#still145

Working on this project we have not only been able to come up with an idea of our own, but I know my group has been working had to incorporate a social cause that is important to us. Not only do we get to exercise our creative minds,  but we get to use our creativity for greater good. It’s AWESOME.

While I think that writing a mission statement was actually one of the most challenging things we’ve done in this class, I think it’s actually the thing that I have enjoyed the most, or really found the most useful. Writing a short bio was challenging too, but writing a mission statement was much more, I think it’s pretty easy to write about yourself, your accomplishments and what your career/major is, but I think it’s much difficult to define your aspirations, and put them down on paper. I feel that my aspirations, even if they might be out of my realm of reality, are impossible to fully put on paper. I don’t know if that’s true, or if maybe I'm scared to put them on paper in case I'm not able to accomplish them. I do know that this exercise really helped me organize my thoughts about my life a little bit. I hope that in the future, maybe on my own time or in a different class, I will have the opportunity to work on this a little more.

Last year, for my freshman year of college, I went to American University in Washington, DC. As a pet of my application, I had to explain why I wanted to attend the school. I explained that, although it seems impossible, I wanted to change the world, and what better place to to that than washington. While the school didn't work out for me, I realized that I could change the world in little ways, but not necessarily how I had imagined. I learned that the little things we do, like holding a door for someone or smiling at a stranger, can help inspire people to be a little bit more kind. Kindness is contagious, and with these little things I truly think we can change the world, little by little.

I’m not really sure why this group project was so different from the rest. Maybe we got lucky with our group members, maybe it worked because we were working on something we cared about. I’m not really sure, but either way I’m so glad everything worked out and can’t wait for the class to see our project!

Because there are so many aspects of our application, we had to design what each menu and aspect of the application would look like. Our photoshop wizard did wonders, and made the prototype look extremely realistic, and professional. I can’t wait for the class to see it!

So we came up with our concept, BooKlub, but now our challenge was trying to make the application attractive to people of all ages. So I thought to myself, what is something that we could add to this application that would make it something me and my friends would want to use. So of course, naturally, our group decided to make it a social application as well. Users would be able to have profiles with their favorite books, genres, and be "friends" with their friends who also use the application. Users would be able to make recommendations to their friends, lend friends their books, as well as chat about the books they are reading. Users can also make groups with other users sort of like book clubs.. (That's how we got the name). And our generation needed another social platform... Right?!?! Coming soon.... Our next challenge is to create a prototype...

I thought that John Comazzi's lecture in class on wednesday was really interesting. I think one of the biggest things that me and my friends complained about through elementary, middle, and high school was that we felt like there were so many things we memorized and focused on that were really unimportant. Why did I need to know the year that Queen Elizabeth was born? Why do I need to know the exact order of the layers of material that make up the earth? Truth is I don't. I think my time in school would have been way better spent learning things like spacial relations, everyday skills, and problem solving skills. I think the camps for young kids, as well as the camps for high school kids, that John Comazzi was involved in would have been very beneficial to me as a young kid. One of the things I think I struggle with is problem solving, so that definitely would've benefitted from. I also think that there are other skills that we will all be required to know when we are older, but are never taught to do. I think it would be nice if schools taught kids how to do practical skills such as filing taxes, and other skills necessary to run a household. But now I've decided that I'm going to try and incorporate active learning into my classes... I don't exactly know how but I'm going to try...

So after I had clearly started to identify my specific problem, I realized I need to look a little farther-- perhaps think of potential solutions to spark ideas in my classmates minds during my presentation. So I thought of things that were possible with our current technology (at least to my knowledge) and maybe combine a few things. I came up with the following: A projection clock, a hologram and a remote. Maybe we could have our phones plugged into something that is charging it, and is also creating a hologram that is projected onto our bedroom walls and is controllable by a remote. Seems complicated, but could be simplified. I found projector clocks here: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/1/3/projection-clock and if we combine that with holograms, it could work. Now this is just one idea... but It helped me get my mind in gear. The only thing is how do we use all this modern technology, but keep the potential product at a reasonable price?