05 februari 2012

Guiding Questions when writing the report


Lotta Sandborgh

Personal Project Report Draft

Guiding Questions

What AOI did you use? Why? Which specific section of that AOI did you focus on?
    Human Ingenuity. Because in my project, my guiding question was how I could teach a dance choreography to a group of people and then perform it, this connects to Human Ingenuity with the questions how and why we create. In my project, I focused a lot on creating and learning because I like to create things, and I wanted to also try something new, like teaching what I created to other people. Sharing is caring!

What topic did you use? How do you relate to this with past experience and knowledge? How does this topic relate to your AOI?
The topic that I used was a dance performance. Since I am a dancer, I have done a lot of performances in my past with choreographies that I have created. I could apply my past knowledge from preparing and practicing for performances when I was looking for a song that fits well with a choreography (even though I didn't create the choreography myself). Also, I knew that you can never practice enough for a performance because there is always something to improve! A dance performance fits in with the questions included in Human Ingenuity because I had to ask myself the question: "How can I create a dance choreography that many people (with possibly no dancing experiences) can learn and perform?"

What were your goals when creating this project? What specifications did you design for you to reach your goals?
My goals when I created this project was to design an interesting dance choreography that would get a lot of attention when performed spontaneously at a public place. The specifications I designed to reach as much audience as possible was to have loud speakers playing the song at the most crowded place in Lund. For it to look appealing, I set up a goal to have at least 50 participants, all wearing a red santa hat, and everybody dancing synchronized with the music and each other. To show that the performance was successful, we interviewed four people in the audience about what they thought about the performance.

What resources did you investigate for the project? Why did you choose those resources? Were some better quality than others? Did you have any difficulties finding resources?
The resources I investigated for my project are youtube clips of past flash mobs, instructional websites for creating performances, and smart mobs. I also got a book about smart mobs called Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold. I chose these resources because they are specifically about performances, smart mobs (which is a type of flash mob). The same techniques are used when designing and performing a flash mob. The book was sometimes a bit hard to understand because the book was aimed for an older civilization, but it was the most useful one because it gave me a lot of quotes, statements, techniques and other useful things for writing my report.

How did you make your choices about what information to use? How did you evaluate your sources?
I picked what I thought related to a dance performance and a flash mob. I payed a lot of attention to the book and the observation of the environment. I also looked closely at past flash mobs and what the techniques were that they used.

What exactly did you do to complete your project? What decisions did you make based on the information you discovered? How did you solve problems? How did the information affect your choices?
I recorded our performance and turned it into a video. Looking at the information I got form my resources, I adjusted my project specification to be able to have a flash mob of good quality.

Were there any specific techniques you developed during the investigation?
Yes, I have gained a lot of knowledge about flash mobs, and designing a suiting investigation with goals that are reachable!

Did you adjust/change any of the goals you put up as the project went? Why? Did you feel that you successfully reached the goal?
No, I didn't change any of the goals as the project went along because I put up a good goal from the start that I felt I could work to reach throughout the whole project process.



25 januari 2012

Writing the Report...

The final draft for our report is due on FEBRUARY 13TH.
Points for my report:

  • Written piece
  • Written in MLA format
  • Have a front page with Santa Claus picture on it 
  • Use examples from Journal
  • Use quotes and cite sources! (Rheingold,322)
  • The area of Interaction I applied and why
  • My topic - FLASH MOB?
  • The inquiry question and the outcome or product I created
  • My plans and the process I implemented
  • The resources I used (cite them!)
  • Techniques applied
  • Any challenges or issues I met and how I solved them
  • What I learned about my topic and area of interaction from my investigation
  • What I learned about myself as a learner from the Personal Project
(Taken from itslearning) The written report must include.. 


18 januari 2012

Smart Mob book notes

I have collected the notes that I wrote down from reading the Smart Mob book. 

    Resource: Smart mobs by Howard Rheingold
  • = compares flash mob and smart mobbing
    Ideas
    Examples
    IMPORTANT
    Facts to look up
FLASH MOB VS. SMART MOB

    "Being part of something special makes you special" (Glee)

1: How to recognize the future when it lands on you
  • Smart mob=consists of a group of people who are able to act in concert (<--to prove a point, flashmob is just for fun) even if they don’t know each other.The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing abilities.
Smart mob: Demonstration, speech, strike
Flash mob: Dance performance, singing, theatrical

2: Shibuya epiphany
  • Pros of smart/flash mobs: Get new friends who share the same interest
ex: Mad Wing Angles - motorcycle gang who met over texting
  • Oyayubisoku=the ”thumb tribe” (Referring to Tokyo texters, Japan has so much ppl who texts)
Mobile telephones NOT ONLY TEXTING can be used for life style related information for those who don’t cope well with internet - restaurant guides, transportation, schedules, etc.

3: Technologies of Cooperation
  • People use text messaging to coordinate their actions; Someone wasn't home, they contact their phone
    I have experienced a friend texting me to open the door
  • SMS = Short Message Service
  • First message was sent in 1992 in the U.K.
  • Sweden is the most online country in the world
  • Technology should help people come together; groups of people with certain interests and experiences grow
  • Effects of the new texting, telephony, and internet culture: Junk food + no movement= fat people
    FLASHMOB MAKES PEOPLE MOVE AND GIVES A GOOD REASON TO GO ONLINE PLUS NO FREE RIDING=People who succumb to the temptation to enjoy a public good without contributing to its provision WILL HAPPEN as much
--> Cutting the line
  • "We are generation Txt" Was going around as a message in Filipino Youth (youngsters in the Philippines) another ironic one in Filipino-English texting lingo said: "Der is lyf Byond textng. Get 1." ("There is life beyond texting. Get 1.)
--> Good to text; makes you connect to people in other ways
  • Norwegian ethnologist Truls Erik Johnsen claims "The content of a text is not important. The message has a meaning in itself; it is a way of showing the recipient you're thinking of him (or her)
  • Collective action dilemmas= action made in a group arguing something are are the perpetual(never ending) balancing of self-interest and public goods=a resource from which all may benefit, regardless of whether they help create it
--> Lighthouse for navigation, park, sanitation system, breathable air.
WITHOUT PUBLIC GOODS - NO ACTION DILEMMAS
WITH FREE RIDERS - NO ACTION DILEMMAS
  • People need inspiration to contribute to a public good
  • A commons(social) can be more than physical resources like fish or pastureland
  • What a group needs to keep their members engaged: Identity, reputations, boundaries, inducements(bribes) for commitments
    IDENTITY: Dancing Santa Claus Flashmob
    REPUTATION: At school put up posters, made group on facebook, performed at assembly, etc.
    BOUNDARIES: Keep what they are allowed to do limited; the choreography was specific
    INDUCEMENTS: Told them they will be on Team Marco Polo's Channel on YouTube and website(www.teammarcopolo.com)
  • Howard Rheingold about group factors: "These are the social processes most likely to be affected by technology that enables people to monitor reputations, reward cooperation, and punish defection."
  • A group of people who are about to something - The leader gathers everyone and tell them that they are all in this together and that the success of the event is depending on them working as one.
  • The most successful recent example of an artificial public good is the Internet
--> We put almost all information access on the internet
  • Usenet.com - more useful than facebook?
--> subscribe to a "newsgroup" and you can read all the postings made by people in that group SAME AS FACEBOOK
  • Usenet.com exchanged 151 million messages, contributed by 8.1 million unique undefined users in 2000. Facebook exchange...............................????????????????
  • People are adjusting: becoming portal; obtain support, companionship, information with those outside the area through phoning, writing, driving, railroading, transiting and flying.
  • P2P (peer to peer) technology was mostly made for fun - it is a human social power.
    Cory Doctorow demonstrates this and says: "In a nutshell, peer-to-peer technology is goddamn wicked. It's esoteric. It's unstoppable. It's way, way cool.
    Hardware and software makes it possible to not just participate, but believe in it.
    Today people not only use internet for fun, but for cancer researching, finding prime numbers, what can you not use internet for?

4:Computation Nations and Swarm Supercomputers
  • Research organizations important to our society started and have been able to grow from using a computer's capabilities
-->Evolution@home (http://www.evolutionary-research.org) searches for genetic causes for extinction of species.
  • p2p is about being able to share files with other people
  • Peer-to-peer Power= the "killer app" - software application that turns an underused technology into an industry-is a central and recurring myth of Silicon Valley culture. The PC was a toy for geeks and gamers until the electronic spreadsheet transformed it into a business tool. Email and the Web were the killer apps of the Internet. And Napster was the killer app that awoke the world to the disruptive potential of p2p power.When millions of college students started trading music files in the new MP3 digital recording format, they strained the carrying capacity of large-scale university Internet connections, alerted the vested interests in the existing intellectual property industry that a frontal assault had been launched on their livelihood, and demonstrated that teenagers can ignite world-changing p2p ad-hocracies.Erato
  • Gnutella.Net - social networking site and a search engine and file-sharing facility for its users. Connects anyone to everyone, impossible to know who asked a question.
-->"Hey, find strawberry-rhubarb pie recipes?" = "Hi my friends, can you find a strawberry-rhubarb pie recipe for me? And while you're at it, ask your close friends too. And ask them to ask their friends"
    Some guy 6 degrees from you (your friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend) has the answer
    That's what they fix at GnutellaNet!
  • "Free Riding on Gnutella" - every social network's weakness
--> 70% of Gnutella's users don't share any files - DOESN'T ENCOURAGE COOPERATION!
  • Computers make complicated tasks easier to handle!
  • Devices in our hands are going from portable to wearable :)

5: The Era of Sentient Things

  • Smart rooms=visual, audio, and haptic interfaces to environments such as rooms, cars and office desks
    Smart clothes=wearable computers that sense and adapt to the user and their environment.
-->Might take away our personal freedom!
    Smart people=relying on human intelligence in our development of technological infrastructure rather than attempt to take the human being out of the equation.
  • Many parts of the physical world has become browsable and clickable. How does that change us?
--> Events happen over the internet, People are "looking down", communication is changed (the way we communicate might be video calling, texting, etc), Friendship is possible to be developed with people you didn't have the access to knowing before, and more information is available for anyone to find out anything.
  • In 2002, when Smart Mobs was written, Industry analyst Gartner Consulting predicted that 40% of adults and 75% of teenagers will use wearable computing devices by 2010. True? False?
  • "Wheter it comes through penny chips, wearable computers, geo-coded handheld devices, location-based services, smart rooms, digital cities, or sentient furniture, it seems clear that the next ten years will see more inanimate objects joining the Web and more people linked through mobile group-forming network technologies. The power of individuals to use smart mob media to form beneficial ad-hocracies- the power to solve socal dilemmas-depends less on computing power or communication bandwidth and more on trust and willingness to risk the sucker's payoff. That's where reputation could make a crucial difference." pg.112

6: The Evolution of Reputation
  • Electronics brings people together
-->Facebook - Marco Polo Team found our flash mob! Ebay - uses reputation system to bring people who don't know each other together, from different parts of the world!
  • Social innovation through Usenet - It serves as info-hunting and gathering information for each other (Freeriding=others gathers information for you and you don't give anything back)
  • Newbies= new people to the cite.
-->Technology has cause informal language to be used more often because it's simpler/faster to write
  • Opposite of freeriders=hordes if compulsive contributors
  • Good thing about virtual communities is that you don't have to a professional writer, artist, or television journalist in order to express yourself to others. Everyone can be a publisher or a broadcaster now.
--> ABUSE=those anonymous people who get attention for their negativeness and other unnecessary things posted on social networks.
  • "killfiles" - on Usenet.com eliminates the things you don't want to see pop up on your site
  • Hiding crap is easy. The real achievement is finding quality
  • Before Facebook: Usenet.com
  • Ending: How has technology affected us? -Make yourself seen online And in public(IRL) through flash (and smart) mobs! Soon internet will be "the public"(?)






11 januari 2012

Sharing!

Team Marco Polo has put our flash mob video on their Youtube channel! Click on the picture to look!

10 januari 2012

Performance time!!



On Saturday, 17th of December we performed our dance! There was between 40-50 participants, all wearing a red santa claus hat. Everybody did the dance like it was choreographed and the entrance of people was just like we had planned; Johanna and I started, after the song had played once, 6 people joined, and at the third round everyone else joined the dance. Many people on the street stopped and looked at our flash mob performance, and many people seemed to have enjoyed it because they looked happy(as show in the video). We got some interviews with a few people; Christos Karabellas, Ariannas mom, Mona (flash mobber) and a yoga-guy who was standing on Stortorget for his Falun-gong.


Lukas, Daniel, Paulina, Anna and me
People were slowly arriving around 1:30 to our meeting at Stadsparken before the flash mob



Everybody were in costume!


Practicing the dance


Then we made our way to Stortorget for the performance! Exciting!





Click on the picture to get to the video! :)


Question is.. did it really succeed? In other words.. did it follow my project specification?
Anything that we didn't succeed on is marked in red
  • 3 Cameras (one for pictures, two for filming) for documentation 
  • Speakers
  • Red santa claus hats
  • iPod that has the song playing the song 6 times in total
  • Public communication site to give information (facebook)

Specification
What: Dancing Santa Claus Flash mob!
When: Saturday, 14:00, December 17
Where: Stortorget, Lund
Who: Lotta Sandborgh and Johanna Jonsson + at least 50 people
Why: To spread joy and bring out the christmas spirit in Lund!
How: We will dance to the music..
Johanna and Lotta starts off...
After song has played once, 6 more people will join in, and after the song has played twice, another 6 will join, and when the fourth time will come*1, everybody else joins in...
When we have finished the dance after a total of 6 rounds, everybody walks away like nothing has happened...
Everybody*2 will keep their santa claus hats on...
Success!

*1 Everybody entered the second time (more or less), some people came in at random times, but everybody came in before the song played 3 times and after 2 times.
*2 Not everybody kept their hats on!

17 december 2011

Reminder from Stadshallen

Confirmation from Mats at Stadshallen to put out the electrical chord for our speakers today.


Marco Polo!

Great News!!
The Marco Polo Team (the ones who created this dance) has found our flash mob event on facebook. Now they want us to send them the video of when we are doing the dance so they can share it on their youtube-channel and their website! This means we have to do a really good performance so we can look good for the Marco Polo Team! Here is what they wrote to us:


UPDATE 19/12


He also created an event for a road trip to Sweden just to see our flash mob!