Problem Kya Hai?

You think so. But is it really?

It is a learning project, and it has this punctuation. This point at which we sit back and ask: So how far have we come? What has it meant?

And do we have what it takes to keep going?

( A) Reflective Essay
Write a 1500 word essay reflecting upon your learning journey through the semester. You can use the SWOT analysis to help you. You can also visit the blogs of some of your classmates for inspiration on the way to write reflectively. Your essay has to demonstrate an understanding of your abilities and shortcomings in learning in a reflective fashion. You also have to demonstrate an understanding of the meaning of reflective practice.

(B) Paper Lantern
You are required to make a 6’ high paper lantern out of paper and wire. In making the lantern you have to visually document your experiments with paper. The final product has to be photographed and presented along with the picture of the processes in an A4 poster. You then have to reflect upon the ‘method’ and the meaning of doing design in this fashion.

(C) Design Method Essay
Write a 1500 word essay on either of the following topics:
1. Methods to improve creativity
2. Methods to solve problems
To develop the essay you could use the questioning technique, and refer to the handouts given through the semester. Your essay has to demonstrate an understanding of the overall area and a few specific methods in detail.

If you receive this it is because in your two peer reviews the critique has found your overall progress inadequate for the grade you have chosen. You work for the semester in this course is thus inadequate.
Mid semester crit and counselling
You may in the recent past have had a conversation with me in which you have agreed to complete a set of tasks to push your learning along. However you have not completed these tasks.
Incomplete learning
1. I am now asking you to undertake and finish all or some of the tasks listed below. You will receive a separate email listing the tasks that you need to complete.
2. You have to do these tasks and get a certificate of satisfactory completion from me to receive a grade for this course.
Dates
1. Your last dates for submission are as follows:
a. 1st date: 1st November
b. 2nd date: 26th November. This is with extension – so you have fill up an extension form (with Brian) and get it signed by me.
Blog
All submissions can be through your Blog or as hard copy handouts.
If you use the blog: You have to post your work in the Blog and get me to review it. You have to mail me specifically to notify me – by email - that you want a specific post looked at.

I have all the documentation from the whole semester in front of me. This is:
1. Your reviews from 26th Oct.
2. Your reviews from the middle of the semester.
3. Your books.
4. Your Grade aspiration

Each of you individually has had a unique experience through the course. You have learnt many things. You have had many difficulties negotiating your way through the course. Some of this may have had to do with a conflict between your idea of what constituted the practice of industrial design as you understood it to be and what you were exposed to though the course.

You dealt with a lot of the new material that you encountered in the course in your individual ways – facing up to it, ignoring it, adapting your ways to it. Many of you at many times through the course encountered feelings of inadequacy – which this conflict gave rise to. In the end you may have come though in your own way.

What is apparent from the profusion of documentation you have produced is a journey, a process of learning. And a process of unlearning – which is more significant in some ways than learning new things.

I am attempting now a closure of the exercise. In this process the task before me is to comprehend your aspirations and match these aspirations to your learning experience. In simple words if you have high aspirations then your learning goals – as portrayed in your individual spider diagrams – will be many faceted. If you have competing interests in your life then your aspirations may be modest. And so to the task of closure – which requires me to match your desire for learning and how adequately you have fulfilled that desire.

Many of you in your reflections have been completely honest both with your self and with the people in the room on 26th. You have said you could have done a lot more. Or you have said you wished you had started earlier. Or you may just have confronted me earlier, even in the first few weeks, to get more clarity for your self. The chart in the beginning of the semester was a ‘tough problem’ and many of you, rather than attack it, set it aside. But all that is in the realm of what may have been. What I am keen on is what ought to be!

For one I am keen to maintain the grades you have chosen. At the same time I am keen to complete your learning journey. My task, therefore, is not over.

So here is the thing:
1. For some of you the learning journey is incomplete.
2. I would like you to complete it: For example if you haven’t reflected – I would like you to do the reflective essay.

So – Please speak to me about this. And ask me what I think you ought to do.

Was looking around and saw this at the RISD site: http://www.risd.edu/industrial_tech.cfm. the rhode island school of design is one of those design schools that have stayed pure to design - unlike uni programs of design which have sold out to various brands of academic discourse. so 'et tu risd?' i am prompted to ask. or as we tamils say it - 'you also a risd'.

It basically says:

"Laptop Computer Requirement: All students in the Industrial Design Department are required to purchase a laptop computer, software, upgrades and insurance specified by the department. For more information call the department at 401 454-6160."

Now the question is - what does this mean?
1. Is the future going to be one in which the laptop is ubiquitous?
2. Or is the present one of ubiquitous laptops - and its jjust us at RMIT who haven't gottn on to the bandwagon?
3. Is this the last we are seeing of laptops in design schools before they are banished forever?

Looking at the long period in history - especially as people who have to be in the future, and action it for others by initiating adoption - what are we seeing? Can we read the trend correctly and go in the right direction? Or should we follow our current ideas?

Went to the Fringe Party Yesterday. Not Impressed - in fact angry and irritated. Not happy Melbourne Museum, Not happy!!

Whats is the problem?
The paper lanterns were treated SHABBILY.
1. They were not lit.
2. They were under an escalator.
3. They were all clustered together. Likes waifs huddled together in the cold.
Not happy!

So here is the thing - what should we do?

Option 1: Business as usual - do nothing. Shrug.
Option 2: Get them to connect up the lights. Incremental Change.
Option 3: Ask for apology, Money back, and for repositioning of lanterns to be separate and more prominent individually.

Discuss Please.

Here is the thing:
1. I visit your blog every day. And I may not be seeing a post. And I may be visiting many blogs and not seeing any posts or seeing very few. This makes for a reasonably unproductive activity.
2. I visit your blog every day.
3. I have begun a conversation with you - individually. I have waited for 10 weeks to feel confident enough to do this. But having spoken to you I am expecting you to open yourself in your blog. I am waiting to see you talk about yourself - your reflexive study.
4. Why reflexive: For both capability development and more crucially for creativity development you need to go through an activity that is introspective. The dumbledore exercise of taking stuff out of your head.
5. What would I like: To make my blog cruising productive if you can put a post in every day till Oct 17 (end of sem) that would be good.

Note you may not yet have made the transition to:
1. Starting the Blog: Do so and let us talk about your initial experiences on Monday.
2. You have a blog but Posting to it is some distance away: What is the point you say? You mind is a strange thing. And as designers this is our primary resource. Blogging has been known to make tigers out of mice and other such miracles. So give it a shot. If it doesnt work? Doesn't mater - its only for another four weeks - you will be rid of this course soon enough.
3. You have a blog and you have posted but are not doign a lot on this now: This is the end of the season, the course. And it is here that the blog becomes crucial. So do it for your mag/ book, for your reflection, for a self assessment. And as a contribution to the newer bloggers.

I went on the net looking for 'reflexive study' and in a short span of time could only find this example. Which curiously enough is hugely relevant. Take a look.
Writing a reflective journal.

See you next week. Have a leisurely weekend!!!

Time to blog furiously. I am setting time aside to check all the 486 blogs I have see every day. So count down time - get over it:
1. Ben
2. Ashwin
3. Matt

And others!

(a blog a day keeps soumitri's blog travel productive - so write)

1. I would like you to bring in submissions for the first class after the break? This would be work in progress of a book you will work on: (a) Part I: What you have done to follow up on the lectures (those six things; films, talks, visits, case study, assignment,…) can be shown! (b) Part II: What you have done to follow up on the studio sessions can be fleshed out here. Many of you have not attempted the paper lantern for fringe, I would like you to take it up now.

2. Formats: (1) This has be a folio in the form of a book (work in progress) done in Illustrator, Power Point, or In-design, with text and images – layout to be elegant and well considered. (2) Use your Blog text (if you do not have a functional blog? start now, send me the link, and put text up, and put this into the book at the same time), (3) put up the films, say put up the poster of the film, your note, link to an article on the film and your take on it. (4) Introduction and Conclusion – this can be drawn from two parts of your reflexive study (I used to be, but now – this can go on to the blog too). (4) The parts of your book can be (should be, or else? Heh heh), a- intro, b-lectures follow ups, c- studio follow ups, d-conclusion, e-links and bibliography). (5) Book format/ Size: A4, Vert/Horizontal. (6) Bring B/W dummy for discussion to class.

(Written on 3rd September)
I have a lecture that I didn’t get a chance to deliver. Work done – no way to use this work. Have written it up. You can ask for the text. The next week was supposed to be competitions. One lecture, one set of ‘corporation games’ to be played. (the first years are ready to come in when you want them. Are you ready to play?)

That apart: How was the performance that day? Patchy – but maybe here is why.
1. I asked for you to form three groups. You did. I ask team leaders to pick the groups – they didn’t. First mistake! A leader has to take responsibility – to fashion a good team. We ended with unequally balanced teams. When leaders don't take charge you get apathy and ill will. So?
2. One group had huge energy – things flowed. In one group – people couldn’t help each other, didn’t make the effort – things stumbled along. In the third group the dislikes surfaced and irritation and anger reigned – they ground to a halt.
3. Was all this bad? No. But it amplified what you bring to class – and in a sense holds a mirror up to who you are. You are in the main very tired/apathetic/suspicious/unengaged/distracted (pick one!). You are not comfortable letting your mind respect me – for all that I am doing to your mind. You do not do enough for me. Olivia is putting lots of energy (incidentally I saw that ad ‘goddess of candles?’ on SBS) – Fringe + Dinner – why? To get more out of the course. The more you put in the more you will get. So what have you done – not just for yourself? (there I go haranguing! Ummmm). Have you pushed your limits? You have to pay me back for all that I have done till now. August was your month (July was mine), but you didn’t take charge. September is here and I am still waiting. No new initiatives in October – only Favelas. Am I unhappy? No, not at all. That is your prerogative. Mine job is to set up and court failure – so that I can get results. So that I can show you what happens if you do not go into a learning mode – which unfortunately is different from a doing/execution mode. Its not about the content – its about you. Content will keep changing – its arbitrary – but your mind, that is a given.
4. Am I unhappy? No – I need failures to start a conversation happening. Because we need failures – that's the only way we learn. If Carl sound like a Soumitri acolyte ( in his recent posts) – then so be it! That is the Guru Shishya Model getting activated. That model delivers – but it asks for the student/shishya to have implicit faith in the teacher/guru. That's a big ask. The guru delivers – but first the shishya has to be there – all of him, mind and body. Do I want to adopt the G-S model? No. that is for the musicians in the city who go off to distant parts to learn percussion. I am a student of pedagogy, its my calling, and I see the anger and the start of the engine in some of you when your group failed. Not resignation, Anger! I notice it and say under my breath, its finally working for you – go for it. In this class in addition to the G-S model we have the school teacher-student model (teach me the right way), the employer-employee model (‘yes sir’), the contractor-trady model (tell me what to do and I will execute it).
5. Carl you came late to class and I didn’t have a chance to do the meditation session. Also re the rest of you – I was chicken, you would sneer at me, I don't have your full confidence, you don't trust me implicitly).
6. So we have failed ( the EV CAD and model will happen – but that wasn’t the point at all, it was the way it would happen). One group failed dismally – but significantly they found anger and that is energy too – so they will come through. But Ben your group will find it difficult to pull through with a presentation. So watch out, you have to crank yourselves a lot harder.
7. You want outcomes? So do I. (a) Can you each please make a 6’ high paper lantern (esp those not doing it for fringe)? (b) I want to make a small book on Walton focussing upon both construction waste and solving tough problems. (c) Make your Evs (2D poster + 3D model, then prototype or scale working model).
8. If you still have energy left over I would like to propose a revisiting of your previous semester’s work – Matt your ticket thing, Kate/ Carl your HPVs – and their conversion into competition entries.
9. If you don't do all this? It doesn't matter.

From Wikipedia:
The education of an individual human begins at birth and continues throughout life. (Some believe that education begins even before birth, as evidenced by some parents' playing music or reading to the baby in the womb in the hope it will influence the child's development.) For some, the struggles and triumphs of daily life provide far more instruction than does formal schooling (thus Mark Twain's admonition to "never let school interfere with your education"). Family members may have a profound educational effect — often more profound than they realize — though family teaching may function very informally. The origins of the word "education" reveal one theory of its function: the Latin educare comes from roots suggesting a "leading out" or "leading forth", with possible implications of developing innate abilities and of expanding horizons.
Formal education occurs when society or a group or an individual sets up a curriculum to educate people, usually the young. Formal education can become systematic and thorough, but its sponsor may seek selfish advantages when shaping impressionable young scholars.

Also to 'educe' is to draw out.

And more in the context of Carl's usage of the term Guru: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru-shishya_tradition

I am committed to three wheels. So there ...