5CTA1024-0906-Web Communities and Interactive Cultures

As I am making an app aiming at Primary School students, I decided to take a look at existing apps to help me gain an understanding on what designs, features and attributes help attract this target audience to these apps and how I can also implement some of these conventions in my own project to make it effective. Example 1 This is the front page of an app I found online called 'Curious George - Curious About Shapes & Colors'. From this simple piece it only uses a primary colour (yellow) as its background. I feel this is because it makes it look bright and subconsciously makes the user fall in this frame of mind. I also notice that they have used different font patterns and font colours for the title of the app. I believe this is to keep the user engaged as it doesn't bore them with the same style throughout making it standout a bit more and making it more intriguing for the user. Example 2 This is a page inside another app I managed to find online although I ...

Continuing from the previous blog post, I also learnt that 'they also learn best through doing - active learning - and play is the best way of offering them these hands on experiences. Whether reconstructing real situations or building imaginary worlds, children can develop their thinking, language, imagination, speaking and listening skills through creative play, which prepares them for communicating and interacting effectively with others'. Young children learn a huge amount through their senses which become finely tuned long before they may have mastered speaking or reasoning skills. They need lots of relevant opportunities to explore the objects and materials around them with all of their senses. This helps them to construct and test theories, make decisions, overcome challenges, foster empathy, build resilience and solve problems for themselves so that they can become independent, confident and competent individuals.

As well as finding out information on how the Internet works in the way it works and why we choose to use it in the manner in which we do, I believe it is important to find out how children learn effectively as this is primarily targeted to them. According to 'Earlyarts', 'young children learn holistically, which means they learn from everything all at the same time. Something they learn from one experience will connect with something else seemingly unrelated and form a connection which builds context and meaning (which is why it's so important not to separate teaching into subject areas too early on).

The next subject on the internet I chose to look at was the evolution in how we humans use the internet from the time it was founded till todays society and time as well as why we choose to use the internet in the ways we do use it. According to 'Top 10 List' the top ten of the internet is 'communication, research, education, financial transaction, real time updates, leisure, online booking, job searching, blogging and shopping'. Out of the list I believe that young school children tend to use the internet more for communication with other people of the same age and background and for leisure (which include social media). According to 'One Poll' there are a number of reasons in which we use social media a lot on the internet. Just to list a few as reference to this claim; Social interaction - social media, not surprisingly, allows people to be social. They meet new people and keep in touch with friends, acquaintances and family. Entertainment - games, ...

As my objective for this project was to create an app for young school kids to learn about the internet, I thought it would be a wise investment for me to take time to research how the internet actually works as well as finding interesting facts, opinions and insights about the internet. The first thing I decided to research was how the internet actually works and functions to the interface we know today and manage to find some valuable information. According to 'Internet Society' "the Internet works because open standards allow every network to connect to every other network. This what makes it possible for everyone to create content, offer services, and sell products without requiring permission from a central authority."