Beach Creatures

Theo Jansen: The art of creating creatures

I have never seen anything like this before. This is definitely a creative spark. Mr. Jansen is the creator of these "Strandbeest" which are these beach creatures.

he has invented life like kinetic sculptures, built from plastic tubes and lemonade bottles. There are many different designs that he has created and they are all built to move and even survive on their own.

They are still a work in progress so they can't quite survive on their own yet but the end result is for them to survive on their own. You would think that plastic tubes ad lemonade bottles would create an animal but they are more sophisticated then you would think. hey have a brain, and legs, and a nose that all have a specific job.

They move by the wind and live in the wet sand. They can detect if they are in the water or on dry sand and each part is design to help them survive in these situations.

There biggest challenge is the storms. However they have a detector in there nose where they can hammer there own stick into the grown to stabilize them selves from not blowing away.

If that is not creative I don't know what is!!!

Computer Interface's

Anand Agarawala: BumpTop desktop is a beautiful mess

This TED talk has to do with interfaces and how they are not up to date with the technology they provide. They have been the same since computers have come out. There has been no big change.

Apple has had some advances in there interface with making it more stylish but for the most part still the same. The concept of his talk was to open our eyes to possible updates to our interfaces. His ideas are pretty funny with the way he can manage the icons. The pain point is it represents his desk at work. It is a bit scattered. There are piles of icons, you can organize them neatly or have them in the corner. You can put them on the side like a shelf, or even make one icon bigger to represent it's importance.

It is very creative and I think it is a good step in the direction of updating our interface. When you thunk about what is the first thing you see when you open up your computer. It's you interface and just think if that was more creative it would inspire you to be more creative in your work.

I think a possible solution to start this update is supplying these creative ideas like the BumTop to individuals and let them run with it. Let them be involved with there own interface. They will have the opportunity to be creative and create there own design for there personal interface. It may spark creativity.

Net Neutrality, Internet Free Speech,and Censorship

My research project was on these three topics. Here is my PowerPoint and a cool Youtube video on the subject of Net Neutrality.




Here is the YouTube Video I used in my PowerPoint

???HTML???

If the title doesn't clue you in on my experience with HTML I will break it down for you. There is no experience what so ever!!!


I know it cheesy but I though it was hilarious!

To be honest when I first started this class and found out we would be blogging I wasn't really looking forward to it. I had never blogged before I had only just heard about it.

Taking this class has allowed me to advance in my knowledge of new internet technology and be more confident with the subject.

I really enjoyed how we used blogger to do our assignments. It was very creative and inspiring to do something different and not the same ol' same ol' book work.

Environment Issues

Our environment is an issue in many social groups of our society, as it should be. You can even go as far as saying it is a political issue. I feel people are realizing that this is a growing matter and we need to stop taking it lightly or we will have no more existence here on earth.

Alex Steffen: Inspired ideas for a sustainable future, is who I did my TED talk about. He is the founder of worldchanging.com, who offers his views of our world what it’s doing and where we are going.

A few random facts throughout his presentation that really got my attention:
*Our 1 plant uses enough resources to provide for at least 7-10 plants
*We are building a new city the size of Seattle every 7 days
*In the year 2025 there will be 8 billion people on our plant

I feel we should be ashamed of ourselves for taking advantage of our planet the way we do. I don’t know if people understand the magnitude of this situation. What will happen to us if we deplete all of our resources? Will there still be us?

I googled the population of Seattle and as of 2006 there is about 682,174 living in the city and an estimated metropolitan area population of approximately 4.3 million. Now just imagine that every 7 days we have a new city the size of Seattle that can house that kind of population. So what is that doing to our environment? Well for one I know it has to be taking up a lot of land to build a city that big. So there go the trees, and the poor animals that had a habitat, and our O-zone layer even more.

Our worldly population as of this year is estimated to be a little over 6.6 billion people. In the year 2025 we estimate our population to be 8 billion. That means from now to the year 2025 100 million people will be born every year. Now do the math here we are going to need a lot more Seattle’s to accompany that number. The problem is where are we going to find the space and resources to handle that growth if we are struggling at this moment to keep up with our environment now.

So obviously if we want to sustain life on this planet a few changes are needed in the immediate future!!!

Blog Action Day

This is a very interesting concept to me. I think it goes to show how effective blogging is as a mass communication media. My topic of interest for this was Medical Waste. It is hard to believe what we are doing with this toxic material. I did some research on the web and found out general information about medical waste.

Medical waste is an increasing issue that is troubling the world. Large urban hospitals can produce more than 2 million tons of medical waste each year. A big cause in this issue is clinics and hospitals throwing there medical waste in regular trash, which can cause contamination and spreading of diseases. Others burn their waste in open fields or in small incinerators without pollution control, exposing communities downwind to toxic byproducts such as dioxins and mercury, and generating potentially hazardous ash.

Over the years the world has learned that incineration is a leading source of highly toxic dioxin, mercury, lead and other dangerous air pollutants that threaten human health and the environment.

HCWH (Health Care Without Harm) is an organization that was formed to help decrease the amount of toxicity generated by the health fields medical waste. There purpose is to ensure proper management and disposal of medical waste and to decrease the dangerous practice of incineration by promoting and implementing alternatives.

Plans to reduce this issue are being implemented around the world, some of these alternatives include:

Waste minimization, segregation
Alternative technologies
Alternative technologiy suppliers
The GEF Project.
Immunization Waste



noharm.org
medical waste picture

Get in touch with you inner tortoise

My TED talk was on Carl Honore:Slowing down in a world built for speed. He is a journalist in London who wrote a book about slowing down.

Our society has the worst reputation of "road runner" attitude. Where if we aren't doing something at every moment then we are wasting time. And what is time to a lot of us? Money!!!

So how did we get so deep into this issue. Over time our culture has put a taboo on the word slow. When someone is referred to as slow it is a negative label. We take on task after task without looking at the consequences it may cause. Weather it be short term and/or long term.

Now how do we fix this problem. We are going to have to reteach ourselves and our society that it is ok to stop and smell the roses. That taking a vacation really is needed.

Myspace

I do agree that Myspace is a social network. It allows people from all over the world to interact and be connected to each other. For the most part I am not a fan of myspace. I feel it is overrated and taken over my 13 year olds talking about how there like totally sucks. I feel it might be doing more harm then anything. This could increase the problems we already have with children being exploded online. There is no age limit and anybody can view your site and see what you write. I know you can say well don't type personnel information but 13 y/o don't really understand that and shouldn't be on these kind of sites.

David Bolinsky: A Fantastic Voyage Inside The Cell, is who I did my TED Talk on. He is a medical animator who has this company XVIVO. They teach Harvard medical students by producing these advanced images and videos to help them see and understand what goes on inside the human body.

His goal of these images is to help people understand the truth and beauty of our bodies through biologic animation. This allows us to see 3-D anatomically correct images in motion. We are seeing real life actions of what really goes on inside our body.

This is an extremely advanced teaching tool. This opens up so many opportunities for inspiring creativity and sparking imagination. I feel this tool should open up to more than just the medical community. I think high school biology classes would benefit from these images and also smaller colleges and universities, that might not have the most advanced technology in there schools. With these videos and images there is no need for high tech technology. Yet it is the most advance images out there.

This will allow students to interact and have fun while understand and learning the intricate inner working's of the human body.

With this advancement I also feel that in the future we will be able to look at these images and use them to help have more control over our health. The more we learn from these images the better educated we will be. That will lead to the advancement in the research and actual care of our health.

Here is one of the images I got from his online portfolio



http://www.medillsb.com/ArtistPortfolioThumbs.aspx?AID=253

Surfing the Web

I would say I surf the net about 7-10 hours a week. These were a few that I found myself going to more than once.

www.rcc.vccs.edu - got to keep up with school and e-mail

www.facebook.com - keeping in touch with friends

www.google.com - it has everything

www.cnn.com - trying to keep current with news

www.webmd.com - duh! medical

www.dictionary.com - I am really bad with words

www.weather.com - I have to be prepared and know how to dress for the day

One Laptop Per Child

My Ted Talk this week is by a guy named Nicholas Negroponte: The vision behind one laptop per child. I choose this one because I thought it tied in with what we have been learning so far. The internet and education and also creativity.

He included a few slides with his presentation so some of this information is directly from him. The basic principles of the project is that
1. Children are our most precious natural resource
2. The solution to poverty, peace, and environment is education
3. Teaching is one but not the only way to achieve learning

A big point he wanted to get across was this is not a laptop project it is an education project. It is a non-profit organization that has so far raised 20 million dollars in funding.

His number one rule is scale. He doesn't want a few laptops going here or there he is talking about millions. The plan is for 7-10 million in 2007 and 100-200 million in 2008.

There are 7 countries that are the first targets for this project.
*China
*India
*Thailand
*Egypt
*Nigeria
*Brazil
*Argentina

Another big point in this project is the labtops are going to be made for only $100 dollars. The cost for the children is nothing. They are very versatile and have many purposes.

I can't imagine what this is going to do for these countries in the future. Most of these children have never heard of a computer before and now there towns and villages will have networks. This opens up so many opportunities for these kids to advance and make a life for themselves.

Internet and Education

The Internet is very important in my education. As stated before I am going to school to become an RN and the internet helps me stay current. There are amazing medical websites out there that keep me informed on the latest research, newest debates , and interactive videos that allow me to view things like medical procedures.

Within the next five years the internet and education can only advance more. I think the number of online classroom's and teaching will increase. Allowing more international interactions and students never having to leave there home to get an education. Now is that for the best who knows. But I think it will give more opportunity and open more doors for people trying to get an education.

The biggest change involving education would be changing how schools teach. With the way curriculum is enforced in the school system there is not much time for students to be educated in alternative ways like the internet (secondary education). I feel if the internet had a bigger influence on education it would bring back some creativity into education. Allowing student to interact with other students around the world and be more involved in worldly events. With the internet if we want to incorporate education into more there needs to be a better filtering system. I don't want my child to be on the internet trying to do his/her school work when a pop-up ad comes up and it's for a porno site. How to keep that from happening is a whole other issue on it's own. Since the internet is not government regulated anything and everything is on there so you also have to take that into consideration.

The first step it would take to connect other nations and people around the world would be education. I know it sounds funny but really. There are countries that have never even heard or seen a computer before much less know what the internet was. So educating and helping under privilege countries would open up so many opportunities for so many people.

SOL

This was very interesting and definitely got my brain ticking. I feel that schooling is changing and will change as we advance in our society. Is the change always for the best, yes and no. The biggest issue I have with education at the present time is SOL's. I firmly believe this is the biggest reason for children not being able to keep or explore there creativity. SOL's create such a dictatorship when it comes to curriculum and what must be taught and accomplished by the end of the year. Then at the end of the year the children are suppose to take this test to prove they learned something. I don't know about the rest of you but I am a horrible test taker. So the children are required to take this test and the results show how well that child learned the material from the entire year. They are then judged by the results of this one test.

When I was in high school they just started this new plan where if you didn't pass your SOL you had to take special remedial classes, so now you are being singled out and then they would even go as far as not letting you continue on to the next grade. In Mr. Robinson's presentation he stated that we don't grow into creativity we grow out of it or educated out of it." My sister is 12 years old and all ready her concern in school is am I going to pass my SOL's. They pressure you and beat it into your head what they want you to know. There is no option or room with the way schooling is going to even begin to want to be creative. You have to outsource to find ways to be creative which means extra ciricular actvites with the school, if available or elsewhere.

So, do I think schools kill creativity absolutely. This does need to change and I feel in order to do so it will take much effort from the entire chain of command. We need more options. If SOL's are here to stay then the school really needs to make an effort at finding alternative routes of teaching that can still follow the guidelines of the SOL material. They need to offer more extra curricular activities all throughout education and let the children be more involved in what they are learning.

Getting Started

My Name is Bryana and I am currently a student. This week was the start of my first semester of being an RN. I know it's going to be tough and very exhausting but well worth it in the end. So you better be nice when you comment because I could be taking care of you one day!!! Schooling pretty much takes up most of my time and between that I do work. When I do have free time I love watching movies, thats probably what I do the most in my free time. Netflex's is my friend. I have never "blogged" before so this should be interesting and I am excited about this class and learning new things!