HIGHLIGHTS
The Senior Project of ICT Mahidol 4th year student entitled “KideClass: 21st Century Classroom through Cultural-Tourism-based AR Game” is one of the projects that was awarded the “Senior Project Grants”. This grant provided by the ICT Mahidol is for 4th year students whose senior projects are related to arts and culture conservation in academic year 2019. The members of the senior project group are Mr. Kiettikoon Amornrat (Keng) (Computer Network), Miss Ann Arayapipatkul (Noei), and Miss Natnicha Onwong (Mild) (Database and Intelligent System) and
Dr. Pawitra Liumrak as their senior project advisor.
The ICT Spotlight team interviewed those students about the criteria and techniques to be awarded the Senior Project Grant, their experiences, and challenges while conducting the project. Let’s check it out!
Please tell us more about the Senior Project Grant; what are the criteria and specific qualifications?
This grant is called “Senior Project Grants”. If a project is either directly or indirectly related to arts and culture conservation, a student can then apply for the grant. Its criteria includes submitting a report specifying the benefits gained, measurable results, proper scope, which is not too broad nor too narrow. Apart from that, it also depends on the creativity and the presentation skills that the group can attract the committee.
Please explain about your Senior Project; what is it about and what are the objectives of this project?
KideClass is a 21st Century Classroom in the game application platform using Augmented Reality or AR. If you are curious how AR works, can you remember the famous game “Pokemon Go”? The Pokemon can exist in the real world through the smart phone. Kideclass applies AR for cultural tourism as well. The pilot community for this project is Mahasawat community, Salaya, Phuttamonthon, Nakhon Pathom Province.
The objective of the KideClass is to develop educational technology in order to improve the 21st century skills for elementary education students grade 1-3, aged between 6-8 years old because only in-class teaching may not be efficient to pass on 21st century skills. Also, the KideClass can help promote the tourism in the Mahasawat community. In the Kideclass, there will be storytelling about the community, cultural history, and simulation. This can encourage children to learn through the real places and inspire them to develop their skills.
Why did you choose this Senior Project topic?
As this project is the cooperation between the Faculty of ICT and Mahasawat community, we then had a chance to go to visit this community before starting this project. We felt the warmth and friendliness from the people in the community. The community keeps agricultural and natural preservation very well. People in the Mahasawat community have careers which can support themselves. In the midst of change in the current chaotic world, as part of the new generation, we would like to apply our knowledge learned from the Faculty of ICT to help develop and support the community to be more known. This can generate more income for the community and the people in the community will have sustainable income for themselves.
What was the most difficult aspect of this project?
The most difficult part was how to create our product to meet the objectives, to be measured by the reliable indicators, and to show the results being accepted by the committee. Besides, the COVID-19 pandemic caused limitation of application testing and assessing those representative samples who must travel in those places. That resulted in changing many things.
What did you learn from conducting this project?
We learned so many things; work methods, work plan, application designing, game coding, and the most important things were teamwork and responsibility. There was no definite time to do this project, so we had to manage ourselves when we should do the project and when we should take rest. Moreover, learning about the community, way of life of the villagers, as well as being aware of the problems they have faced, allowed us to develop many skills; speaking, collecting, and applying information to our games. This helped us gain more experiences in conducting this big project with different types of people.
What benefits does this project do for the society and how?
First is education. The Kideclass is an application created for 6-8-year-old-children. This game helps children to develop the 21st Century skills through simulations, for example, tie-in between game and Mahasawat Community tourism places can well introduce children to the culture of the community through games.
Secondly, tourism. Another objective of the Kideclass is that it is one of the advertising tools for Mahasawat community. The community will be known as the cultural tourism and it will affect and help increase tourism on the community.
Finally, what would you like to recommend to your friends or those juniors who are preparing for Senior Projects or would like to win this kind of scholarship?
For those who are in the first stage of creating the project topic, we recommend you start from a problem you would like to solve. You may begin with surveying the area, asking the local people in that area, or thinking of things that you may want to develop. You should think on how it can benefit the community or mankind, and whether you can apply the technology you have learned to solve the problem, and how you can help solve it.
The most important thing in doing the project is that you have to understand what exactly the problem is, and whether that problem should be solved or improved. You should think that if you are the person who have that problem, then how you want it to be improved.
The Senior Project entitled “KideClass: 21st Century Classroom through Cultural-Tourism-based AR Game” is regarded as another project that helps support the tourism in the community by applying technology perfectly as well as allowing easy access to tourism information.
You can follow up on various senior projects by the ICT Mahidol students in the ICT Spotlight. Please stay tuned!!