Todd Mayberry – Ed Methods

February 10, 2014

Our iPhone Walking Tour of Historic Japantown Portland

We are pleased to introduce you to Japantown PDX, a free iPhone app that grew out of our work with the Nikkei Legacy Center. The free iOS app documents the vitality of this once thriving “Nihonmachi” and its sudden disappearance in the spring of 1942 when all persons of Japanese ancestry were removed from the West Coast and placed in America’s concentration camps during WWII. In addition to telling Portland’s Japantown story, the app explores the remarkably diverse Old Town neighborhood in tour stops that honor its African American, Chinese and LGBT roots.

App Features
Our goal was to design a user-friendly app suitable for all technical “abilities.” We began by surveying the Nikkei Center’s rich collection of historic photos for location-specific images. The most notable and well-documented became our tour stops. When we had historic exterior shots we photographed the contemporary scene replicating the view. Thus users can watch historic Japantown street life reappear in “then and now” dynamic photographic dissolves. Each stop has multiple historic and contemporary images, text and an audio narration. We had many historic photos that told the story of a vibrant community, but they lacked location. We decided to include them in the app as a “Gallery Section.” The app also allows users to share image content with built in Facebook and Twitter buttons.

Then and Now Photo Japantown PDX

We also wanted to weave in an underlying narrative – the story of WWII’s Executive Order 9066, the forced incarceration of the neighborhood’s Japanese Americans first at the “temporary” Portland Assembly Center and eventually at the Minidoka concentration camp located in southern Idaho. While the app is location based, we elected to give it an narrative arc that begins with an opening audio greeting voiced by Jean Matsumoto who grew up in the pre-WWII Japantown. Jean and her family were among over 110,000 Japanese Americans that were removed from the West Coast and incarcerated without trial. The app details other stories of forced relocation and re-population of the the neighborhood after the war and invites users to learn more by exploring the exhibits at the Nikkei Legacy Center in the heart of historic Japantown.

UP Students Explore Nikkei Center Concentration Camp Exhibit

About the Project Team

This app grew out of a collaboration between our class and the Nikkei Legacy Center. It was one of three curriculum design projects undertaken by students in support of the museum’s educational outreach. For more see Student Consultants Design Museum Curriculum and Mobile App.

Our class served two roles in the app development – the entire class became our focus group – discussing what they thought needed to be in the app – both from the perspective of user experience and their growing knowledge of the history of Portland’s Japantown. Three student’s worked more directly – narration (Aram Glick), audio recording (Collin Soderberg-Chase) and logo (Samuel TS Kelly). Peter Pappas worked closely with Todd Mayberry to select content and images.

The other key team member was GammaPoint LLC a Portland-based mobile app developer. GammaPoint was interested in designing a user-friendly platform that would allow organizations to develop their own tour apps with a minimum amount of assistance. Our project served as their beta. We worked with GammaPoint on developing the tour design, generating prototypes which were then evaluated by my students and Nikkei Center. For example, we discovered that while we had a wealth of video interviews of former Japantown residents, their file size bloated the app. We used plist files to upload data to GammaPoint and tested their new web-based upload tool. It has now evolved into GammaPoint’s App4Tour which promises to be an affordable way for users to create their own multi-media rich tours with minimum of technical assistance.

October 19, 2013

Nikkei Project Update

Erin, Sam and Peter did a presentation at the OAtS Conference at OHSU. Teena and Amit Jain (from Gamma Point) were there as well. We got some great feedback on the app – features, navigation and uses. Here’s a post Peter did on the Nikkei project.

Aram and Tom took some photographs in the neighborhood after meeting with Todd at Legacy Center. Todd’s been focusing on finalizing material available from Nikkei archives.

September 29, 2013

Class 6: Work Session at Nikkei Legacy Center

We will be serving as curriculum consultants to the Portland’s Nikkei Legacy Center. The center is dedicated to “Sharing and preserving Japanese American history and culture in Portland’s Old Town neighborhood, where Japantown once thrived.”

Tonight’s class met at the Legacy Center to work with their staff to plan our projects – Todd Mayberry (Director of Collections and Exhibits) and Kim Blair (Education Manager). Our task to is to use our instructional design skills to assist the Center in creating curriculum material. More on our project-based approach.

At this point we are considering four projects:

Self-guided instructional activities for middle school museum visitors.
A teacher’s curriculum / activity guide to accompany a historic document filled suitcase that goes out on loan to the classroom.
Online archive of documents with guiding questions and activities
Selecting historic materials for inclusion in an iPhone App tour of Portland’s historic Japantown neighborhood.

Students explore exhibit of WWII incarceration camp room at Nikkei Center

Above: Saito Fish Market (Taken circa 1915)
Mr. Saito driving the Saito Fish Market car. Saito Fish Market was located in Portland’s Japantown on what is now NW Fourth Avenue.
ONLC 1497, gift of Rose Niguma.
Image credit / Oregon Nikkei Endowment

September 23, 2013

Class 5: Exploring Project Based Learning

Henry Sakamoto
For video interviews and more go to Densho Digital Archive. Use free guest login.
The Densho Digital Archive holds a wealth of visual history interviews and other materials that broadly document the Japanese American experience. These unique primary sources cover a span of history from immigration in the early 1900s through redress in the 1980s with a particular focus on the World War II mass incarceration.

Students explore their world with an expectation of choice and control that redefines traditional notions of learning and literacy. Increasingly educators are discovering that they can motivate students with a project (or problem) based approach that engages their students with the opportunity to think like professionals while solving real-world problems.

Here’s 6 reasons why PBL works:

Traditional instruction is based on “teaching as telling.” PBL creates learning more immersive experiences.
A new information “culture” demands a new literacy. PBL can build those skills
We need to increase the rigor in the classroom. PBL moves students to higher levels of Blooms.
PBL makes learning relevant – student take responsibility for their progress.
Usually the audience for thinking is the teacher – PBL shifts the focus to real world application.
PBL can gain added impact by inspiring and empowering student as change agents in their community.

Instead of simply talking about PBL, our class will be undertaking a PBL project that embodies all the elements above. We will be serving as curriculum consultants to the Portland’s Nikkei Legacy Center. The center is dedicated to “Sharing and preserving Japanese American history and culture in Portland’s Old Town neighborhood, where Japantown once thrived.”

Our task to is to use our instructional design skills to assist the Center in creating curriculum material. At this point we are considering three possible projects:

Self-guided instructional activities for middle school museum visitors.
A teacher’s curriculum / activity guide to accompany a historic document filled suitcase that goes out on loan to the classroom.
Selecting historic materials for inclusion in an iPhone App tour of Portland’s historic Japantown neighborhood.

A PBL experience always needs a good kick-off entry event to get students engaged in the task. We will begin our project with a classroom visit by Henry Sakamoto, who grew up in Japantown and was attending high school at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. Henry and his family were subjected to FBI search, transfer to the Portland Assembly Center and eventually interred at Mindoka Concentration Camp in Idaho.

Henry will be introduced by Kim Blair, education manager of the Nikkei Legacy Center. Next week’s class will be held at the Center where we will be able to tour the museum and work with Kim and Todd Mayberry, Director of Collections.

Update: Unfortunately Mr Sakamoto could not make it to our class. We discussed our project work with Kim Blair, education manager of the Nikkei Legacy Center.

Then we did a bit of “speed dating” of our ideas for the DBQ Assignment. Students formed two lines and had 2 minutes to pitch their DBQ design idea to each other and share some feedback. Then one line shifted and we repeated the pitch exchange. In all students pitched their idea three times.