Personnel
1. Primary Applicant: Briefly describe the role of the Primary Applicant. Max 50 words.
David Pepper: David is the founder of the Novice Learners' Network, and the content owner of its first module of content: NovicePC, a set of modules that help PC computer novices make progress in the journey from novice to intermediate PC computer user.
Describe the most innovative learning environment in which you have participated. Max 200 words.
In grade school I studied Jerome Bruner's Man A Course of Study (MACOS) curriculum. MACOS was an innovative system of learning in which students explored cultural anthropology from a holistic, multi-dimensional approach that replaced didactic teaching with an effort to simply facilitate the learners' natural process of learning.
The year that of the MACOS program, it seemed that almost every activity of my fourth grade class in some way related to it. We studied the social organization of a baboon troop, and then Native American Eskimos, through exercises exploring their culture through music, architecture, environmental science, movies, and artifacts. The MACOS class exercises were complemented by an elaborate card-based learning system, which was color coded by topic and was structured hierarchically.
The Novice Learners' Network emulates MACOS' faith in the natural learning process. The NLN will entice learners and educators to browse from one module of content to another, appreciating the myriad connections between them. The educators' and learners' communities add a participatory dimension to the NLN, engaging users with one another just as Bruner's MACOS positioned what was being studied within the group of learners rather than from an authoritative source.
Upload Résumé or Curriculum Vitae (CV)
Upload a résumé or CV. If applicable, include work history and selected publications, projects, awards. Include name at top. Maximum 2 pages.
2. Project Collaborators (if applicable)
**Résumé or curriculum vitae (CV)
** If applicable, include work history and selected publications, projects, awards. Include name at top. Maximum 2 pages.
Briefly describe the role of the project collaborators, if applicable. Max 350 words.
While there are no collaborators in the traditional sense, The Novice Learners' Network is a massively collaborative project. It falls well within the definition of "crowdsourcing", which is a neologism for allowing a large group of volunteers to take control of a project which might otherwise be done by employees or contractors. Synonyms for crowdsourcing include "community-based design" and "distributed participatory design".
Crowdsourced content development has had a remarkable effect on knowledge creation and transfer. The success of blogs in the media space that was once occupied by professional news organizations is one example. Wikipedia's rise to becoming one of the world's most visited websites is another.
3. Project Staff. Max 350 words.
Provide name, titles, and brief job descriptions for other staff to be paid through the project budget. Describe the project personnel qualifications relevant to the proposed project.
The following three paragraphs show the parts of the project that are to be done for pay by people other than the director. In each case, no vendor has formally agreed to do this work, so naming them is not possible. However, the rates that are quoted and the breakdown of tasks has been researched, and these provisions should make the project successful.
Localization Experts
Paradoxically, "Localization" means making content usable in many languages. Localization experts will provide 1000 hours of translation services and 50 hours of localization consulting. This is the most important investment in the budget because it will be used to multiply the audience of content by projecting it into the media-spaces of other language groups. Without this investment, a unit of content would only have the language-group audience of the content creator. With localization it will benefit many more people.
Software Development Experts
Software development experts will supply 100 hours of technical publishing and 100 hours of database programming services. This contribution is intended to help with difficult design problems and to help establish and implement best practices which will make the most of the site's software and database design. The ratio of software development expert hours to project director hours is 2/16. This shows that the overwhelming majority of software design work is to be done by the project director, with key contributions from experts.
Graphic Design and Creative Experts
Graphic design and creative experts will supply a total of 335 hours of services in website design, illustration, technical writing, and photography. This investment is also critical to the success of the project. The strategic use of illustrations and custom photography leads users to the conclusion that a website is trustworthy. Like audio quality in video, creative content on the web is used to instantaneously evaluate the quality of a site. This behavior is called "thin-slicing" by Malcolm Gladwell in "Blink", and it is one of the greatest constraints in the web medium.
