Lets Make World a Better Place Innovative Product and Marketing Project

Project Title: Lets Make World A Better Place Innovative Product and Marketing Project Teachers Name: Bijal Damani School Name: The Galaxy Education System SN Kansagra School, Gujarat, India Phone No: Mobile: +91-9898043690, Landline: (0281)2479049 Email Id: bijaldamani@gmail.com, bijal.damani@tges.org Website: http://sites.google.com/site/bijaldamaniseclassroom/Home/ Project Overview
An idea can change your life!!! But how many of us can come up with such bright and sprightly ideas. In this project, students of Grade 11-12 study the concept of Advertising and Marketing in an innovative manner. Instead of teaching this topic in a very drab uninteresting manner, the teacher involved her students to think out of the box and create an innovative product to understand marketing concept. Although it was a purely content based project, the teacher designed this project through which skills needed by a 21st century business student are developed i.e., Innovative thinking, creativity, ICT skills, communication and lot of other soft skills. Through this project, the teacher tried to trigger students thinking and challenged them to think innovatively.

Teachers Biography
Ms. Bijal Damani works with the Galaxy Education System and teaches Commerce to Grade 11-12. She is a firm believer in Project Based Learning and integrates technology in st classroom practices for imparting 21 Century Skills in her students. She is the first Asian to receive the most outstanding international awards - Outstanding Young Educator Award from Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) in the year 2009 and Outstanding Teacher Award from International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) in 2011. She was also featured on the cover page of ISTEs monthly magazine Learning and Leading with Technology published in September 2011. Her Project had received a technology grant of $ 40,000 and HP EdTech Innovator Award 2010. Butler and Cooley Excellence in Teaching Award 2011 , Guruvar Outstanding Indian Teacher 2009 , TCS-Education World Best Teacher Award 2006, Rotary Vocation Award 2009 are some of the awards that has been conferred to her for her constant pursuit of excellence in classroom. Her E-classroom Masti Ki Pathshala provides guidance to students 24*7 . E-classroom can be accessed by any student or teacher from around the world and hence provides multiple learning opportunity to students irrespective of time and place. Not only that her students also prepare Electronic Portfolios containing all the activities and projects done throughout the year. Galaxy Bazaar, a social entrepreneurship project carried out by her students of Grade 11-12 is a perfect example of how Project Based Learning can be clubbed with Service Learning for overall growth of children. Students set up a bazaar before Diwali for three days and run the bazaar on purely commercial principles. The net profit, after deducting all expenses, is donated to sponsor education of 450 underprivileged students.

Project Goals
The main project goals were: To develop 21st Century Skills in students To making students Think innovatively and Out of Box , Let Students explore technological tools and its features

To make students aware about Marketing concepts and look at advertising from the perspective of a marketer To work in a team and learn to collaborate distribution of work was an essential part for the success of project for the team Learn the basic aspects of audio recording and film production To face the stage fear and work on public speaking and communication skills To acquire soft skills needed for professional presentations

Include details of the teacher or teachers who taught this learning project: experience, areas

Lets Make World a Better Place Innovative Product and Marketing Project
Planning and Origin of the Project
The class was divided into team of 12 students. Students were to come up with an innovative product idea, getting it registered with the class teacher. No overlapping ideas were allowed. Students would get the copy right on the idea the moment registration is approved. The task given to these teams was to come up with an innovative product idea, (innovation may be in packaging or the product itself). This made students think innovatively. It made them analyse the current products and think of ideas to make this world a better place. Once they decide on the product, next step was to market this product. Each student was to design o o o o o Newspaper advertisement Magazine advertisement Television advertisement Radio jingle and Product website

They were to compile the entire presentation in PowerPoint Producer which was shared with the judges. This Project is now in its second year. The project is a part of Student E- Portfolio for Grade 11-12 students. Being a Commerce/Business teacher, she wanted to design a project through which major skills needed by a 21st century business student are developed i.e., Innovative thinking, creativity, ICT skills, communication and soft skills in an interesting and engaging manner. Through this project, the teacher tried to trigger students thinking and challenged them to think innovatively. Though the project was completely student centered, teacher played a vital role in planning this project. Teachers job in this project was that of a Director of a movie that of a facilitator. Another task which required planning was to make sure that all teams meet deadlines and complete their work/tasks on time. Continuous one to one interaction and feedback helped the teams.

The Technology Context

Students were given the list of software which they could use for the project. If students wanted to use software other than the ones given in the list, they had to discuss it with the teacher to decide on the suitability of the software. Following tools were used: Microsoft Power Point Producer

Lets Make World a Better Place Innovative Product and Marketing Project
Microsoft Publisher Microsoft Word Microsoft Powerpoint Microsoft MovieMaker Corel Draw Wix for making flash based website Cam studio Auto play media studio Audacity for voice editing Video editing softwares

As a winner of HP EdTech Innovators Award 2010 the teacher had received a technology grant of $ 40,000 which included 20 HP Elite Laptops. Each team was given 1-2 HP Laptops and few laptops were brought in by the student participants as per their requirement. Every day, all 120 students would work in school for two hours. Since it was the flex time, all the team members could meet simultaneously (irrespective of the section they were in) and work on their team projects. Students would work on the project even on Sundays in order to meet the deadlines. Students used school wifi (per team two accounts had been created) and dongles to access internet, wherever needed. For shooting videos (for television commercial and for Microsoft PowerPoint producer), three cameras and tripods were made available to the students.

Project Management
The project has undergone the following stages: Stage 1: Formulating teams by students considering the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate. Students balanced the team by having some people with artistic sense, some good at technology, some good at arrangement, some good at script writing; some had good voice, some with acting talents etc. Stage 2: Brainstorming with students to come up with various potential products. Students would discuss and evaluate the pros and cons of variety of products and decide on one final product. Stage 3: Registering their unique and innovative product through mail. Each team had to register their product before they start working on their Marketing plan. If the product chosen already existed or was not innovative or was not socially useful, the product was rejected at the registration stage. Stage 4: Timeline was provided for completion of each stage. Teacher maintained a Completion Status Chart to keep track on the progress of the teams.

Lets Make World a Better Place Innovative Product and Marketing Project
Stage 5: Company name was decided and Logos were designed. Designation of each member was decided and Letter head, Visiting cards etc were designed. Stage 6: Students worked on Newspaper and Magazine Advertisement. Stage 7: This stage involved Division of Labour. Each student voluntarily took up a task as per his interest and comfort level. For example, for Radio Jingle - somebody good at language, wrote the lyrics, the other with appropriate voice quality recorded them; somebody looked for the appropriate background music etc. Each student worked in cohesion collaborating with other students in the team. Stage 8: Similarly, TV Commercial was shot. Students split specific task among themselves script writing, dialogue writing, character search, set up for shooting and angles, technical help etc. It was fun as students faced the camera and acted in the advertisements themselves. Not only that, they also roped in their teachers, fellow students etc. for the shoot. Stage 9: Students were expected to make an official website for their product and company. For that, they were asked to use Wix flashbased online website making tool. Students divided their work as per their interest and comfort level. Stage10: This was the most challenging stage of the competition. Students videotaped themselves explaining the Powerpoint presentation to be used in the Video Window. Once the shooting was done, it had to be synchronized with the Powerpoint presentation. (And additional audio file, if students wish to add some music in the background.) The Producer file was published once synchronization was over. Stage 11: All teams had to submit their work to the teacher on the given deadline. The 360 degree evaluation of project took place with students evaluating their own projects. The Project of each team was shared on the Competition Blog on which peers (Participating competitors) and other students could post their comments. Each teams work was evaluated on the basis of their innovation, technology usage, team work and communication abilities. Stage 12: This stage was the Compilation Stage. Students uploaded their Marketing Plan on their Eportfolio. Teacher used Auto Play Media Studio for compiling the work and preparing individual DVD representing the work of each team. Not only that, the work of each team was uploaded on Official Competition Website for future reference.

Learning Outcomes Impact on learning for Pupils/Students

Students were challenged to think beyond the obvious enhanced thinking and analytical skills were acquired. Students learnt lots of ICT in the process Many software like Microsoft Powerpoint Producer or Wix Flash site builder, which students had never heard of before were explored. Some tutorials were provided to help students use these softwares and tools effectively.

Lets Make World a Better Place Innovative Product and Marketing Project
Explore new technology tools and use them creatively Many students used different editing software. It was nice to see different teams sharing their experiments and experiences with one another regarding usage of new tools and learning from one another. Teamwork and collaboration using technology or otherwise. This entire project was all about Collaboration where students worked together with passion and learnt from each other. Although students worked in teams and each team was competing with the other, still they shared the resources, knowledge and experience (not to mention good times) with one another open heartedly. Improved Communication skills Getting rid of fear of being videotaped and get a sense of angles, light etc. When students started shooting Television commercial and Producer videos, there were many takes and retakes. Students started understanding the role of angles, lighting etc in videotaping. Learnt to handle the gadgets like Video camera, tripod etc. Developed Practical approach students started looking at advertisements in a different perspective. Until now, students were looking at advertising as a snack break or from consumers point of view. After this project, every child now evaluates the advertisement, its idea etc. Now the discussion about advertisement in classroom is on a very different level. Ethics and moral judgement how to persuade customers without using tantalizing material Visual Literacy Students have become aware of the designing dimensions use of colours, size, fonts and positions to draw attention of customers in the given advertisement page. Laws related to copy right, patent etc. Students had to register their product with teacher and any product which is overlapping in nature with the existing product or already registered was rejected. Students learnt various aspects of Intellectual property right.

Impact on learning for other teachers and the wider school community
This was a project where all the stakeholders associated with the project directly or indirectly were benefitted. Though 120 students were involved in this project, the impact of the project was witnessed far and wide. The project managed to impact more than 2000 people. Lots of collaboration, brainstorming and engagement took place on this project. Following collaboration tools were used: 1] A group created on Facebook with more than 500 active members, consisting of participating students, ex-students, students from other schools, parents, teachers, vendors etc. http://www.facebook.com/groups/145795885510480/ 2] An active blog on the WordPress with more than 2427 hits http://innovativeproductandmarketingcompetition2011.wordpress.com/ 3] A Community created on Microsoft PILN India site

Lets Make World a Better Place Innovative Product and Marketing Project
http://in.partnersinlearningnetwork.com/communities/innovative_product_and_marketing_co/Pages/d efault.aspx 4] Official website for the competition http://www.wix.com/ipmcompetition201112/ipmcompetition2011 YouTube Channel containing Presentations of each team http://www.youtube.com/user/ipm201112 Even within the school, some teachers and non participative students were involved in the video shooting for television advertisement. So there was lots of excitement amongst the teachers as well. Exstudents or already graduated students have played an important role in the project. These students are scattered in different parts of the world pursing their Graduation. Ex- Students studying in United States, Singapore, Mumbai etc. were also involved in guiding the participates through Competition Group on Facebook. As, mentioned earlier, it was an Integrated approach to teaching, hence many teachers took reference of this event for their activities. For example, one of the assignments given by English teacher was to write a report about the day of presentation. Many students turned up to see students presentation live in school auditorium and the ones who missed it are checking out the DVDs, Blog and websites for further details. The first step towards any learning is to create interest and excitement to have engaged learners. Parents too were excited about this project. They have seen a postive change in the attitude of students. The effect of this project on community can be experienced only when we will have a bunch of Creative Capitalists who are interested in producing innovative and socially useful goods at reasonable price, generate employment, take care of the environment and still earn reasonable amount of profits will rule the business field and work as Change Agents for the community.