Free Write-The Value of Experience

In the next few decades, if we find ourselves in a "matrix" like world, our experiences will have no value. Everyone will experience the same type of feelings, emotions, ect, and they will not be unique to each individual. Yes we may find ourselves in different situations, but each outcome will be the same and expected. This virtual world will be very interesting as it first plays out, with the contact lens and the the "treadmill," because this is something that is unlike nothing else. But everything will be the same in the long run, including our values.

Free Write-Who Has Inspired You

Ever since Kelly came to talk to my First Year Seminar class about her years of service both during and after college, I have been inspired by what one can do if you push for what you believe in. Kelly has accomplished so much and she is just out of college, having created her own major, studied terrorism in another country, and been chosen as the top writer for her senior thesis. Since her presentation, I find myself thinking about what I can do to better our world. I want to accomplish something as great as what she has accomplished.

TED Video

• Received a good education and wanted to give something back
• Visited a village in 1965 and to see how the underprivileged people live-->changed his life
• Wanted to dig wells for five years in a village
• Exposed to knowledge and skills poor people have
• Wanted to start a barefoot college-college for the poor
• Told him don't bring anyone with with a degree
• Had to be a dropout, ect.
• Had to provide a service
• Started the Barefoot Professional College
• Follows lifestyle of Ghandi at college
• No one gets more than $100 a month
• Come to the college with any idea, "teacher is the learner, the learners are the teachers"
• 1986-Built college
• Solar electrified. Solar powered
• Installed by a engineer
• Food is solar cooked
• Cooker made by women
• Collect rain water in case of drought
• Night school for kids
• Solar lit schools
• Participate in a democratic election to elect a prime minister

Free Write-Midterms

I think I can say that I am ready for midterms. My load has been lightened since dropping history earlier this week and I feel more relieved about the work I have to do. That doesn't mean I'm not feeling stressed. I strive to do almost perfect in my classes and when I don't achieve that, I feel mad. I am not getting enough sleep and I'm not sure what to do about that at this point.

Next Steps for Blanket Making

Next Steps for Blanket Making

• Prof Harden-->Letter head
• Put together Donation Letter
• Put together a list of places
• How we are going to make contact?
• Deliver?
• Mail?
• When to deliver--Abby L., Eric, Jazmin
• Schedule for delivery
• Phone contact
• Whose going to go?
• Creation Piece--Ally, Hannah
• How much material we will need
• Set Goal
• Size of blankets (baby, adult, children)
• Advertise cause--Abby C., Sarah
• Establish a timeline--Ann
• Fundraising back-up plan--Mitchell, Deanna
• Recruiting organizations and volunteers--Taylor (organizations and clubs on campus), Millie (Girl Scouts and organizations outside campus)
• Supervise project--Mark, Eric, Evelina, Adderlin
• Contact with community partner--George, Nathan
• Statistics, ideas

Wing 3 Presentation

• After your grab your audiences attention, you need to engage your audience-compel people to care deeply
• If you can't engage, you can be swayed
• You need a personal connection
• Characteristics:
• Transparency
• Interactivity
• Immediacy
• Facilitation-->organization acts as caretaker
• Commitment-->consumer needs to be committed to help goal of organization
• Co-creation-->consumer needs to help create ideas
• Collaboration-->consumer and organization work together
• Experience
• Trust-->between organization and consumer
• TEAM
• Tell a story
• Make us feel alive, and inspire us
• Get attention fast
• Make it sticky
• Keep your audience wondering what happens next
• Focus on protagonist
• Empathize
• Identify person relevance to engage the audience
• Must empathize with your audience's needs and feelings
• Connect with the people you are trying to reach out
• Be Authentic
• If you're not moved by the story you're telling, no one else will
• Increase feelings of closeness and connection
• Incorporate a wide variety of details
• Be open and clear with your audience
• Match the Media
• Use different forms of media to meet different preferences
• Utilize online and offline media
• Engagement and empowerment is best achieved when information flows in both directions
• ex. Tom's Shoes
• Charity: Water
• Charity: Water builds wells of clean water in developing nations
• Charity: Water used the four design principles of Engage to convey their message

Summary of First Third of Delirium

Delirium by Lauren Oliver is a futuristic novel. This novel is told in first person, by Lena Haloway. The opening chapter is all about "the procedure" that everyone has to get to rid them of a disease called amor deliria nervosa or love. In Lena's society, love is something that is taught to be feared. Love is dangerous. "It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being." In the olden days, people didn't realize how deadly love was. Some thought it was a good thing. Lena is getting the procedure done on her eighteenth birthday. People have to be at least eighteen to get the procedure done. Once she has been through it, she will never have to fear getting the disease. In preparation, everyone has to read through  The Safety, Health, and Happiness Handbook, or more commonly known as The Book of Shhh. Lena is very excited about getting the procedure done and is anxiously awaiting this day.

Lena is worried, deep down though, that the procedure won't fully cure her. Her mother killed herself because she didn't want to go down for her fourth procedure. The first three hadn't worked. Her last words to Lena had been "I love you. Remember. They cannot take it."

Before the procedure, Lena has to be evaluated and is given a score on a scale from one to ten, ten being the highest. She has been preparing hard for this day and has all the right answers that the evaluators want to hear to get her a good score. On her way to the evaluation center, Hana meets up with Lena and they walk into the center together. Hana is very relaxed about the evaluation, saying things that might get her into trouble and not giving a care about what happens, the opposite of how Lena is. Lena is tense and uptight, reciting what she will say to the evaluators.

Once they make it into the building, Hana is asked to go in for the evaluation first. Before she goes though, she whispers to Lena, "You know you can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes, right?" Lena doesn't understand what Hana means, but it is too late, as Hana is already through the doors. Finally it is Lena's turn. She is escorted into a room where she is asked to take off her clothes and put on a gown. She is allowed to take all the time she needs to prepare for the examination, like meditate, which makes Lena giggle. Once she is ready, so goes through the doors to begin her evaluation.

As Lena walks into the room, the lights are so bright she cannot make out the faces of the evaluators. There are four of them and all she can make out are the silhouettes. The evaluators begin by asking about Lena, what she likes to do, what her hobbies are, ect. Lena starts her speech she has long been rehearsing. Trouble comes when she is asked what her favorite books are. Lena tells them Romeo and Juliet. They ask her why and she responds with "Because it is beautiful." The evaluators were expecting her to say that it was frightening, to see what love is like if it is not cured. With Lena's answer, though, they are shocked. When she is asked for her favorite color, Lena digs herself a deeper hole by saying gray. The thing is though, she is being honest. What she is saying is not rehearsed like the beginning was. The evaluators are once again shocked.

The very next moment is incredible. A herd of cows burst through the doors and come charging at the evaluators and Lena. She thinks she is saved because the cows start chewing up the evaluation sheets the evaluators were writing on. On the sides of the cows, the words "Not Cure. Death." is written. Lena suddenly realizes what is happening. The Invalids, the people who live in the Wilds, the unregulated land that exists between recognized cities and towns, have staged another protest. They usually attack the town of Portland once a year. As Lena looks up to the observer's booth, she sees a boy, whom she is sure is part of this protest, who winks at her. She is taken aback by this and immediately tries to get someone's attention. But as she looks back up, he is gone

Case Study-Jeroo Billimoria

Jeroo Billimoria is involved in the National Child Protection Service. She was not satisfied with the amount of kids left on the streets of India and wanted to do something to change this. There are millions of children that live on the streets. Some have run away, others have been abandoned by their families.

Jeroo originally grew up with the mindset of becoming an accountant, following in the footsteps of her parents. When finding out about the side work her father did for the people living on the streets, Jeroo switched her major to social work and enrolled in the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). She was involved with many organizations for the homeless, like the Coalition for he Homeless in New York City. Once she was back in India, she traveled around to the shelters in Bombay, being drawn especially to the kids there. She would visit these shelters often and eventually started giving out her home phone number to these kids if they found themselves in an emergency and needed help.

The system that Jeroo was involved in, protecting children around India, was poorly developed. There were many children's agencies, but there was no way to work between these agencies or the government in a smooth way. To help this area, Jeroo had proposed the idea of coordinating services for these kids to different organizations, but there was little enthusiasm for it.

Jeroo attempted many ideas to try to change the understanding of the situation. In 1991, Jeroo founded an organization called Meljol (Coming Together) to bring children together from different backgrounds to work on projects with social benefits. She said the goal of this organization was to "create an alternative mindset for children to give them a sense of their own power." Although this was a good way to start helping these children on the streets, Jeroo was still getting phone calls from kids all the time. In 1993, she decided to go to the government telecommunications department (DOT) and propose the idea of creating a toll-free number for children's assistance. They were not convinced by Jeroo at first to immediately establish this line, but Jeroo provided evidence that showed the children would use this line if it was made available. While the DOT was processing Jeroo's request, she gathered together a team of students from TISS to compile a directory of child service organizations located in Bombay.

Gathering everything together so far, Jeroo set out to gain attention for her new network: Childline. This organizations is a "twenty-four hour helpline and emergency response system for children in distress," as stated in Chapter 7 of How to Change the World. Childline works towards getting the millions of kids off of the streets and into homes, giving them the right care they deserve. A budget was put together and in May of 1996, DOT granted Childline use of the telephone number 1098. One month later, after fourteen organizations signed on, Childline was officially launched. The organizations that signed on housed the telephones for the 24-hour Childline service, one including Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA).

At first, the organization was not ready for what they set out to do. The people working for Childline were receiving thousands of calls. During the first year, Childline fielded 6,618 calls. In the beginning, the calls were from the kids on the streets, but as the year progressed, there were more and more calls from concerned adults and children from the middle-class. Jeroo had thought she wanted to focus Childline on the street level, but as she realized that these concerned people calling were trying to help the kids on the street as well, Jeroo saw that it was necessary to create awareness about this service amongst larger sections of the population in India. Another problem Childline ran into was locating where the call had come from. Team members set up a system of standard questions that were to be asked during each call to establish the were-abouts of the child, the time of the call, and the clothes the child was wearing. To make sure the team members could deal with any sort of situation, they began receiving training from social workers in telephone interaction. Open houses were conducted with so that people could suggest improvements for Childline, to correct the problems they were facing. A big learning experience for the workers at Childline was interacting with the police and hospital officials. They began making sure that these different groups of people or organizations could also benefit from the use or intervention of Childline in a situation. With the police, Jeroo set up a conference for these officers to realize that Childline would simplify their jobs. Eventually Childline and the police established a partnership, issuing special identification cars to the team members of Childline. With the hospital staff, workshops were set up to "sensitize" them.

The network grew as word about this 1098 number spread. More money was brought in through newspaper articles and colleges. At the end of 1997, Jeroo decided to devote herself to Childline. Shortly after this she was elected an Ashoka fellow. Ashoka is an organization that finds and invests in social entrepreneurs around the world to try and make our world a better place to live in. Jeroo went on to try to extend Childline into other cities. In June of 1998, a gathering of people from  twenty-nine other cities was organized to explore the potential for spreading the service. One colleague agreed to spread this service and within a month it was declared that she wanted to see Childline in every Indian city with a population above 1 million (twenty-three cities) by 2002.

When the service was spread nationally, there was a plan for its operation. Childline would operate like a franchise, with a "decentralized management, but with a uniform brand, operating procedures, and standards." The service would remain free and open twenty-four hours a day. The word "Childline" would always be written in both English and translated, but the logo and the phone number would remain the same everywhere. Each city would select organizations based on local need but conform to a uniform structure: A "nodal" organization, a noted academic institution, would facilitate operations, traning, documentation, and advocacy. "Collaborating" organizations would respond directly to the calls while "support" organization would handle the follow up, and "resource" organizations would help with the long-term needs. Each city would have one Childline coordinator. The government would make grants to Childline partners to pay salaries for the people placed on each team. Childline would not begin working in a city until the police commissioner and senior healthcare officials had come together with a written commitments of cooperations. Each city would be required to establish a Childline Advisory Board (CAB). Any business that wanted to publicly associate themselves with Childline at the national level would have to commit to a full partnership. The central office of Childline would be stationed in Bombay.

Within the next six months after the gathering in June of 1998, Childline had already spread to four more cities. Not everything went smoothly when Childline spread to other cities. One Childline office had to be shut down because of corruption. Another was dropped off from the network because they refused shelter to disabled children. Still others did not meet Childline's standards of care. By 2000, Childline was operating in fifteen cities  and preparatory work was being done in another fifteen. Once 2002 rolled around, not only had Childline reached their goal of spreading to the cities in India with a population over 1 million, they had spread to over forty-two cities with preparatory work under way in another twelve. The network had more than 120 organizations directly implementing the Childline service and over 2,000 organizations providing assistance. By Octoboer 2002, Childline had fielded 2.7 million calls.

At first, the government opposed this system. They were not giving Childline any money. The government became a supporter of Childline only after they realized it could help them. There reason was very specific. The service Childline was doing many of the things the government had committed to when they ratified the United Nations Convention Rights of the Child in 1992. Also, Childline "was the hallmarks of a twenty-first-century organization," integrated and decentralized, blending technology with human services. Childline was low cost as well. Another supporter of Childline were the child service organizations. Jeroo said "'We survived because we chose solid organizations." There were several wealthy individuals who greatly helped Childline. Jeroo had turned to them in times of financial trouble, to avert collapse. Although there were many groups of people who had pledged their cooperation, Childline found that these people, the police, health, and railway officials, were still very ignorant and indifferent to them. So, in 2000, with the help of the government's National Institute of Social Defense and 78 partner organizations, Childline launched a National Initiative for Child Protection. The goal of this was to make police stations, hospitals, schools and train stations more "child friendly." The underlying factor to this training was "empathy begins with understanding."

The ChildNet database system was started, which was an unusual computer program that was designed for users who were easily distracted and semiliterate. This program proved to be very useful for analyzing call patterns. They could track specific "hot points" within cities and set up medical help if a high number of calls were coming from a specific area. As Childline spread, the program also became an important source of child protection information. ChildNet could be used as a resource for bringing back missing children. With the combination of technology and human management, today's telephone calls can be greatly analyzed.

In 2001, Jeroo had received international recognition for her work from the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Later that year, she decided to step down as Childline's executive director. She believed that a founder should leave after five to seven years. Her new plan is to build an international consortium of child help lines. Jeroo is looking to link existing lines to set up a global "help desk" for these services and to establish global standards. Recently, Jeroo launched a new organizations called Child Helpline International (CHI).

In summing up Jeroo's success with Childline, she was asked to give a one liner about her experience. She said "Learning to let go." Also, she added "Everything will not be exactly the way you want it. You have to let people take charge. The best thing is not to have a picture of what you want, but to have basic principles."

Free Write-Describe One System I'm Involved In

One system I'm involved in is Girl Scouts. This semester, I wanted to do something that involved being around kids. During my senior year of high school, I worked at a local daycare every day after school. I loved it! I looked forward to being with the kids everyday. They have a way of immediately cheering you up.

I found the Girl Scouts and was really excited to get started. I would like to help with the Daisy group, which is kindergarteners and first graders. These are the ages I was in charge of at the daycare and they are my favorite age group. Currently, because of my schedule, I am not able to be an actual leader for this semester.

If I am not there, as a leader for next semester for example, the troop will not be able to have a meeting. They will lose that week to progress further in their troop, damaging their education in this area.

Wing 2 Presentation

• Important to grab attention of audience
• ex. Bonobos
• PUVV-Personal, Unexpected, visual, visu
• Personal-->Important to make a personal relationship with audience; Facebook, tagging friends
• Unexpected-->Grabs attention, message should be new and original, suprise
• Visual-->show don't tell, humans remember more said than heard; Apple, Nike, Twitter
• Visceral-->using all five senses to invited a group into a welcoming atmotphere so they can feel comfortable, color, sounds, combining two senses with marketing campaign
• Measure your success, gage effectiveness of your campaign
• Coca Cola Happiness Machine
• io Digital Cable

Creation Story and Sentience

In real life, there is just one way to create life. Artificial life, on the other hand, can be brought about in many ways. In my story, artificial life is brought about by cloning. Once the cloning is successful, the species will reproduce and create this new, artificial life.

This process will take several days, as did the creation of real life in Genesis. God created the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh. This is how the cloning process with happen. Although the reproduction of the new species will take months, the process of developing new DNA and cloning will take only a few days. At first, people may not believe this is possible, but seeing is believing, as is the basis of Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

On the first day, the species will be brought into the lab and a strand of its DNA will be extracted. For this experiment, we are cloning a male human being. This DNA will be the basis for the newborn. To have a successful experiment, the newborn's DNA will need to be the same as the DNA of the male. The strand of this DNA will contain the intelligence of the age of the male which is was taken from. This male will be 20 years old, so the newborn's intelligence level will be that of a 20 year old.

On the second day, the sperm will be joined with an egg in a test tube. This will then be set in an environment at which fertilization can take place. There will be several days allotted for this.

After fertilization has taken place, the embryo will be placed in the female and allowed to mature until the baby is born. Once the baby is born, the DNA should match that of the 20 year old's. If this is true, the male has been cloned. Not only will there be a copy of another human being on Earth, but the baby will attain the intelligence of his or her clone. In this case, the 20 year old male.

If this experiment and creation of artificial life proves successful, then our human race has access to a whole new meaning of life. I believe this will create the urge in humans to create as many of "them" as possible. This might be just because they are interested in this area, now that we have access to it, but if too many clones are created, our world will be replicated, in a way.

In a way, this creation or cloning will create an awareness of several things. Although these people will still be human, they will be clones. I believe that the "real" human population will either be able to tell who are the clones and become aware about the differences between themselves compared to the clones, or become aware of how similar everyone on Earth is. People will also become aware of the type of technology that is needed to create clones. I think scientists will go crazy creating clones once this is figured out, which will make everyone very aware of the type of technology it takes to clone.

Old Sturbridge Village Town Meeting Reflection

At the beginning of the town meeting, I didn't really know what was being talked about. I didn't understand what we were deciding. As the meeting progressed, I began to get an understanding, from the questions that were asked. I didn't realize what it meant to be a pauper as well. I now know that this means you have given up your right to make decisions for yourself, basically. The town decides what happens to you. With the meeting, there were 17 paupers, 9 which were over the age of 60. I had a hard time trying to act like it was 1830 during the meeting, which was probably why I had a hard time understanding the meeting. Overall, the meeting was successful. If we had more time, we would have gotten more accomplished, but during the time we were allotted, we accomplished buying the farm and staying at the same tax rate.

Ray Kurzweil

2020-computers powerful enough to simulate the human brain

2029-completed reverse engineering of human brain

2045-expanded intelligence of technology/machinery by a billion fold

In 2020, I will be 27 years old. By this time, I hope to be graduated from college, and have attended grad school. I hope to be a pharmacist at this time and be engaged.

In 2029, I will be 36 years old. I hope to be married and have kids at this time. I want to be a successful pharmacist and maybe have opened my own business.

In 2045, I will be 52 years old. At this time I will be very successful in my business.

Genesis Outline and Comparison to Battlestar Gallactica

1. God created the Earth in different days
2. God created day and night
3. God made the sky and water
4. God made evening and morning
5. God created dry land
6. God created vegetation
7. God made the moon and the sun
8. God created swarms of living creatures
9. God gave them blessings
10. God made human kind-created Adam from the dust of the ground and Eve from the rib of Adam
11. On the 7th day he rested
12. God gave them everything fruitful and good to live off of
13. Adam and Eve had no humility being naked and saw no need to hide, they were one with each other
14. Serpent told them not to eat off the tree of knowledge of good and evil
15. Then the serpent convinced Eve to eat off the tree who then convinced Adam to eat off the tree.
16. God walks among them to find Adam hiding from him.
17. Adam no longer saw himself as perfect and felt the need to hide.
18. First sin and punishment come from eating off the tree
1. Serpent became a snake
2. Enmity was put between the man and woman
3. Increase in childbirth panes
4. Husband shall rule over the wife
5. Ground is cursed because husband listened to wife-eat plants of field
6. Forced to leave garden forever
19. Cain and Abel were born
20. Cain killed Abel
21. 
    

Genesis compared to Battlestar Galactica:

1. The 12 colonies were created in steps
2. The humans made the cylons, which can be compared to God creating Adam and Eve.
3. The cylons are among them at the end which can be compared to the serpent.
4. Adam and Eve no longer saw themselves as perfect when they ate of the tree which can be compared to the cylons who could no longer find themselves as perfect.
5. The cylons were destroying the other things that were created.

Free Write-6 Weeks in to School

At this very moment, I feel very overwhelmed. I have a lot of work to do and plenty of exams to study for. I thought I was managing my time well, but it doesn't look good if I'm still this stressed about getting all of my work done. There's the other fact, though, that I might be taking too many classes. Right now, I have 11 classes and it's completely stressing me out. I need to find my groove and get going. If that means dropping a class, that's what I need to do to keep my sanity in check.

I also find myself becoming homesick and wishing I was home all the time. It's even harder now because my dad and stepmom just had a baby! I never want to leave them because I want to hold my sister and be with her. My older sister is beginning to miss me too, and wishing I was home. Everything together is tough.