Skype in the Classroom

Before the late-1990s, dial-up was the standard way of connecting to the Internet. Accessing the Internet was a conscious action that involved negotiation between family members living in the same house. The nostalgic dial-up modem sound of Pshhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchchchchchchchcch… was the bridge between the analogue and the digital. Today, we are living in a world where the Internet and connected devices have become ubiquitous. The excitement around connecting to websites has disappeared and the underlying mechanism of the internet is hidden.

A pavement brings to life an old emirati tradition in a way that gets strangers to create music together. For centuries, Dubai fishermen made a living diving into the sea looking for pearls, known as the “local gold”. Pearl Divers is an interactive plaza dotted with pearl-like sensors that play music with participant’s shadows. Paying tribute to this ancient tradition, passersby trigger original Bayati and Hijaz melodies, bringing magic and connection to the heart of an emerging neighbourhood.

Human trafficking affects 20-30 million victims worldwide. Over 70% of these are women who are forced to work in factories, farms, homes, and brothels around the world. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of minors are considered to be at-risk for commercial sexual exploitation. Victims are rarely “rescued” from trafficking. Most survivors extricate themselves, and are immediately dependent on a variety of support services for housing, medical attention, and emotional care.

Eye Conductor helps people express themselves through music using only their eyes and facial gestures.By translating eye gaze and facial expression into music, Eye Conductor enables people who are otherwise unable to express themselves creatively.

No longer a privilege for the few, access to 17 of the world's most treasured museums is now available to anyone with an internet connection. Google Art Project welcomes us to the halls of London's Tate Britain, Madrid's Reina Sofia, St. Petersburg's Hermitage. See The Birth of Venus in Florence then Starry Night in New York -- from a curator's perspective, down to each microscopic crack in the canvas. The remarkably elegant and intuitive interface feels perfectly on-brand for Google, without distracting from the visually rich content on the site. Visitors can move through the museums on an interactive floor plan, choose the works they'd like to see and read informative curator's notes. It's immersive. Personal. Beyond digital, it's a real-life experience.

Algramo is representative as it proposes a new way of selling basic products in neighborhood stores by breaking the traditional logistics chain. Algramo seeks to solve the “poverty tax” which occurs when families, due to liquidity problems, can not buy in large formats and buy in small formats which are up to 40% more expensive due to logistical inefficiencies, marketing and packaging.

Pas a Pas is an interactive educational tool that enables children to learn and experiment through animation. It is designed to support and integrate in to an existing curriculum and is not meant to alter the natural learning pace of children. Pas a Pas incorporates physicality and the animated outcome of stop motion animation to bridge the gap between abstract concepts from maths, physics or arts - usually represented by graphs, equations or words - and reality. Pas a Pas contributes to an education that integrates 'play' and 'create' in to the learning process.Due to the inherent tangibility of stop motion animation, the concept fits into Montessori education methods - it is aligned with the idea of self-directed learning, indirect teaching and multi-age grouping.

MusicTongue is a tongue-training game App designed for middle-aged and elderly people. The purpose of the training is to retard the decline of mouth function, reduce the risk of choking and improve the quality of life of the elderly. The game can be played on phone or tablets, and through image recognition technology, the game can identify whether the player’s current mouth movements are correct through the front camera; the movements during training are designed by nursing experts according to the《Dysphagia Care Manual》of the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Taiwan; the rules of MusicTongue are similar to “Just Dance”, players will do the training action with the music. After the game is finished players will be able to check the leaderboard and view their exercise records on the main screen. From the reaction time and correct movement rate, elders can see if they have improved.

The Teaching Channel website creates a much-needed resource for time-strapped teachers in all stages of education and all types of schools, helping them find useful examples of teaching methods along with the support materials they need to implement these methods into their own classrooms. Teaching Channel enables them to get support and inspiration from their peers, with the eventual aim of instilling pride in those who are engaged in what is often a difficult but essential profession. It reinforces the importance of the craft of teaching by delivering content in a high-quality experience not often associated with educational resources on the web. We also realize that the discussion and information that enables teachers to improve their craft carries the most meaning when shared with other teachers that share similar teaching environments such as class size, subject of focus, or grade level. This insight forms the foundation for the design of the community features within the website, ensuring that teachers can easily find other teachers like them, and "follow" and learn from these similar teachers within discussions sparked by the video content.

“100 Years of Design” is a microsite created by Second Story to celebrate AIGA’s centennial and the profound impact of American design on our culture, bringing to life exemplary works from AIGA’s digital archives, insightful interviews with leading designers, and significant moments from the organization’s history.