09 March 2007

Avalanche of the quarter

The term got the better of me, as it often does. Time to catch up. Several posts at once...

But the HCI class was, well...amazing. We started out with a bunch of flickr assignments that had the students out taking photos of:
tech used as part of everyday routines
things being used in the manner for which they were not designed
ubicomp about which they had some curiosity

If you want to see some of their sets, check out the contacts for flickr user tc319 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/friends/)

The students did an amazing job with a syllabus that really asked them to do some unusual things. One of the assignments was a fieldtrip of their choosing. Left totally open-ended, their task was to go out into the world and learn something about how people use info/comm technology, and then to come back and tell us what they learned. Fieldtrips included visits to the new Seattle Sculpture Park, the Weird Science Fair, the Telephone Museum (aka, Museum of Telecommunications), 911 Media Arts Center, and other cool places and events in town.

They did lots of presentations -- on class readings, readings they found on their own, their design projects. And we had some amazing guest speakers, including 3ric and Pablos from the Shmoo Group, Christina Drummond who is Seattle director of the ACLU program on Technology and Freedom, and Emma Rose from AnthroTech. I took one group over to Microsoft Research one day because their project had some overlaps with Aura, and some students came down to the Public N3rd Area on various weekends. It was a pretty amazing quarter. And I even got a round of applause on the last day.
There's an abbreviated version of the syllabus at courses.washington.edu/tc319/syllabus.html if you want to see any details. The readings actually worked *really* well.

It was a great class. Really great. A terrific way to start the next 18 months.

Yes, 18 months of sabbatical is what starts after today.
Well, 3 months at Microsoft Research. Then 15 months of sabbatical. But, 18 months away from my everyday routine.

I have, um, literally been hopping with excitement. It makes people laugh-- to see me standing there, talking or listening, and then suddenly give a little hop in the air. Their laughter, however, doesn't hold a candle to the absolute, sheer exhilaration I feel.

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