Intro
Background Research
Target Audience
Technical Specs
Features of the Site
Marketing Strategy
Funding
Conclusion
Works Cited
O’Brien . Curtis . Valentine . Schulz . Melnick
Intro
Teaching language is incredibly difficult. Traditionally, tools to assist teachers in developing language curricula were based around presenting students with text and guiding them through it, but research has shown that relating language to images can be more effective. Learning resources such as picture books help, but teachers lack a consistent, precise, and effective unified pictorial dictionary. Traditional visual learning resources can also be dull and unstimulating to learners – especially those over the age of five (Page). Panache exists to solve that problem. By creating a universal and accessible online visual dictionary for teachers to use and students to reference, Panache will help everyone who is trying to teach and learn a language. The concept behind an illustrated word bank is reflective design, where we see vocabulary, “as alterable rather than immutable”(Kraus). It will be a beautiful database full of illustrations from artists around the world, and within time we hope that Panache will not only become a go-to resource for students and teachers but also a creative online destination for anyone interested in language, drawing, or speaking.
Background Research
To comprehend the meaning of a certain term requires more than being simply able to define it. Here, comprehension includes understanding the underlying complex knowledge structure and being able to explain this information to a recipient. (Jucks & Paus).
General
Research shows that terms are stored, categorized and defined in our minds with a variety of attributes, most notably visuals. In fact, “visual language is connected to verbal language for interpretation, decoding and reading images and symbols.” (Charlease) In this way, “images or illustrations create a story or spark a past memory that help readers bridge new information to known information” (Charlease) Our product hopes to capitalize on this connection in order to assist individuals of all ages and backgrounds increase their word comprehension. While we acknowledge vocabulary knowledge is only but a part of reading comprehension, our product will focus on furthering the understanding of specific words because, “reading activity starts bottom-up with the identification of individual words, and empirical findings confirm that this process is essential for reading comprehension” (Jucks & Paus). Visual learning is a vital tool in children’s pedagogy; children’s books, computer games and instructional toys all illustrate the importance of a visual aspect in apprehending basic reading and writing skills. Even Vannevar Bush states that the human mind “operates by association,” and by offering an image for students to refer to when thinking of a word, we’d create a link to make comprehension easier.
Adult and ESL Learners
When we first began developing Panache we immediately knew it would be undeniably helpful to childrens’ pedagogy. However, moving forward we realized this product would also be extremely useful for teaching children with disabilities, post secondary students and English as a Second Language (ESL) students of all ages. It is proven that adult and ESL learners respond well to visual and graphic pedagogy. Due to the fact that most of them are fluent in either another language or in the speaking and listening elements of their own language, using visuals to translate objects and ideas they are already familiar with is an extremely successful way of teaching (Auberach). A 1968 University of Delaware study found that the use of images helps individuals learn second languages more consistently than exclusively using text. The study’s only qualm was the potential for a “meaning evoked by the picture [that] may not be the same as that intended” and that maybe “communication by word is more reliable,” albeit more inefficient (Panache mitigates the qualm because it shows both the image and the word) (Deno). However, most traditional textbooks are not proficient in providing the kinds of resources that these students need. In traditional teaching textbooks, the pictures can be generic and learners from different cultural backgrounds do not necessarily see all pictures the same way. Bruski talks about an example where he showed some of his Somalian students a picture of a birthday cake in an attempt to teach them vocabulary and they had no idea what he was talking about. They had never seen cake in that shape before and birthdays were not generally celebrated in their culture. The picture was useless because the lenses through which adult learners see the world can be very different from the ones brought forth by the educators. Because of this, we believe that the diverse and global elements of our product will be extremely successful with adult learners. We will be able to include complex, interesting illustrations from artists all over the world, helping students to learn vocabulary through images they understand, appreciate and connect with. Auerbach talks a lot about how adult learners thrive when they are allowed to bring their own life experiences into their learning, so hopefully our culturally diverse database of images and cartoons will help the users connect with the teaching in a more personal way.
Children
Many studies have shown that using visual aids are vital when teaching students language and vocabulary. One study used “visual aids to illustrate oral and written language”, another used “gestures, movements or facial expressions to demonstrate meaning” and another changed the “visual arrangement of wording when key information is given.” (McDonnell and others) These strategies were put in action by the study (and the 500 teachers used) to help improve the reading of students at an early age. This emphasis on “emergent literacy” is extremely important when it comes to our society because “being a successful early reader is closely related to overall school achievement, social adjustment, avoidance of problems with the legal system, school completion and adult earnings and postsecondary educational opportunities.” (National Institute on Child Health and Human Development [NICHD], 2000; Whitehurst & Masetti, 2004).
Students with Learning Disabilities
Einstein was right when he said, “it is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” With that in mind, teachers are only able to instill “creative expression and knowledge” when they have the necessary tools in hand to do so. Despite the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act in 2004, which requires that all taxpaying Americans have access to a free and appropriate public education, many Americans still feel the need to send their children to specialized private institutions in order for their child to have access to an appropriate education (NCLD Editorial Team). We at Panache find this unacceptable seeing as children in the United States who should have access to a free education are forced to pay up to $50,000 to have an effective one (www.thewindwardschool.org) Take the following quote out of an excerpt from “Improving Education Outcomes With Students With Disabilities” published by The National Council On Disability, “We’re very concerned about the unintended consequences of holding schools accountable for [the disability] population. We’re sensitive to the potential for pushing students out, for scapegoating students, for identifying these students as the reason that a school or a district isn’t measuring up.” (Mitchell D. Chester, assistant superintendent for policy development in the Ohio education department, cited in Education Week, 2004b, p. 16). Judging by this statement it is safe to assume that public schools, despite being required to provide access to specialized programs for LD students, may not have the educational resources to develop these programs.
Target Audience
Children
One of Panache’s target users is ideally a student in the orthographic stage of reading development. It is in this stage where “whole words, morphemes, and print patterns become increasingly familiar [and] knowledge of these larger units of print allows students to read efficiently and spend less and less attention on sounding words out letter by letter” (Moats). Panache will help rapidly increase a child’s ability to read and comprehend words through its offering of multi-media illustrations of select words in the English language. Inline with the Scarborough Reading Rope model, which is a literacy-teaching model utilized by specialized private educational institutions to help students develop the ability of skilled reading, Panache’s multi-media illustrations target both the upper (language comprehension) and lower strand (word recognition).
Teachers
Public school teachers and special education instructors are an equally important target user group. We at Panache envision teachers involving themselves with our site through a number of specialized instructional resources that will help them introduce our helpful tool into their curriculum. Teachers need Panache as much as Panache needs teachers. Textbooks are expensive, and it is no mystery that it is common to find underfunded public schools (Pelto, Lecker). Panache works as a free database that will assimilate easily into the school environment the only tool needed being a computer or even a smartphone. It is for this reason that Panache will ultimately help public schools and teachers alike by giving them a free instructional tool that can help them teach and develop specialized literacy programs. Ultimately, we at Panache want to get our database into the hands of as many students we possibly can in order to help them develop their literacy abilities, and teachers are one of the best ways to do this.
Adult Learners and ESL
Panache will additionally seek to appeal to adult learners and those who have english as their second language. Comprehension in literacy is essential for any adult seeking employment, which is why it is paramount that Panache target adults who have not properly attained their full literacy potential. With the necessary skills provided by Panache, adults who were struggling before to find a job, where reading and writing skills in english were necessary, will be given the tools to do so more efficiently and more effectively. This same reason applies to those who speak english as their second language. Not only does proficiency in English while living in America help assimilate into the culture but also ensures a wider pool of opportunity, a feature in which America is known for. Both Adult learners and ESL students need Panache and we are more than available to give these students ample opportunity to succeed in literacy.
Technical Specs
Panache is a series of dictionary-like entries, each composed around one word. From the start it will be accessible both as a website and an Apple and Android app. Websites are nearly ubiquitous, and can be accessed from most electronic devices.
For the website, each entry would probably be around 10 megabytes of data, as the images are relatively simple and make up the bulk of the necessary storage. Given the number of entries we are aiming for, this could add up to hundreds of gigabytes of data. Fortunately, data storage is inexpensive, server space is easier to come by than ever, and there are even potential DDoS protective measures which can be cheap for non profit businesses.
In addition to our website we feel an app would be extremely useful as many students, especially adult learners, have access to smartphones without necessarily being familiar with how to use a computer. Another benefit of a mobile app is that you can access the most topical entries while offline. Given the probable size of the database, it would be unreasonable to expect us to be able to fit the entire thing in a mobile app, however, the app could have the ability to download groups of entries to local storage so that they can be used without internet access.
Features of the Site
Usabililty and Navigation
During our research we found a paper published by three professors at University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL) which has really helped guide us in the preliminary design of our website. The paper describes UHCL’s attempts to define a set of guidelines that would ensure the quality of e-learning courses. They based their research on UHCL’s own process when designing their e-learning course and developed a number of different tools that developers might use when creating a quality e-learning course. While they by no means came up with a definitive answer to the question of what makes a quality online course, they did make a big step in highlighting some of the key features to focus on when designing any kind of academic online service. Table 1 shows the elements of development that UHCL found to be the most important and we will be using many of these to guide the beginnings of our website design process (Kidney, Cummings, Boehm).
One of the most important features to consider when designing our website is going to be navigation. With a large database of information it is going to be vital to make sure we have well functioning, interesting categories and an incredibly capable menu system. We want our website to be structured so that information lookup is easy and the site is intuitively navigable (Burrell, Sodan).
A study carried out by Nielsen and Sano (Nielsen, Sano) showed that uniformity, consistency and “uncluttered” design were the keys to a well designed website. They said that “the designer’s job is to facilitate perceptual processing and user effectiveness” and one of the key ways to do this is through intuitive navigation techniques (Burrell, Sodan). They also highlighted the importance of designing a site that worked in a similar way to other sites so users feel they know how to use it. We think for our site this will be particularly important. One of our key target audiences is students with learning disabilities and students learning English for the first time. As a result, the site needs to be as simple and easy to navigate as possible, therefore creating no more obstacles to the information than may already be there due to the users disability or language and culture barrier.
Due to the fact that our website will be compiled from different illustrations from illustrators all around the world, it is going to be important for us to try and create as much consistency in the design of the site so as to create a cohesive net around the diverse content of our site.
Due to the vast amount of content on our site we are going to have to include a number of different navigation options. We will start with the more conventional navigation tools such as a search bar with predictive results and a front page with a selection of our favourite images, however we will also design a number of alternative ways to use the website that we think will benefit teachers, students and all our other users. Categories are going to play a large part in the navigation design of our website. A study conducted by Borges, Morales & Rodriguez found that alphabetical listing of pages by topic was easier to use and more intuitive than a table of contents style. However we think it will be important to our site to have the option for viewing illustrations both alphabetically and by a number of different topics. All uploaded illustrations will be divided into different categories using a tag system. For example one illustration may be listed under several tags:
- Illustrator.
- Nationality of illustrator.
- Level of difficulty.
- Type of word (noun, adjective, verb, etc).
- Associations made with the word (family, country, work, home, etc).
- Year it was made.
We think the best way to organise our categories will be using the style of “Combination Top and Left Side Bar”. This is a logical style often used by large institutions as it permits organising large amounts of content (Burrell, Sodan. Both the top side bar and left side bar are viewed as primary and most often the top of the screen is used for “main level” links while the left side bar is reserved for more immediate areas.
The top bar will feature our most more general and administrative tabs. These will include an a link to an ‘About’ page, a link to a page with all of our teaching resources and a submit function.
Most of our navigation options will be in our left hand side bar. At the top we will have a search bar followed by the option to view all words in an A-Z display. Immediately underneath this we will three subheadings of Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. We will then have a broader list of filters for users to refine their searches and the illustrations that they view. These filters will be arranged by topic including subjects such as ‘animal’, ‘family’, ‘body parts’ etc. We may also create individual galleries displaying curated selections of words, for example “the best words to use on holiday” or “the best words to use to insult someone”.
Instructions and Faculty
As our site is not an actual e-learning course, the aim will be not to have any instructions on the website. We hope that the design will be clear enough for users to pick up on what the site is aiming to do fairly quickly and we do not want it to feel like a textbook or an online course. There will however be a few things we will work into our design to make sure the site is entirely understood by the users and that schools and education centres can get the most out of the site.
About page – The site will have an about page which will include our mission for the website and some different things we feel the site can be used for. We will not want this page to be prescriptive or too instructional but we want it to inspire users to continue to explore the website in a free and unlimited way.
Walkthrough – We will develop a walkthrough that would appear the first time a new user used the site. The walkthrough would highlight the functionality of the website in a few easy steps and would only need to be seen once. We will make this using Quicktime and it will be an effective and easy way to get users involved immediately.
Tools for faculty and learning facilities – There will also be a tab with a link to detailed instructions and resources which will guide instructors on how they can use the site to best aid their pupils and how it can be a key part of their classroom.
Submit – This section will provide a space for budding illustrators to share their creations with the administrative committee.
Additional Features.
Audio Player – Panache’s dictionary not only has illustrations of the word, it also has an audio player embedded in that illustration that when clicked states the word in question as well as sounds it out phonetically. Thus, Panache not only targets literary knowledge and vocabulary, both concepts that contribute to the development of language comprehension, but also phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition, all concepts that contribute extensively to the development of a child’s ability to recognize words.
Comments – While we want Panache to be open and contributable, we aren’t interested in comment systems. Instead, we hope to opt for systems that allow people to submit their own images to an oversight committee who would approve the highest quality and most relevant images. Similarly, we will have a system for teachers to submit their own collections of entries with some commentary about how it was used. The most well received curricula would be highlighted on the website for other teachers and students to use.
Marketing Strategy
Our product is unprecedented and will revolutionize the way we learn words. Currently the only tools on the market similar to ours are the Merriam Webster online visual dictionary and The Visual Dictionary. Both of these existing websites grasp the very skeleton of what Panache seeks to be however, both fail to encompass our global perspective and innovative and accessible design. Panache will surely add the needed panache to the web world of visual dictionaries with the eclectic mix of drawings. Panache will encompass a diverse range of words for basic readers to more advanced learners thus creating a strong divide between the products of today and our product of tomorrow.
Our interactive product will reach out to a diverse demographic, which will affect our marketing strategies. We plan on targeting our product towards educational institutions specifically.
Schools.
Our marketing strategy for educational institutions is a direct approach where representatives will be making personal visits to elementary, middle and high schools to show our product to professional educators first hand. As our site is online we will also reach out electronically to gauge preliminary interest in our site and start spreading the world. In addition, our team members will be attending educational conferences in different parts of the country to generate awareness amongst a large spectrum of educators all at once. At these conferences we will arrive with the goal of drawing in as many interested schools and educators as possible. We will do this not only by our approachable nature but also customized Panache swag, of t shirts and pens. Generally, this demographic of people are more in tune with their academic lives and less with social media and technology which is why a personal and live presentation is more likely to succeed. The hands on approach here will also allow for these educators to understand the way our product works and will ensure its proper use. Once our entire database is available online and integrated into the classroom, any student of any age and learning capability can access it.
Adult Literacy
When accessing adult literacy programs we will use the same approach as with previous educational institutions, Panache will target specific literacy programs as well as volunteers working in this field in order to ensure its benefit in these institutions and programs. With similar effects adults will now have an accessible and interactive way to learn new vocabulary even when not in class.
General Interest Readers and Writers
Lastly we will be marketing our product towards writers with an affinity towards learning new words, and expanding their vocabulary. Whether they want to access our product for poetry, songwriting, fiction or non -fiction writing, these users are bound to be part of a demographic that is more in touch with technology. With this in mind we will be marketing our product on the popular website Twitter under the sponsored tweets section. Our tweets will show up in users timelines who seem to be active on twitter and who follow other literary themed accounts. The fact the users have twitter will mean they are already wordsmiths and will benefit from our product. Twitter will also serve as a primary marketing platform for users studying for the SAT’s. As that demographic is mostly teenagers in Grade 12, these users are definitely in touch with technology and will certainly benefit from our Twitter advertisements. Students studying for the SAT’s will also see Panache in their schools and the added marketing plug on twitter will increase their chances of gravitating towards our product.
With these marketing strategies in place Panache will enter the lives of young learners and old learners, curious learners and studios learners to create a more interactive, creative, and accessible learning environment.
Funding
Expenses
Illustrators – Part of our expenses include paying our talented group of illustrators to build the Panache website and create its beautiful and eclectic aesthetic. We will be hiring small groups of illustrators at a time to complete bulk illustrations. This strategy is not only most effective for creating content for Panache but also most cost effective as we are able to get many illustrations at once for a fixed price rather than dragging the process out. We will be crowdsourcing our illustrators, thus making the process much more time and cost efficient. A lot of our hiring will be done online as we want our illustrators to come from as many diverse backgrounds as possible. In a world where many cultures are being forced to collide at a rapid pace, this would aid the new generation’s understanding and acceptance of the diverse population around them. It will help guarantee that cultural “knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual” (Bush). A considerable part of our budget will be allocated to hiring our illustrators both online and in our offices.
Management – Until the database is complete, we’ll need two full-time workers—one acting as CEO and the other as CTO (Chief Technology Officer). Everyone else—software developers, artists, and grant writers—can be part-time to cut costs. Once the site is built, there will be little maintenance to do and it wouldn’t make sense to have a full-time team. The majority of management costs reside in the initial construction and legal organization.
Server space – Server space is extremely cheap. Amazon offers huge amounts of storage for relatively small amounts of money, and hosting the entirety of Panache would not be a big financial burden. The potential larger expenditure would be dealing with server requests. Still, Amazon deals with those interactions for a relatively small amount of money, and all in all, the technical maintenance of a website is not going to be a huge concern as far as monetary resources is concerned.
Funding for Marketing – We have set aside $15,000 for our marketing plan and plan to use most of this money towards our web advertisements on Twitter. Our direct marketing will be run mostly off of our dedicated staff and volunteers who are committed to this product. Once our web database is fully functional that is when the main push for web advertising will take place and throughout the construction of our web database representatives will be making the sell to educational institutions. This will ensure that by the time Panache is fully functional we will already have users.
Grants
Government grants – We’ll begin by applying for a grant through the National Science Foundation (National Science Foundation), who funds “approximately 24 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America’s colleges and universities.” They have an annual budget of over $7.2B to spend each year, and this year have funded a variety of projects ranging from research studies to education programs revolving around math, with awards ranging from $40k to over a million dollars (National Science Foundation). Additonally, we can use official search databases such as grants.gov to identify the best possible grants we are eligible for.
Private grants – Private funding and grants are great options for non-profit organisations and once we have established our site and proven what an asset it is to education we will definitely look into approaching some individuals and organisations in search of private funding. We are extremely aware of the issues that private funding can cause and because of this we are making it a policy never to accept continued funding and only single payment grants. The dangers of relying on ongoing private funding is that it can become condition based and the donor or donors can start to make their funding conditional on changes within the organisation (Jang and Feicock). As a result of this we would be very upfront with our potential investors, letting them know we would only accept their grant if it came with no strings attached. We will also be looking into applying for grants from organisations such as The Gates Foundation who offer grant opportunites to hundreds of US non-profit organisations (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). Additionally, the Australia-based World Literacy Foundation offers small grants to any group of individuals working to increase literacy.
Small donations – Global literacy is a compelling cause and a strong one that people want to fight for. Our start up costs will cover flyers that we will send to local neighborhoods that might be willing to donate.. We will start from the ground up collecting donations at every turn possible, canvassing streets, and sending out flyers. Once our prototype is working we can take the product to conferences, which provides another opportunity for donations. This should create a substantial base for hiring illustrators and paying off potential loans, as well as expenses of the website.
Conclusion
Language is more than just communication; it can be a creative outlet and a formidable expressive tool. Without sufficient mastery, however, not only is language unable to transcend communication, but it becomes a challenge. We at Panache have put in the work and research into ensuring the development of an intuitive, versatile, and if we do say so ourselves, brilliant educational tool. With your support we can make all the aforementioned facets of Panache a reality, and furthermore, bring to fruition a reality in which the English language can be comprehended much more easily. Join us in our quest to combat the struggle of literacy we all come to bouts with from time to time and make reading and writing that much more fun! Thank you for taking the time to consider our proposal and we hope you enjoy the ride, it is sure to be a fun one!
Works Cited
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