June 9, 2009

History in Motion


Project Summary

History has always been my favorite subject and even though I hadn’t officially studied it since Freshman year of college – I knew I wanted it to be the focus of my Capstone Project. I noticed in my preliminary research that History/Geography was one of the least popular and lowest testing subjects for middle school students and decided to design a more fun and interactive experience with the material to help engage the students. Inspired by cut scenes from another love of mine, video games, I proposed creating interactive History text books that prompted the students to play games and interact with the content at various, strategic touch points. I called the entire system “History in Motion” and for my individual project I focused on the idea of creating motion graphic cutscenes that students would view to drive home key events throughout various chapters. Due to time, money and personnel restraints (I had only myself, three months and zero dollars to develop my idea) I completed an initial piece about the Battle of the Alamo as a proof of concept.