|
1. what do you consider the main argument of the article? The main argument of the article is that future systems need to encourage and allow users to be active contributors to the systems design. Open systems will let / encourage users to be more creative and give them experience in the design process. 2. do you agree or disagree with the main argument? give a answer based on your own experiences? I agree with the main argument. I havn't been actively involved in the design of any open systems that I know of but use mozilla firefox which is an open source project. It has a lot of things that I used to wish IE had when I used to use that. Having open systems allows users to be involved and we often see that these systems that have user input and design turn out to be very useful and better than had they not been open. Once I graduate I plan on spending a lot of time researching open systems and seeing if I can contribute to them. I even have more ideas that I wish to add to a browser such as firefox. 3. enumerate in which situations 3.1. you acted as a designer/active contributor We are currently in the beta testing phase of our senior project and I can't believe how good our system works. I get such a high when I think that I actually created something that is going to be used by others for their own purposes. I've created a messaging system as well that wasn't used by others (except the people in my class and group) but I still felt very good once the system was created. Creating and designing things gives one a sense of self-satisfaction. Another good exmple is the class swiki. 3.2. you acted as a (passive) consumer With a multitude of technologies available on the market today which are infused in everyday life situations When I watch televisions I am simply "consuming" what I am watching. I don't consider myself an active consumer in this respect. I use my laptop everyday as well and while I didn't contribute in it's creation, I do use it to create other things so I'm not fully a passive consumer when it comes to this. 3.3. situations in which you believe you should have acted differently While working on a production and environment support team (as explained in #2) In highschool I use to be a social butterfly and had many friends throughout all of my classes and was a very active contributor to the social enviornment of these classes. Once I got to college though I became very shy. I don't really talk with any of my classmates and I don't every speak up to contribute to the lecture or ask questions. I just simply sit there and consume what is going on. Being in my 4th year now I wish that I would have tried harder to make more friends and contributed to the class discussions / social enviornment of my classes. An exercise in learning for understanding — pick one of the following problems and try to solve it 2. The Rope around the Eart h 2.1. There is a steel ring around the earth at the equator touching the (flat) earth everywhere. We extend the steel ring by 1 yard in length and form a concentric circle around the earth (i.e., the distance between earth and steel ring is the same everywhere. 2.2. Question: Will a small cat be able to sneak through between the earth and the steel ring? answer briefly the following questions: 1. describe your solution (if you found one) or why you were unable to find one? Using google I found the circumference of the earth to be 24,901.55 miles. Solving using the equation circumference = 2(pi)radius I found the radius of the earth to be 3965.21 miles. (I now realize I have to convert everything to yards, earth radius equals 6,975,240.4 yards) I then added a yard to the circumference of the earth and solved for the radius again. The difference between the two is about half a yard which IS enough space for a cat to crawl under. 2. what did you learn solving (or thinking about) the problem? Nothing really. I learned some information about the earth's circumference and radius but this isn't exactly information I need to or want to know. On the other hand I didn't think that the solution to this problem was yes the cat could crawl under, but it turns out that it can. Again, not very useful information. 3. what kind of knowledge was most important for solving the problem? Knowing how to solve for the radius was using 2(pi)radius = circumference was the key to solving the problem. 4. are (or would be) computers helpful in solving these problems? Not necessarily. These problems are very complex to think about but not mathematically. Computers wouldn't have the information needed unless a program was written specifically for each one of the problems. But then isn't this just a more complicated / tedious way of solving the problems by hand?
|
