These are words.
Quick Project Update
Right now I’m trying to think of strategies people can use to discover their Skills, Interests, and Goals. The image is from the time I spent thinking about my own path.
Some notes from my current thinking:
Strategies/Exercies for Discovery
Self reflection exercises
Journaling
- Proprioceptive Writing
- To carry out this practice you simply find a place where you will not be disturbed for twenty-five minutes; you light a candle, turn on Baroque music, and place a stack of unlined white paper and a pen in front of you. The candle is meant to create a sacred space for your writing and to help you focus, and Baroque music has been shown to induce the alpha brain frequency, which is the level of mind commonly associated with meditation.
- Morning Pages
- As the name suggests, Morning Pages are to be done in the morning; the waking mind is more open to free-form writing and can more easily jump from one subject to another without the constraints set by reason.
Oblique Strategies – Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt
- Use an old idea. State the problem in words as clearly as possible. Only one element of each kind. What would your closest friend do? What to increase? What to reduce? Are there sections? Consider transitions. Try faking it!Honour thy error as a hidden intention. Ask your body. Work at a different speed.
‘Ideal World’ exercises
Questions for Discovery
What are your skills?
- Simply ask about skills
- Ask about schooling/job skills
What are your interests?
- What excites you right now?
- Try something and react to it – recommend new thing
What are your goals?
- Jobs similar to ones that you want, but are not ones that want.
- How would you describe your ideal work place?
Things I’ve read that are inspiring/informing:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-04/why-people-stay-in-jobs-they-hate
https://www.themuse.com/advice/help-im-stuck-at-a-job-i-hate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/opinion/dalai-lama-behind-our-anxiety-the-fear-of-being-unneeded.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
Project ideas and plan
Ideas
I’m realizing that we have four weeks left to finish our project. During this week I kept trying to focus my project idea but I didn’t speak with more people.
I am really inspired by the Body Coding reference by Nancy Nowacek that I shared last week. Kinect2Gesture by Gene Kogan seems an easy to use tool. This would be a good opportunity to experience being a remixer.
I have been also thinking about games.
In the Body Coding documentation (but not in the repository) there is a movement dictionary for p5js. What could be done using it with the online editor that has automatic updating of the sketch window? How can it be used as part of a lesson plan in a course like ICM? What about making it a game? I have questions about the possible complexity of the gestural language, and how it could be taught.
Another path is to think in computation in a more general sense. Brainf*ck is a Turing-complete [esoteric] programming language that has only 8 instructions. It is impractical and difficult to use, but it is playful and can be thought as a puzzle, at the same time that it helps to understand the basics of computation. The gestural language would be easier to teach, and I can see a more direct way of making a puzzle/game out of this. I have the question of how it could be used as part of a lesson plan. Apparently the language has been used in some courses, but I think it can have a broader impact.
General plan
We have four weeks left:
- Interviews and definition of the project
- Development of first prototype(s)
- User testing and more interviews
- Development and documentation of final prototype for presentation
What’s next?
I’m still in the research phase. I’m considering focusing on the prison system in one state. After research, I plan to meet with professors at NYU who are conducting research on jails to see what insights they may have. I’d like to meet with a researcher from the NYU law department and the NYU Psychology department. I know it will also be worthwhile to interview a few inmates or someone who is working for inmates’ rights.
Research–>Interviews–>Prototype–>User Testing?
I found this organization and think it might be useful to contact them for more info.
http://www.law.nyu.edu/studentorganizations/prisonersrightsandeducationproject
Also plan on contacting someone from this event:
http://blogs.law.nyu.edu/docket/pilc/oct-14-beyond-criminal-justice-reform-conversations-on-police-and-prison-abolition/26279/
http://www.law.nyu.edu/areasofstudy/criminal
Some References about Movement in Learning [Code]
I have been thinking that I will focus in programming classes, because the personal computers or the computer rooms are usually movement limiting.
Some references:
I found out via Gene Kogan this project by Nancy Nowacek, him, and collaborators called Body Coding.
Body Coding is a research work-in-progress that asks the question: how else might code be performed (If not with fingers and keyboard)? If somewhere between sport, hip-hop and sign language that can be passed on the street and in clubs like popular dance, who then, can access and perform coade, and what are its products?
I want to interview Taeyoon Choi. He has some interesting projects, tools, idea for teaching computational thinking using the body. Some examples:
Other references:
Book: Brain Rules 12 Principles for surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School
http://qz.com/592569/a-neuroscientist-says-theres-a-powerful-benefit-to-exercise-that-is-rarely-discussed/
Bot for Coach
I have been interviewing people who were dissatisfied with their jobs and have re-focused their careers about:
- How they made the decision to leave their job
- Their process of exploring new skills
- How they made the transition to a new career path
I’ve found that many people leave because they find their job creatively or emotionally unfulfilling, go through a period of dabbling with new skills, followed by a ‘coming to terms’ with their new interests and eventually school or a career change. My results are colored by the fact that I have only been talking to people who eventually made a change, I am talking to people with a similar educational background, and people from a similar socio-economic background. I would like to talk to a more diverse group, but it is taking a little time to contact and interview folks. (If you have any leads on people who are dissatisfied with their jobs, but have not left them please let me know. I want to talk to them!)
I interviewed people with an eye to developing an answer to the ‘How can we help learners assess their own skills when they are looking to enter a new industry?’ question I came up with last week. Now that I have conducted several interviews I am considering some kind of automated coach-bot that will help people define their interests, find related topics they might be interested in, find classes or degree programs they might like, and stay on track.
People I’ve talked to have suggested I checkout the Karen app and 30 Days of Genius series, so I’ll give those a whirl.
Next steps are, hopefully, a couple more interviews to fill out the pool and prototyping!
Reference/inspiration/things I’ve read that have informed this project so far:
http://www.citylab.com/work/2016/10/how-the-recession-upskilled-your-job/505262/0
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
https://www.aier.org/sites/default/files/Files/Documents/Research/3780/BCC20130401.pdf
Project update
I’ve started to loosely define my user as the college or graduate-level student who is going into a creative and/or strategic field. I have access to these people both at ITP and at work, so testing and validation would be possible.
For my research, I’m looking into ways to help place information in situ, so it’s not as siloed in specific knowledge banks or academic contexts. Being less familiar with education, I’m looking into common learning theories for adults. Here’s a start.
- Adult Learning Theory posits that adults must understand the applicability of information to their life to learn best. I’d like to lets users literally contextualize information in places that seem relevant to their own activities and goals for the future.
- Anchored Learning Theory suggests that putting a subject matter within a realistic situation will embed it with more meaning. I’d like to virtually anchors content to context, so that in a specific situation where information might be useful it will resurface.
- Constructivism is the idea that learning is an active construction and learners learn best when they make connections between experiences and ideas. I’d like to help users attain two paths to long-term memory retrieval by creating two modalities for learning.
Next, I plan to look more into persuasive design and HCI.
Week 5 – Design Challenge
What is the problem you’re trying to solve?
Ethical development through user-centered design is not promoted in many fields of higher education, primarily engineering programs. Most of these teaching environments do not challenge students to think about their moral responsibilities as innovators. They are rarely asked to ponder the question, “What does it mean to be responsible for the next century of human interaction and productivity?”
I. Take a stab at framing it as a design question.
How can we develop a moral foundation for budding “makers” and their lasting impact in society?
II. Now state the ultimate impact you’re trying to have.
- Encourage humans to help understand humans by enhancing ethical literacy.
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Engage moral discussions by exploring existing ideas and present questions about different contexts, perspectives, and application
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Review concepts, morals, and opposition that may be personal, local or systematic
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Offer “unbiased” consideration of topics that presents multiple perspectives
III. What are some possible solutions to your problem?
- Artificial Intelligence Bot: provides individual conversation with different arguments to base your decisions
- Develops map of user’s mind by storing ideas and conversations to best understand interests and perspectives
- Share articles and supplementary information based on conversations
- Not: a logistic assistant that self-develops with the goal of improving knowledge and assistance
- Introductory Innovation Ethics Course: pushes students to simulate the long-term impact of innovation on specific societies
- Model UN Format: each student represents as a member of a certain community (i.e. nationally, systematically, locally), with a given identity and set of values/priorities – must then come together to evaluate their impact from a given product/service/innovation
IV. Finally, write down some of the context and constraints that you’re facing.
- Audience of “makers:” students currently building knowledge about careers involving product development and interaction (i.e engineers, technologists, marketers/advertisers, researchers)
- Scope & Relevance: education, political and socioeconomic views, news literacy, identity (cultural, gender, sexual, international), medical health (mental, physical, self-help), ideation and entrepreneurship
- Constraints
- No Generic Moral Foundation: cannot tell students what to think, but how to develop ideas without being limited or blinded by their identities or backgrounds
- Personal Triggers: telling someone that a specific part of their history might affect their work can ignite large personal and communication issues
- Reducing Conformity: conversations focused on a diverse set of topics can older be covered in-depth with an equally diverse group of students
- Technological & Efficiency Constraints
- AI is very cost intensive when developing and testing – cataloged data is not always easy to access (I can’t go make a moral development bot with Google’s data.)
- New curriculum and untraditional course formats are difficult to get approved.
V. Does your original question need a tweak? Try again.
I wasn’t able to quickly develop five solutions to my problem, so it may be too broad to cover all of its aspects. If I specify the audience to strictly engineering students, I can include the solutions below. The question now becomes: How can we develop a moral foundation for engineering students and their lasting impact in society?
- Requiring senior design projects to prove the use of user-centered design and the possible effects of the student’s identity and background on the product presented
- Offering scholarships and financial support to those who prove/promote moral literacy
- Real-World Competitions: use students to solve local problems that would be irrelevant to them otherwise
Assignment 5
What is the problem you’re trying to solve?
Making subjects like history and social studies more interesting and useful to middle and high school students. And to provide students with a wholesome perspective of history.
1. Frame it as a design question…
How might we deliver history and social studies material/content in a way that more effectively engages students and increases their interest, retention, and understanding of said material?
2. What’s the ultimate impact you’re trying to have?
To provide students with individual awareness of self through greater historical context into world and social history & affairs.
3. What are some possible solutions to your problem?
Building learning platforms and engaging/immersive experiences that deliver history/social studies content- via AR, VR, curated (and personally crafted) learning material
4. What are some of the constraints that you’re facing?
How would such initiatives be funded? Would schools support this?
What exactly am I measuring to ensure that the impact I’m aiming for actually is what results?
How does one ensure that the learning content is historically accurate and full? What kind of ways can we ensure that schools would approve of this?
Why do students learn “some” history and not all history? How do I prove that this is the current practice, why it’s deconstructive to students, and how do I offer a solution that would ultimately curb this?
5. Does your original question need to be tweaked?
No.
Frame Design Challenge: How can we improve the online learning experience?
Frame Your Design Challenge
What is the problem you’re trying to solve?
How can we improve the online learning experience?
1) Take a stab at framing it as a design question.
How could we make online education more meaningful and more reliable?
2) Now, state the ultimate impact you’re trying to have.
I want students who get online degree would receive high-quality knowledge and skills the same as students from traditional colleges, and also improve the acceptability from the entire society or industry.
3) What are some possible solutions to your problem?
Improving the management of online education (like attendance, assignments, feedback, test); creating more helpful conversations and interactions among professors and students via technological ways; building more networking for students; providing more practical training opportunities for online students; making class content from professor more structured; motivating online students, letting them engage in the class, and make them more concentrated; building better atmosphere for studying; etc.
4) Finally, write down some of the context and constraints that you’re facing.
Because traditional face to face college experience us some hints about how to improve online education, we want to only focus on the online degree-level learning.
5) Does your original question need a tweak? Try it again.
How might degree-level online students be more competitive?