the school level. |
CONCLUSION
|
| The existing systems are connected with academics, but none of them connects schools across a country on such a wide scale, so that both the students and schools from diverse areas can interact with each other and share their ideas, educational methods and study skills, leading to overall development of them. Thus this system will surely set a new trend in the social networking industry. |
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
|
| We express our sincere thanks to all those who have provided us with valuable guidance towards the completion of this project and paper as a part of the syllabus of the degree course. |
Tables at a glance
|
 |
| Table 1 |
|
References
|
- BernadettKoles and Peter Nagy, "Facebook usage patterns and school attitudes", Multicultural Education & Technology Journal, Vol. 6 Iss: 1pp. 4 – 17, 2012.
- Christine Greenhow, "Online social networks and learning", On the Horizon, Vol. 19 Iss: 1 pp. 4 – 12, 2011.
- WEB: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites
- WEB: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.in/2011/08/top-20-social-networks-for-education.html
|
Menu