SNOW DAY SHUT DOWN
Class arranged a zoom call to discuss the missing production plans. I would not able to make it.
Fifth Week Thoughts
Honestly we should’ve just had class… It was even sunny.
But well, took the day off to visit family friends in Brooklyn, and technology is so amazing I was able to be in the Zoom class while at the same time being out with my cousins.
It was important to know what we were gonna do next time we met with the kids and listen to the ideas everyone presented. I learnt that my ideas since we are doing something public I should take into account things such as copyright. I really loved that a girl from LCSS is really into The Beatles so I wanted to do something in relation to them and my story was about them but I’m probably gonna have to go more Beatles-inspired rather than using them as the vehicle for an experience. Also I hadn’t thought of the medium in which I’d present that story and since it was brought up I feel now like I gotta take the interactive experience into account when thinking of the story rather than come up with the story and then translate it into an activity. I’m excited for what’s to come.
SELF ASSESSMENT:
- In Ed Tech and Design Thinking I feel that I am making the most progress with:
Having an actual experience on building something with a group, researching with a group and making progress in something similar to how design is, in a team. My classes are all about personal projects and group projects are in the best case conformed by 3 people and they are terrible. I love working as a team for a focused design project. - I need more assistance with:
Probably learning the ins and outs of all the software we talk about. We go about Unity, AR with the cube, the VR software and it is interesting to know about them but probably some deeper diving might be necessary to fully realize what’s goin on, like get my feet wet with the things, like more studio play-time but honestly there’s no time in this little class, I wish it was a six hour class honestly. - Write a short paragraph: in the first five weeks of Ed Tech and Design Thinking, I discovered/learned…….
That working as a large group in design is really exciting. I’ve learned about systems, about procedures in teaching, about methods on learning, about the world in ecological ways, about personal stories my classmates have, about software and gadgets I didn’t know existed. But most importantly I’ve learnt that there’s a bright future ahead because there’s wonderful kids with the spirit and the mindset to change the world. - Comments on the studio? What is working or not working for you?
Time is so little this studio feels encapsulated. My big six hour studio is a huge waste of time whereas this should be so good for that. Love taking trips, love the interesting lectures, love the class activities, love how we are a group.
Week 5: No snow snow-day & Initial Project Ideas
Haha, this week started off really funny. I was in NYC last year and have witnessed some serious snow then, so I was expecting there to be a decent amount of snow on Monday, but…
Surprisingly, I think attending class from home through Zoom was actually quite effective. I was trying hard to catch everything everybody was saying so that I don’t miss out on anything interesting, and I think because of that it (the bad connection coupled with the virtual experience) made me more attentive. The downside was of course that we could not collaboratively make anything physical during class but I think overall we did well in organizing a makeup class over Zoom.
Thoughts on Homework Readings:
I have been thinking a lot about the readings we have been doing and how they relate to the readings I have done in the past. Below is some analysis I have done over the last couple of weeks which I also included in my self-assessment.
As Seymour Papert put it in Mindstorms, “Piaget has demonstrated how young children hold theories of the world that, in their own terms, are perfectly coherent.” In other words, their model of the world is no less developed than the model of the world adults hold. Here, an analogy could almost be made to machine learning where you have different machine learning models that are optimized for different end uses.
Additionally, Papert goes on to say that “one of the more subtle consequences of [Piaget’s] discoveries is the revelation that adults fail to appreciate the extent and the nature of what children are learning, because knowledge structures we take for granted have rendered much of that learning invisible.” There is a certain joy to teaching, or just being around, children because children do things differently than us. Often adults see actions performed by children as naïve, or as some less informed version of what they would have done themselves, but this could be the result of adults imposing their own worldview, and own learning model, onto children, when in fact a very different kind of learning model is at play in children.
In CC Lecture last semester we read Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence. In the book, Bostrom explains in detail where artificial intelligence stands currently and what main hurdles we are facing before superintelligence, in any kind of form, can be achieved. In his explanations, he discusses about very specialized machine learning models that perform one task extremely well while completely failing at others. The challenge is to construct a machine learning model that can handle all kinds of tasks including highly creative, abstract tasks. Since human superintelligence has not been achieved yet, understanding how those with different learning models than ours learn, work and play would serve us well in building a much more holistic picture of how learning takes shape in our minds. Observing and learning from children in this sense is a step we should not skip.
Initial Project Ideas:
While looking through the links in the syllabus, I noticed that there is actually a great reference on the RiverKeeper website to data on the amount and type of trash found in and around the river. Each year the Riverkeeper Sweep takes place on the Hudson River estuary which involves cleanups, invasive species removal, and shoreline restoration. An impressive number of volunteers contribute to this effort annually – more than 1,700 volunteers.
As starting points for our Earth Day projects, I had the following ideas:
- An interactive and educational data visualization connecting the hidden cause and (often hidden) impact of using non-biodegradable products
- A fake news fantasy story about the wacky, dangerous and promising aspects of synthetic biology, specifically gene editing, for species preservation. Inspired by the following two projects:
– A real-life project about using gene editing to bring back extinct species: https://reviverestore.org/
– An online science fiction story about growing your own sneakers using gene editing: https://www.nextnature.net/projects/rayfish-footwear/
During the Zoom session, it was helpful to discuss about our ideas as I think two really important points emerged from the discussion. These were:
- We should consider how an ordinary person can understand and take action locally
- We should focus on the specific collision/conflict points and aim to educate the public about these
Additionally, the user archetype interviews that were mentioned sounded like a research technique I would like to learn more about. In my opinion it’s challenging to conduct any kind of accurate user study in the design world, regardless of whether it is quantitative or qualitative study. Learning to do these well is a great skill to have for any designer working with users/clients for whom they are designing.
Low-Res Prototypes
Here is the low-res prototype Raquel and I prepared for Week 6.
Week 5
We had our Zoom class on Monday, we shared our Earth day ideas with each other. After reading storyboards from LCCS students, I thought it would be nice to collaborate my ideas with them. My idea was inspired by a book called “Illuminature”, which explored the world’s most diverse environments and reveal their hidden secrets with the color lens. My idea for earth day: Students from LCCS and outside visitors (kids and parents), they can use our prepared color glasses to see different layers of views under the ocean, both beautiful ocean creatures and plastic garbage. I hope LCCS students can help us create drawings and we can use them and create optical illusion inside of the dome.
Week 5 Zoom
This class meeting was very difficult for me personally to attend. First of all, it all seemed that there would be some sort of an apocalypse coming down, swiping through the city as if a blizzard the size of a catastrophy showcased in some video games or movies I have experienced, where everything gets taken down to a rapid halt and nobody moves from home anywhere near anywhere. In the end, it was supposed to be 8 inches of snow, from my mixed-background perspective – that ain’t much but in the end, there wasn’t much of anything really, that did not reopen the school, though and that did not mean that the class meeting would not take place, along with another class I had scheduled for the evening at NYU but was pushed to Columbia.
That wasn’t the end of it as I fell ill, with as I suspected, common symptoms of fever, some sort of a viral infection raised mayhem in my immune system and alike, which grounded me for a bit less than a week but that ain’t taking me down. And so as I treated myself to a large batch of Argentinian tea, I made my way eventually towards Columbia University, where I treated myself to a medium-sized cup of joe at joe’s (coffee) and took a seat at Pulitzer’s Hall, where I put my laptop on my laps and proceeded to download whatever I needed to join in to the conference.
Now, first things first – I never made use of the Zoom conference system. Usually what I would use back in the days would be skype, I even remember years ago when I just discovered that I could do conferences with multiple people, even with cameras and that was a breakthrough, still introduced by remaining Estonian startup Skype (I think it was?). Now, you’d do this with facebook, you’d do this with every single application but as it turns out, there are more of those out there and that’s sort of cool, especially if it works well. And it seemed to do just that, as people would connect even with their mobile on the go. I guess the future is here, although I’d kinda argue it’s technology of yesterday but does the job just fine.
From what I recall (of when I was quite tired, sneezing, coughing and all) I believe the meeting was a series of updates, of us introducing our ideas, analyzing the ideas from LCCS and preparing for what’s to come next, such as the low-fi prototypes coming up soon. Here a quick note, from what I know and was educated, low-fi prototype would be like, sketches, paper prototypes, some of the stuff we were doing weeks back. This time it seems I’m delivering a VR prototype – that’s hi-fi, although very likely low-res, I’ll continue arguing, horizontal prototype. The problem is, I haven’t really worked with VR on mobile for a while, especially for android. There are two workaround I could establish, one to publish the prototype on a website, I know this runs at least on my mobile, it could perhaps even run on iphones in such case (not yet tested). Or just drive the development towards a mobile build and perhaps PC, if required.
The only question is, what exactly am I building? I really like the idea of the dome experience, it reminds me of those experiences created by TeamLab that I’ve seen for instance in Singapore. Except, I found TeamLab’s experiences to be very low-fidelity and I see a multitude of area in which this can be improved. Especially within a dome. Especially with more responsive technology. Having some form of a clear narrative. Perhaps with computer vision, perhaps some other technologies. Some interesting ones were mentioned like conductive ink and others. It feels like there is a lot of different materials, forms and techniques available but the remaining question is, well, what’s the concept? Something to deal with utopias and dystopias? Sustainability? Where we want to be in 50 years from now?
And so the work begins…
Week 5 – The Snow that was Rain!
Thanks to those of you who were on the Zoom call today. We already see some really great creative ideas coming about. Please pitch to the blog what you think is a great storyline and a great way to make it an Earth Day experience. Whether it is in the Dome, a game (physical or digital), a VR immersive experience, a VR 360 Gear role play movie etc. etc. We also look forward to your 5-week assessments. These are totally confidential. You can tell us how you feel about the class so far and how we can make it better. Looking forward to seeing your blog posts. Remember that they don’t have to be long!