HI all, I have had many opportunities to work with first-year non-computer-science students lately. Feedback on the course I'm planning for next term is welcome. So far, I've got a course description, one text, and a plan for how to get the students to engage with local and remote communities.
Last year, I ran "Technology and Activism," which was closely coupled with "Art and Activism." Given that the latter is not running next term, and the two were very closely coupled, I'm not in a position to do a quick revision of "Tech and Activism" and run it again. This term, I'm running "Creativity and Leadership." We're reading some fun stuff (we're finishing "Starfish and the Spider" at the moment), and are exploring into the space of open communities a bit more gently than we did with the "X and Activism" courses last year. My proposed course for next semester currently has the following description: === Making the Future: Entrepreneurial Empowerment for Everyone A hands-on exploration of the tools, physical and virtual, that empower individuals to participate in growing and changing communities on a local and global scale. This course will make use of virtual tools (wikis, YouTube) as well as physical (eg. the Makerbot 3D printer) to begin "democratizing innovation," described by Eric von Hippel in his book of the same name. Our work will have us communicating with entrepreneurs locally (in Meadville) as well as globally as we experience the process of decentralized collaboration and change. === Within the context of this course, I'd specifically like to do the following: 1. Find the funding to purchase a Thing-O-Matic[1]. 2. Set the students the challenge of creating a sustainable business around giving away 3D prints to open projects. By "sustainable business", I mean "we can keep doing it year round." At worst, "we can do it through the school year." I can then work that business into future runs of these FS courses over the next few years, which will give students an authentic, entrepreneurial experience in an open, collaborative context where they can see and touch the products of their interactive process. Along the way, we read, write, and do interviews surrounding the challenges and rewards of working in open/decentralized contexts. My questions to you: 1. How does it sound? Anything you'd add? Take away? 2. Any readings you'd like to see in there? 3. Do you think kickstarter.com would fund a project like this? I'm looking for approx. $1500 to get the printer and bits. (If it comes to it, I can probably do it for around $700, but that is far from ideal.) Naturally, the description was due this past Friday. I've been swamped keeping up with the courses I'm currently running, both of which involve community interaction, and therefore both require me to stay on top of quite a few things. But, as long as I'm a day late, another might not get me in too much trouble... Cheers, Matt [1] http://store.makerbot.com/makerbot-thing-o-matic.html _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
