Week 2 (27.10-02.11.14): Design Thinking

For this week's presentation, I found an article entitled "7 Things You Should Know About Design Thinking". You can read it here:

http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-design-thinking

I decided to choose it, because I've never heard about "design thinking" before. Having read the article, I still don't understand, why it is called "design thinking" (maybe you can help me with that?), but nonetheless it is a teaching method practiced in higher education. The single sentence that best describes it is: "[a] shift from testing students to having students test their work".

In other words, students are encouraged to creatively find solutions to problems on their own and without the fear of failure by trying as many different approaches as they can and then evaluating the results. For example, teams of students can take part in a game, where they need to find information from public records by visiting a government institution, or trying to find it online and to see what works best. The idea is to focus on doing rather than discussing or theoretical thinking. According to the article, this way of practical prototyping and testing results in faster development of working solutions to real-world problems.

Questions:

1. Would you agree that early failure leads to better outcomes? Can you give an example of your own?

2. Do you prefer to engage in brainstorming ideas and trying different ways of solving a problem, or are you more inclined to first learn about the problem and then propose the best solution?

3. I think it's difficult to predict how successful this method can be. There's a risk that it can devolve into a lot of wasted effort and few results in the end. What do you think?

4. What classes / subjects can you think of that would benefit from this approach the most?

Week 1 (20-26 October 2014) EDUCAUSE

Read an article at http://www.educause.edu/library and present it here. Encourage its discussion.

Week 1 (20-26 October): Self-Presentation

Write here a few sentences about yourself.
Why did you decide to continue your education? What do you  specialise in? What research would you like to do/are you doing? How are you planning to conduct it?

Winter Semester 2014/15

Dear Students,

The course will start 20 October  2014.

1. Each week  there will be presented texts/films and presentations, which I would like you to read/watch and comment on.

2.  You should also present a scientific article with your comments and questions for the group to discuss: you do not write it, you just find something of your interest online, present it and moderate the discussion of it.  Put your name on the list of blog moderators next to the date when you would like to do it.

3. At the end of the semester you will give a 10-13 minute presentation.   

Weeks of our work on the blog:

1.   20.10-26.10.14
2.   27.10-02.11.14 Wiktor
3.   03.11-09.11.14 Michail Mokkas
4.   10.11-16.11.14 Robert Mazur, Oguz Bastemur 
5.   17.11-23.11.14 Piotr Wójcik,  Monem Fanduli, Albert Śledzianowski 
6.   24.11-30.11.14 Wojciech Jarmulski,
7.   01.12-07.12.14 Joanna Gutowska, Łukasz Jeznach,  Łukasz Wilczyński   
8.   08.12-14.12.14 Piotr Sukiennik, Marek Kulbacki, Krzysztof Sykuła

Tuesday (24 June) or Thursday (26 June) presentation

Dear Students,
Please decide on the day when you can deliver your presentation.
It should be from  the area of your studies and should be 10-13 minutes long.

Week 9: 3D Printing hope for a better life or a disaster?

We are seeing an explosion of development of the three-dimensional printing. Three-dimensional printing has existed for 30 years, the market leaders are: 

SHAPEWAYS,

http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/2404-10-Extrordinary-Things-You-Wont-Believe-Are-3D-Printed.html 

Stratasys

http://www.stratasys.com/

New technology takes off in a three-dimensional printing: 

Printing organs for transplants http://www.organovo.com/ 

Printing clothes, food. 

Printing houses. 

Printing electronics.

I remember when people from 70-80ties were dreaming of traveling at speeds faster than sound. That time there were CONCORDE supersonic aircraft which was flying from London to New York in 2 and a half hours.

Trials were conducted suborbital flights 2 hours flight from London to Sydney, Australia. There were plans to build a permanent base on the moon. Planned flight to Mars. How do these dreams ended we all know.

Flight from London to Sydney, Australia continues today 36H stunning journey of change in Hong Kong. Is the situation of 70-80ties going to reapet? Will the dream of 3D printing come true? 

 Are we going to print at home - clothes, food, electronics and other everyday  usage stuff?

Currently operating three-dimensional printers start at $ 40 000. Cheap 3D printers do not work very well. The printer’s owner needs to handle a lot of knowledge in the creation of three-dimensional objects and hundreds of hours of optimization.

REP-RAP Printers rig cost after $ 2,000. Truth is howerever you will not able to use them in effective way.

The leader of the cheap printer is https://www.makerbot.com/. 

This printing technology to print FDM liquid plastic. 

Printing material is PLA “Polylactic Acid, is a biodegradable plastic” and ABS “acrylonitrile butadiene styrene LEGO"

Commercial Printing 3D is just beginning as before personal computers.

At the moment you can see lot of advantages: 

Production of personalized goods tailored to your personal tastes. 

Furniture, clothing, electronics houses, etc. 

No waste in production. 

Instant production, lack of transport of the produced things. 

Energy efficient, fully automated process.

There are however disadvantages and risks:

The most serious drawback is the possibility of producing a complete printer by another the same printer. Amplification is a feature of the living structure and it is not a virtual computer virus but reality.

No need for a factory to produce anything. 

Unnecessary transportation.

Printing organs from their own stem cells eliminates all sectors of the pharmaceutical companies. 

Printing any chemical and biological agents. Threat of biological and chemical terrorism.

The biggest threat is the lack of motivation to make money, everything practically could be available almost immediately.

Do you think that 3D printing will be available in every home in the future?

Do you think that the three-dimensional printing is a threat or an opportunity for modern civilization?

Week 9: The social network of loneliness

Nowadays, technology allows for instantaneous exchange of information all over the world. Popular examples are mobile phones, instant chat messengers, e-mails and social networking services (like Facebook). We can communicate in real time with practically any other person that has access to them from anywhere in the world. Despite of how simple and efficient such a way of communication can be, it hinders the natural forms of contact. This leads to worsening of interpersonal skills that we need to possess in order to properly coexist and cooperate. Another major drawback is the fact that humans are social animals and we need the physical and direct (real) contact with other representatives of our species else we feel lonely and depressed. 

However without a doubt social networking services play a major factor of how we are perceived by other people. They are often used as a self-promotion tool, which anyone can access despite of our offline status.  

I think that the real problem lies in people’s false perception of being connected to others, the illusion that we are not alone, although the bitter truth usually is quiet opposite. I was born in the 90s and when most of the social networks emerged I was already in my early adulthood, so I had at least a taste of the period before everyone went online. I feel sorry for the 2000s generation who had no chance to experience that.

Here is a video on the topic. It went viral a couple of weeks ago so chances are you have already seen it:

And here is another interesting video covering the same topic:

Lastly in this article you can view the opinion on the subject of MIT social psychologist Sherry Turkle, PhD.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/06/social-networking.aspx

And as always here are some questions that I would like you to answer:

1. Do you have a profile on any of the social networking services? If yes then how many of your connections are people you regularly talk to or meet with in real life? (rough estimate)
2. Does this matter affect you in any way? Do you feel lonely?
3. How often do you use any of the mentioned devices/services in order to communicate with others? Could you live without them?