The Importance of Students
University students are at a unique place in their lives. They have the time and resources to dedicate their efforts towards ideas, progress, and advancement. The ACT Exchange shares these interests, striving to improve the tourism and residential experience of each city. Creating intelligent cities cannot be done in a day, nor by an individual person. We are looking for universities to partner with in order to map cities and develop content for digital storytelling.
Digital storytelling involves using the information collected through city mapping to create an interactive story for users of the ACT Exchange application to discover their surroundings. Augmented reality, videos, animation, and other visual methods will be used to depict the story behind monuments, buildings, and landmarks. This content is then presented to users of the mobile application when they reach a specific location.
The ACT Exchange believes that university students are essential to developing the content for digital storytelling. Regardless of the discipline they study in their courses, students can find a role in the process. From mapping a city to crafting the content of digital storytelling, students are at the heart of the ACT Exchange’s projects.
Since each location has a unique story, the first step towards presenting it to tourists and residents alike is discovery. History, government, and religious studies students (though not only limited to these fields, of course) can contribute to the research through city mapping, which will provide a basis for creating an intelligent city. Speaking with local business owners, digitally recording the locations of particular landmarks (both famous and otherwise unremarkable), and taking photographs to aide with the visual aspects of the application.
Students of theatre or those who possess acting talent can operate as the storytellers, doing narration or creating the voices during a segment of augmented reality for the ACT Exchange app. It is also possible for these student actors to be present in video clips, portraying historical figures related to the location in question. Developing an interactive experience to depict the story of a city requires specialized knowledge of the area, and who would know it better than students who traverse its streets every day?
Technology students also have an important role with the ACT Exchange. Programming the content of digital storytelling to match up to the city mapping, activating beacons/geofences/geotriggers, and publishing the content to the mobile app are all examples of ways that technology students can aide in making their city an intelligent community. Ensuring that the user experience is accessible and logical is so important, and the ACT Exchange values the input of students.
Regionalization is integral to making the content from city mapping and digital storytelling available to a wider audience. Students of foreign languages will be of great value in this process, as they can translate the information from the native language of their area to the language which they study. Their city will then become open to attracting a more diverse public.
In each of these aspects, university students are very important in creating intelligent cities and their insight is an asset to the projects developed by the ACT Exchange. It all starts with students; we are looking for partners to help us map cities, create content for digital storytelling, and turn communities into intelligent cities!
