New Technologies "Sharing the Road"

Image found at http://www.welcome-to-lancaster-county.com/amish-buggy.html.

I was driving out to visit my parents' last week and passed a horse and buggy on Highway 1. I was around the Cambridge City/Connersville area where there is a large Amish population. Now I'm thinking back to our conversation last week about whether new technologies replace or enhance old technologies. I thought the picture I added is very appropriate and really sums up this topic. Old technologies are never completely replaced. They are just forced to "share the road" with the new technologies. Of course most likely there will be a lot more usage of the new technology than the old technology. For every one buggy I see, I will probably pass several hundred or more cars. But it seems there is always someone out there who still values the 'old ways' and makes use of them, even if only for nostalgic purposes. If there is something that has been completely replaced, it is probably because the original way was very dangerous or unpleasant, but I can't think of anything at the moment that would fit this category.

Wordle Mission

I created this for another class using the first paragraph from my Mission post. I thought it was pretty neat and wanted to share. It's from Wordle.net if anyone hasn't heard of it and wants to check it out.

Advertising and my Mission

I was thinking more about my mission and how it fits in with everything, and at first I was feeling like mine was very different. I didn't see how I could think of it in terms of advertising and using new media to advertise. Sure I can use techology for my mission, but I'm not trying to create some new product to sell or persuade people to use some new kind of technology. I just want to inform people about the overpopulation problem in animal shelters and get them to adopt pets. And then I realized...advertising is exactly what my mission is about. I will be trying to "sell" in two distinct ways.
1. I want to sell people ideas. I want to persuade them that it is better to adopt animals from a shelter than to buy them from a pet store. And I want to sell them other information such as it is important to spay and neuter pets to keep them from increasing the population even more.
2. I will actually be wanting to sell specific animals in the shelters. When a person purchases one of these animals, it will be called adopting. But it is still a purchase. The seller just does not make a profit.

I feel as though I am now thinking more clearly about my mission and how I can use any new form of technology to accomplish it. If something can be used for advertising, it can be used for my mission.

Smart Shoes..What happened to them?

So the other day I was NIFT (the gym on IUPUI campus), working out on the elliptical. At the same time I was listening to my ipod and watching tv. I looked around me and saw so many people running or doing other cardio while listening to music and/or watching tv. At NIFS almost every piece of cardio equipment has it's on television screen on which you can choose your own channel from a list a cable channels. Anyway, as I'm looking around I think about our 503 class and our discussion on mediated experiences. We no longer just run on the treadmill, we have to have one or more types of media going on around us for this experience.
When I got home, I looked around on the Internet to see what new technologies are emerging with exercise equipment. I have a Wii Fit, and I think that is one of the directions that the exercise industry is taking that allows them to team up with the gaming industry. I also found a treadmill that has a game controller attached. This goes with a first person shooter type game in which you physically have to run around the levels and use the controller to steer and shoot in order to win.
Then, I found the topic that is the title of this post, the Smart Shoe. This running shoe from Adidas has a chip in it that measures the firmness of the ground and adjusts the level of cushion in the sole in order to provide the most comfort and support for the terrain. This sounds like a great idea. I used to love running outside, but I have a lot of trouble with my knees. This type of technology has the potential to make running less harmful and painful to the knees. So how can I buy some? After getting excited about this article, I realized that it was published back in 2004. I looked around but can't find anything about these Adidas shoes from a year other than 2004. I think smart shoes are a good idea and have a lot of possibilities for added features, especially GPS tracking to know precise mileage and time. Has anyone else heard of these types of smart shoes and have any actually been a success on the market?

My Mission

When I first started thinking about my mission, I thought about computer graphics and what I’m doing with it in graduate school. I thought about the jobs I could get with computer graphics after I graduate and what part of this could be my mission, but nothing stood out to me. I asked some peers what they thought their mission was and they responded with particular careers in graphic design that they aspired to achieve, but again this did not strike me as my mission. I love working with graphic design as well, and hope to have a great job in this field in the near future, but this will not make me feel complete. It is not my mission.
My real mission involves animals, dogs and cats in particular. Helping these animals is what really makes me feel as though I am making a difference in the world and doing what I was put on this Earth to achieve. There are many pet owners out there that love their animals and take great care of them. Those animals do not need my help. The animals that my mission focuses on are the homeless dogs and cats, either out on the streets or locked up in animal shelters. My mission is to do what I can to help take care of these animals while they are still in the shelters and to help find them permanent, loving homes.
So far, I have worked towards my mission by volunteering at animal shelters and adopting stray dogs and cats. Until now, I have never really thought about how I can combine my mission and my skills in technology. I have already completed a few projects where I have advocated pet health and safety with my graphics skills, but I didn’t about how I could continue this work in my future. For a video editing class, we had a project that was to create a pretend public service announcement. I took some video of my own beagle and added text and music. The end result was a short clip that gave statistics about the number of homeless dogs and cats and how this overpopulation could be stopped by spaying and neutering pets. For another class, I created a 3-D animation that showed the cycle of a heartworm infection and how it is spread from one animal to another. This animation was to advocate giving dogs heartworm pills every month as a preventative. These projects could be used outside of the classroom to promote animal wellbeing. They could be broadcast on television as a real public service announcement and uploaded onto veterinary websites to explain why it is important to buy heartworm pills.
So, now that I am thinking about how to combine my technology skills and my mission, the possibilities seem endless. There are so many educational videos and animations that could be created to help keep pet overpopulation down and promote the adoption of homeless animals. These can be posted on numerous websites and other digital media to make them available for the public to view.
My skills can also be used to help in creating the websites themselves, which brings me to my examples of how technology is already being used to factor into my mission. There are two specific websites that I visit frequently and that have to do with finding pets homes and overall pet wellbeing.
The first is called Petfinder.com. This is a website that anyone can go to if they are looking to adopt a homeless animal. They type in information, such as the type of animal, their location, and the age and size of the animal they wish to adopt. Petfinder then presents them with a list of animals that meet their criteria along with descriptions of the animal and where it is currently living. This website makes it easy for shelters and rescue groups to advertise what animals are up for adoption and allows them to reach people who might not have stopped by the physical location of the shelter otherwise.
The second website is called The Animal Rescue Site (theanimalrescuesite.com) and is part of a larger website called the Greater Good. This website is able to donate money to shelters and rescue groups through sponsors advertising on the pages. They also sell a wide range of products and for each product sold a portion of the proceeds are also donated. The Animal Rescue Site also supports petitions dealing with animal welfare and keeps an updated list of petitions that visitors to the website can view and sign.
I think that these two websites are a great example of how our current technology is being used to help animals and I hope that I can contribute to this trend in my future. I’m not sure exactly what I will do yet, but I feel more confident now that I am focusing my thoughts in the right direction.

Introduction

I am Stephanie Whealy and I am working on my Master’s of Technology. If all goes as planned, I will be graduating this May. This semester I am taking N503, Technology in Education, and an independent study for my Master’s project.

I received my Bachelor’s in Computer Graphics Technology in the summer of 2008. I started out my college career as a fine arts major at Ball State University. I transferred to IUPUI after my freshman year because I wanted to focus more on the technology side of art rather than the traditional painting and drawing. I do still enjoy painting as a hobby whenever I get a little free time however.

Throughout my undergrad years I focused mostly on 3-D graphics. This has also been my focus for graduate school. For my graduate project I am working with Marina Sichuga, also in N503, to create an interactive tool to be used by IUPUI anthropology students. It will present them with a walk cycle animation of both a human and chimpanzee and allow them to study the differences caused by variations of specific areas in the skeletal structures. This semester we will be finishing up the 3-D models, animating, and bringing it all together in a flash application.

I’ve had a few work experiences in graphic design. I’ve done 2-D work for a graduate school at Ball State and had a graphic design internship with a real estate company based in Arizona. The last summer of my undergrad years I was also able to have the terrific experience to travel to Poland with the CGT program and teach 3-D graphic design courses at two different Polish universities. I learned more from this experience than I could’ve ever imagined when I applied to go. Not only did I learn an immense amount from teaching the students and interacting with my CGT peers, but I learned so much about a culture that I previously knew nothing about. That was my first international experience but I hope that I have the opportunity to travel abroad again soon.

I currently work for Kaleidoscope as a contract graphic designer. I’ve been working on projects for this company for over a year now. Kaleidoscope works closely with Proctor & Gamble designs for all types of research. This is the area that I have been working on and I have used programs such as Adobe Photoshop, 3d Studio Max, and Strata Foto3D. Most recently I worked on a project with very tight time constraints over Christmas break and just finished this up the weekend before the semester started. Our finished asset was very well received so I hope to have the opportunity to work on similar projects for this company.

My plans for the near future are the finish up this semester with a few great portfolio pieces and graduate in May. I am hoping to have a full time graphic design job lined up to start on or before graduation. I enjoy working for the company I am currently a contractor for and hope to be considered for a full time position, but I am also looking at openings at other companies. I am hoping that this class, N503, will help me strengthen my skills and get ready to enter the professional world.