[AISWorld] Defeating phone cameras

[Cecil Eng Huang Chua]

I have a problem and I thought someone here might offer an innovative solution.

As part of a course I will be running on the changing nature of work, I want to expose my students to the idea of virtual teams.  As an in-class activity, I will have students try to solve up to 2 murder mysteries.

I will be splitting my class into groups of 6, where each member of the group will be placed in physical isolation from other members of the same group (but they will be with members of other groups).  Each class member gets a set of clues- different from the clues of the others.  The group has to share and discuss clues to figure out whodunnit.

The sequence is the group is allowed to meet for 30 minutes to discuss and plan.  They then are split up and then receive the clues.  The exercise begins.  To make things a bit difficult, the clues will be given to students in hardcopy.  They will have whatever electronic devices they bring to communicate.  They will have wifi access.

The objectives of the lesson are to:

-Expose them to the need to plan and coordinate technologies ahead of time.  You all have handphones.  But do you all have the same sms app?  Or are you all on Skype? etc.
-Expose them to the idea that coordination in virtual work involves things like taking turns, finding ways to eliminate dominant personalities, etc.  It isn't just the technology.
-Different media are useful for different things.  The laptop's big screen helps with visualization.  The small handphone is great for taking pictures.  Email is great for sending attachments, but not for synchronous communication.

I want to defeat or make inconvenient one obvious method of sharing information- the handphone camera.  How would I do this?  By defeat, I don't mean render completely unusable.  I just mean one solution is for everyone to take a snapshot of their clues, and email it to everyone else in their group.  I want this to be acceptable, but not too easy.

Some of my thoughts:

1- every clue is on a different piece of paper.  So, everyone potentially has 30 images to read through.  This involves a lot of cutting of paper.  I'd like something less labor intensive.
2- I do something akin to a Captcha- have a background that renders screen capture awful or distort the words.  But this is just awful on the eyes.

So, I am looking for suggestions.

Cecil Chua