SUMMARY:
Everyone in class introduces themselves to each other, and we set the course for exploring a complex world.
NOTES:
For the first part of class, everyone forms groups of three and plays the game “two truths and a lie.” Each student comes up with three statements that all sound similarly believable, but one statement is complete fiction. The purpose here is to listen closely and figure out what sounds implausible. As well, students get to know some uncommon facts about each other.
Then, we discuss the idea behind a famous quote:
“When we try to pick out anything by itself,
we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
This was written by John Muir, a Wisconsin native who traveled throughout the country – by foot – over a century ago. Muir promoted natural areas and national parks. He grew quite old, and his ideas became quite famous. We can summarize Muir’s quote in just three words “everything is connected.”
But, is this idea absolutely true? Is this patently false?
Some students say it’s true, others say it’s false. But a few suggest that the quote is neither true nor false, because connections are a matter of degree. Some connections matter more than others, and relationships vary in degree of importance, impact, and so on.
Environmental sustainability is a complex and global topic. For the course to understand everyone’s individual role in the world around us, “we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” (to quote Albert Einstein). Connections among things create networks among countless complex systems. We will try to untangle human and natural systems to see where problems exist, and imagine ways to implement solutions.
As today is an introduction to solving complex problems, a music video starring Carl Sagan seems appropriate, especially his first stanza: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
Dr John Nelson joins us to help orient ourselves to the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (WID), our classroom location for the next three weeks, and to have a first round of discussion about “sustainability.”
During his guest lecture, Dr Nelson reviews the inspiration and idea behind the WID building construction. In a special behind-the-scenes tour, the whole class sees how these ideas are put into action.
To summarize:
- laws of nature and technological creations are different from human behavior and conceptual ideas we construct, and there are great possibilities for re-designing our built environment
- the WID building is designed with energy and material considerations for a 100 year, including three spaced “envelope” boundaries from the outside walls to the inside laboratories, high-efficiency heat-exchange equipment, and over 70 geothermal wells in the basement for heating and cooling year-round
- many building features, especially the modular laboratory areas, allow adaptability for changing purposes
Illustrations and descriptions of the WID building and more are available in this WID building brochure
Today began the first lesson with Seann Dikkers, a student working with Professor Kurt Squire.
SUMMARY:
We explore the concept of problem solving by first asking, “what’s the problem.” The discussion focuses on images and ideas about healthy people, a healthy planet, and the connections in between. Earthships offer a contrast to the WID building as a different solution to similar problems.
NOTES:
Earthships and Earthships in China
We sit down as a group with Chris Meyer, founder of Sector67, laptops in hand and circuit boards, wires, sensors, and servo motors all over the tables. Nobody knows what a microcontroller was or what the rest of the parts they had sitting in front of them are for.
However, after a quick introduction and a long download, everyone had a circuit board kit and the right software, complete with Chinese language interfaces that helped solve configurations a bit of a challenge! After everything was ready to go, both the Chinese and American students were already learning another new language – electronics.
The lesson is based on the Arduino platform, an engaging, easy to use introduction to the world of electronics. Its core is a programmable microcontroller, a simple device we use to explore numerous examples in the development environment.
Students were shown how to produce a functioning machine and to work from there to create interactive and engaging attributes. In a few short hours, the students went from figuring out how to hook components together to using the provided parts to compose songs, attack each other with servo motors, and generally had a good time figuring things out and exploring the possibilities.
See also this illustrated introduction to Arduino
pending upload
In order to understand what social robotics is, we first need to understand how humans are social with one another. Because humans have an unconscious set of social norms that we follow, we want to be able to implement similar norms on robots so that our communication with them is familiar.
We gather in a laboratory in the Computer Science building with Allie Terrell, a graduate student working with Professor Bilge Mutlu.
Students explored many facets of social robotics – what it means for humans to be social, ways robots currently act socially, the challenges in implementing social behaviors on a robot, and how having social robots may change how we work in the future. To really understand how Professor Mutlu’s research group studies social robotics, students walked through the process of identifying different social cues in humans, studying them, and then discussing situation where they may appear on a robot.
Today, the students take concepts from the previous day’s lesson with Allie Terrell, a graduate student working with Professor Bilge Mutlu, and apply the ideas by programming real robots.
Students are given a brief tutorial about how to program their Lego Mindstorms® robot, and then they spend time exploring how to program it on their own, culminating in a program they would show off to the class at the end. Many students had the robot dancing, talking, and responding to different stimuli by the end of the session. One robot was programmed to offer an ice cream cone!
After our session on robotic “brains” with Arduino circuit boards and programming, the next step to building a robot is figuring out how to hook up the electronics to the motors and the sensors that make it work!
But since walking, talking robots are incredibly difficult projects, we will create small kits from Adafruit Industries, learning how to safely use a soldering iron to melt metal and make (hopefully) good electrical connections. Building kits offers the an experience in soldering, a fundamental skill necessary for building robots but also things like fixing laptops, repairing headphones, and hacking all kinds of electronics. Students are starting to realize that everything electrical is really just a series of little systems that work together to do amazing things, much like a lifelike robot is composed of a few small motors and an electronic brain to make them move in concert.
Chris from Sector67 presented four kits to choose from: a pencil that transforms drawings into sound (Drawdio), a cell phone charger that runs on AA batteries (Minty Boost), and a universal off button for any TV around the world (TV-B-Gone).
The best part of building a kit is learning how to place the electronic components on the bare circuit board, in the right spot, and soldering them up without any mistakes. At the end of the session, even with nineteen students simultaneously learning to handle hot soldering irons and put tiny pieces together in a permanent fashion, we had everything working well with very few mistakes.
So far we have seen the WID building and Earthships homes, a student garden and a school focused on gardening, and a waste water treatment plant. These are all examples of projects that try to solve problems in various systems. Some are designed to reduce human impact on the environment, and others provide for quality of human life in new and innovative ways — they re-design the systems.
Please write short answers to each part of the two questions below and email your completed work to Danny by 8pm on Monday, July 25th.
1: Pick one (1) of these examples and describe how it works as a system.
- Use the terms from class: parts, connections, boundary, inputs and outputs, and feedbacks.
- Identify at least two (2) broader systems the example interacts with.
- Explain what kind of influence or impact it makes on those systems.
- (In addition to written answers, you may also include anything else that helps (information online, notes from your journal, photographs, images, drawings, or anything else that helps to support your answer))
2: Consider either a US or Chinese strategic plan for sustainability over the next 25 years.
- Identify any features of the example that should be part of that plan.
- Explain why these features are important (or are NOT important) by making arguments and showing evidence (information or data online, points from discussion in class, notes from your journal, photographs, images, drawings, or anything else that helps to support your answer).
For students to reflect and build, GWIP includes extensive design times in the third week for students to review the content of the class, work together, and build ideas.
During these times teachers have meetings with each group to assess the project, set goals, and address challenges. Teams generated ideas from scratch, prepared visual and verbal presentations, and presented their work to the class.
After meetings and the first round of student presentations, mini-lessons target specific needs for team members that may need to conduct research, learn new tools, carry out specific design work, and prepare multimedia presentations.
People have used technology for thousands of years. Technologies help people do and teach many things, and people will continue to develop technologies for the future. However, there are always new areas to explore and new ways to use technology.
Over the last three weeks, our class has seen exciting examples of new technologies in social robotics and digital games. For social robotics, we learned about programming circuit boards and soldering small devices, controlling Lego Mindstorms robots, and coming face-to-face with Wakamaru, the interactive yellow robot used in human behavior experiments. For digital games, we learned about conversations and puzzles, prototyping and play testing, various tools for designing games and user interfaces.
You have 1 hour in class to write an essay (1 to 2 pages) on paper!
In your essay, you should do the following:
- explain your personal views about how humans use technology.
- discuss both the possibilities and the limitations of technologies.
- use your imagination to describe future technologies and their uses.
Download/ print a PDF of the assignment
After many weeks of learning and working, today the students do an interactive presentation about their final projects.
Three judges joined the audience, including Chris Meyer, an engineer and founder of Sector67, Ryan Paugh, community director at the Young Entrepreneur Council, and Danny Spitzberg, lead instructor for GWIP. The judges offered constructive criticism on the following criteria:
1 – sustainability – does the game teach something important to its audience?
2 – marketability – is the game fun and unique, and does it attract a specific audience?
3 – proof-of-concept – how developed is the game prototype?
4 – presentation – is it organized, compelling, and enthusiastic?
