This lesson will cover what information you might want to represent through sound. For any sound design, start by identifying the most important idea or piece of information. Ask yourself some general questions. What's the main point you want someone to get? What are the important things to represent? After asking yourself those high-level questions, we typically move on to some more specific ones. What are the components that make up the high-level idea? Is it a relationship between two variables? Is it important to show differences in amount, in type, or even in materials. Let's go back to this in John Travoltage. We've gone through this before. So this time we'll focus on the important ideas. Probably the most important information is this general idea of stack electricity. It builds up, and once there's enough, John can get shocked. Let's break that idea down. There's not really a direct, exact one to one relationship, but it's more important to recognize what differences in charge level mean. With a small amount of charge, John's hand need to be closer to the door to get shocked. With a larger amount, it can be further away. So what about materials? From experience, I know that rubbing or shuffling my feet across the floor makes a sound. Other things that might matter are how he picks up electrons, or how the electrons spread out after he picks them up. They don't just stay in his feet. Now let's go back over our list of ideas. We have charged differences or the amount of charge, maybe something about his foot to make it more realistic how he picks up electrons? What electrons do after they're picked up? As we move from this to the more general categories some can represent, think back to this list, and consider what mappings might work for which idea, categories or groups. Sometimes you might want to show differences between objects or ideas. One example of this is for weather conditions. In this example, we use sounds to convey differences in rainy, and sunny. Sounds can be used to group objects. So similar objects sound more like, well, different objects don't have much similarity in sound. This is the grouping techniques the visual designers might use. State change, some can show differences and types or changes in the system. A visual example of this would be the states of matter visuals for representing solid, liquid, and gas. Let's check out what this might sound in a sim. This is the phET sim friction. It's used from elementary to college to introduce students to friction, heat, and thermodynamics. In this sim, a chemistry book, sits on top of a physics book. There are two different views for moving the book's, a macro and a micro view. A thermometer measures the temperature where the two books touch. Moving the chemistry book changes the motion of the molecules in it, and changes the temperature level. For a lot of friction, the molecules breakaway from the chemistry book, and fly off. It's important for a learner to understand the relationship between the amount of rubbing with a molecule movement, the temperature, and if the molecules breakaway or not, once enough heat is generated, the molecules can break off. The jiggling sound here helps represent the state change and when it moves from a lower heat to a higher heat. Sound can also be used to represent physical movement or the motion of objects. Let's revisit the John Travoltage example. Rubbing his foot on the carpet results in a realistic rubbing sound. Relationships. Other times you might want to represent a relationship. This could be the impact of an action or change that results in a secondary change. These relationships could be correlational, and both the positive or negative direction. Positive correlation or relationship will mean the net increase of a second value due to a change in the first, and they could be equal where the change is similar or unequal, where the change in one causes a lot more change in the second. Negative correlation or an inverse relationship, is where the increase in one value results in a decrease of another or vice versa. Let's check out this example in John Travoltage. As we rub his foot, we hear them bubbling, sound, and see the blue circles popping up. The relationship here conveys that the foot rubbing causes a buildup of static electricity. Amount. Sound can also show an overall change or represent how many or how much of something there is. Let's check this out in a different simulation balloons, and stack electricity. It's used from elementary school through college to introduce students to concepts related to stack electricity. The sim has a balloon, a sweater, and a wall. All three of these start with net neutral charge. We can move the balloon around the play area, and it collects negative charges when rubbed on the sweater. If we release the balloon with a net negative charge, it will move to and stick to the positively charged sweater. If we move the negatively charged balloon to the wall, it results in an induced charge effect. Negative charges in the wall are repelled by the negative charges on the balloon, resulting in a slight positive charge induced on the wall near the balloon. We can use the second balloon for more complicated scenarios. It's important for a learner to understand the relationship between the amount of negative charge on the balloon, how quickly it moves toward the sweater, and how much induced charge it causes. This version of balloons of static electricity does something similar to John Travoltage. In this sim, when I move the balloon around on the sweater, it picks up electrons. In both of these sims examples, we can use the sound to represent having different levels of charge. It can be more complex than these other sounds we've heard so far. Maybe you want to convey something more than what's in the visuals. This can be moving pass amount instead trying to reflect a characteristic of the material or object. Or it could represent something more complicated, like a system or object made of many components. Let's explore an example from the phET sim Ohm's law. It's used from elementary to college to introduce students to the concept of Ohm's law and how it relates to simple circuit. In the sim, there's an equation, V equals IR. There's also a circuit with multiple batteries and a resistor. There are two sliders for voltage, and resistance. Changes in the sliders are reflected instantly in the equation, values and circuits place. As the voltage or resistance is changed, letter size in the equation changes. For example, increasing the voltage slider results in size increases for the letters V and I in the equation representing their proportional relationship. Slighter changes are also reflected in the circuit through the number of batteries in series or the amount of impurities within the resistor. It's important for a learner to explore, and understand the proportional relationship between voltage, and current, and the inverse relationship between resistance and current. In this version of Ohm's law, we used a single sound to represent current. It's a clip that sounds repetitive, and cyclical because we wanted to emphasize the almost cyclical nature of the circuit itself. This type of mapping is much more complex, than the John Travoltage ones for the leg movement or even the collection of electrons. So let's take a step back, and reflect for a moment. What types of information do sounds normally convey? Often are early sound designs focus on highlighting visual changes or paralleling visual feedback. We naturally add sound designs that might focus on adding sounds where they exist in real life, don't let that trick you though. You can always add sounds to objects that don't make them, that can really limit creativity, and adding sense to objects which don't make them can really emphasize changes or highlight the importance of a concept. Sounds can be more than an action. We want to use sound to help people track what's happening. We also want the sounds to encourage exploration. Using interesting sounds can encourage people to repeat actions to figure out what's causing the sound or sound changes. Now thinks to your own learning tools. If you have a tool or situation in mind already, ask yourself the general questions from the beginning. What's the main point? What are important things to represent? Then ask yourself some more specific questions. Are there relationships you want to demonstrate? Is there an emotional reaction you went to evoke? What might be confusing for our learner? We'll continue to revisit these points as we move through the rest of the lessons.
