Disruptive Technologies

Course site for Disruptive Technologies. Exploring identity, community, & design.

Category: Synthesis

Bittersweet, Like an Apple Removed from My Heart

So guess what? This is it. It’s a bittersweet moment as I sit here typing out my final blog post. I had so many goals and aspirations to achieve this semester and reached some while never thinking twice about some others. Then there are the goals that I achieved without intending to. You may be wondering what some of those goals are, but I’ve decided to not tell you. If you’re reading this, then let me tell you that you have been blessed with a magnificent brain that can come up with ideas that I could never dream of—don’t let me hold you back.

 

There is one thing that I learned this semester that I really think you should keep in mind. It’s all about people.

All of this. School, technology, families, the postal service, all of our communities, everything. Don’t take people for granted, but in turn, don’t take yourself for granted either. You’ve fought half the battle by just taking the moment to read this. It proves that you not only want to, but can do it. If you’re having this read to you, guess what, you still can.

 

After school special aside, this has been a great semester. It’s one of the first courses where I felt like whatever I put in I got in return. I definitely appreciated that it was taught and attended by university administrators–not to have an outlet to vent, but it was encouraging to see that the people behind so many emails care about improving the school and are motivated to do it with students in mind.

As you should know by now if you’ve been keeping up with this blog and course, we had iPads all semester. Needless to say that all my plots to keep mine have been thwarted by that nifty ID number on the back. Oh well. I must say that I don’t know if this semester could have been possible without them. They established a baseline technology that we could implement in whichever ways we saw fit to be successful in school. I frequently caught myself panicking if I left my iPad at home (moreso than if I left my phone). It has been everything this semester–never leaving my side. It took some getting used to, but wasn’t unbearable, and since it was new, it forced me to begin thinking out of the box in general. In essence, it was disruptive. Knowing that I would be giving the iPad back, I can speak honestly and say that I failed and didn’t push it as far as I could. As a broke college kid, I refused to spend money on it. If I had brought my own, or purchased it in the beginning, I think my selection of apps and utilities would have been much more in depth (would have had an external keyboard too). Do I think iPads should be implemented in education? Definitely. Will something new need to be added eventually? Definitely. Is that okay and natural? Definitely.

 

I bid you adieu, and may the dreams of a back button forever rest with you, my dear Future People.

Technically Yours,

Richard.

Final Synthesis – Team Right Shark

Final Synthesis

Week 14: Working Session!

Well, this is it … our last class before we wrap up with the final Team Synthesis next week. It is hard to believe, but here we are. Today will be unlike any other day we’ve spent together. I will be giving the class to you — we will still be in the room together for most of it, but I want you to take the time to hang out, talk, laugh, and work in your teams on a couple of things. First and foremost, I want you to make progress on your paper prototypes. I am really excited to see how you have decided to design at least two of the interactions we brainstormed last week and I am very interested to see if you took advantage of the tools we looked at.

The second thing I want you to work on is your Final Synthesis. This one is different than the first two in that I want you to work together to draw our three themes together. You can do that in any creative way you see fit, but you must connect the dots from across the entire semester and use the lenses of Community, Identity, and Design to bring your synthesis to life. I am giving you one last reading this week and I do think you’ll enjoy it … please integrate it into your Final Synthesis. I expect you to share your app prototype, discuss the disruptive potential of the iPad, and describe how our themes and our semester long conversations about disruption impacted your final design statement. Most importantly I want your teams to bring forward a bold statement about how your collective minds may or may not have been expanded by our little grand experiment this semester.

Again, if you have readings or things for the rest of the class to do to prepare, please post them by 5 PM on Tuesday. As some inspiration, here is a Final Synthesis from ghosts of Disruptive Technology Past …

Out of Class

Week 10: Synthesis Number Two

This week I will once again hand the course over to our two teams. I am very much looking forward to seeing what you have in store for us all today. The vast majority of the class today will center on the two teams leading the conversation. We will see if there is time remaining to introduce the next (and final) block of he class focusing on design.

For the final block we will be focusing on Human Centered Design and will follow the process that the unbelievably good firm, Ideo articulates. I would like you all to get accounts at their Design Kit site, download it, and read the Introduction and the Hear portion for next week. That will allow us to hit the ground running.

Out of Class

  • Weekly Create — Show us what you think design means by being creative. Write your personal definition of design in your post.
  • Weekly iPad Reflection — what iPad app is missing for you students in higher education? I want you to be as creative in your thinking as possible and use what you feel you understand about the work flow of students on college campuses. If you could build anything, what would it be and what would it enable?
  • Read “An Introduction to Design Thinking
  • Read “Designing the New Twitter Profiles
  • Go to the Read Kit site and watch the “What is Human Centered Design” video
  • Create an account
  • Download and read the Design Kit Pages 1-18

Listen Up, Can Anyone Hear Us?

To prepare for Thursday’s synthesis presentations, those of us that like to be Too Disruptive would like for you to do two things. First, take a look at Sam Richards’s Ted Talk,  “A Radical Experiment in Empathy.”

Then, we would like for you to take a brief, semi-anonymous quiz. Especially since this is such a small class, we hope that everyone gets a chance to take the quiz (even Cole). Also, please do so no later than Thursday at noon so we will have time to compile the results.

Click here to take the brief quiz, Making ‘My’ Way Downtown

Synthesis – Community – Team Right Shark

Link to presentation

Readings for Synthesis Presentation – Too Disruptive

Please complete the following readings before class on Thursday.

Related to Cluetrain Manifesto:

  • http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/03/cluetrain-manifesto-still-relevant-10-years-later086/

    While reading, think about what theses from the original Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) are still relevant today. Which theses are no longer relevant in 2015?

  • We will also be watching a scene from the 1986 film Jumpin Jack Flash during class. You do not need to watch the movie as a homework assignment, as we will just be showing a short clip during our presentation.

Wenger Readings:

http://wenger-trayner.com/resources/are-the-new-web-2-0-technologies-relevant/

http://wenger-trayner.com/resources/online-communities-of-practice/

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