Why 30 is not the new 20 By: Meg Jay Meg Jay delivers a talk on why the defining decade of your life is the 20's and how we should make the most of it. “Forget about having an identity crisis and get some identity capital. … Do something that adds value to who you are. Do something that's an investment in who you might want to be next.” “For the most part, "naturals" are myths. People who are especially good at something may have some innate inclination, or some particular talent, but they have also spent about ten thousand hours practicing or doing that thing.” | Got a meeting? Take a walk! By: Nilofer Merchant " What your doing, right now, at this very moment is killing you. More than cars or the internet or even that mobile device we keep talking, the technology your using the most almost every day, is this! your tush!" sitting 9.3 hours a day = more than we sleep - facts that backup her point. "Sitting has become the smoking of our generation" "There's this amazing thing about actually getting out of the box that leads to out of the box thinking" |
1 Comment
At least I feel, that when I need to tell a story I tend to over-think. Ira Glass, a succesful writer and reporter shared his work experience through a still video that even though wasn't visually atractive or interacted with media was actually very engaging. I found many important points through out the clips:
This is a component I was completely excluding from my work and will have to add in order to connect better to my public and make STORY TIME original. This applies when writing articles as well given that many times we read from a certain blog or publisher seeking for their own perspective on the subject even though we know what it is about. As a succesful speaker Ira was able to give direct and natural advice on reporting. Yet, glass highlights that he wasn't a great "story teller" from the start and in order to lead national radio shows and his own program (This American Life) he spent years releasing hundreds of stories and producing ballistically. It is important not to give up. For my own ten minute ted talk, practice will make perfect but what will make my talk truly powerful will be how deep I can get into reflecting from the anecdotes I choose to share. “What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . First story is out! I'm very proud of the whole IA team because everyone worked extremely hard in taking this video from simply 'good' to being BEAUTIFUL WORK. This was possible because we REFLECTED and gave feedback: If our expectations wouldn't have been as high and our constructive criticism wouldn't have been truthful and direct the video would not have been as successful as it is right now. As the first experience we all had, weather it was talking in front of a camera, filming, editing or collaborating in a group I felt that I gained knowledge in all these areas. Now I know my strengths, weaknesses and areas I want to go deeper into. I feel ready to take on new STORIES and become better and better through the process. "It's Story Time" is amazing and has set the bar very high. Take a look be ready for more! "The happy secret to better work" TED TALK by Shawn Achor boosted us off into today's working plan as I was able to understand the value and importance of story telling in life EVEN in a bussines. Achor, leader and excellent communicator engaged the audience from second 1 all the way to the end by telling jokes, quick anecdotes, showing pictures and graphics, using ritch vocabulary and being excited of his own work. The video didn't only gave me great skills to have but he explained how being happy while working is the secret to an amazing outcome instead of expecting the outcome to ful-fill your happiness- a perspective we should all apply to our daily lives. NEWS? the word was the problem. This Ted Talk inspired the concept of taking over the bulletin to become STORY TIME. The highlight of my day was when after separating into three sections/groups and story boarding, we came together and shared our ideas and even if they sounded completely different we ideated a way to weave them together, maintaining ONE CONSISTANT STYLE and incrementing the power of the video. I can now conclude that working in a group is more effective when you have good communication and when we take the time to explore each individual's strength in order to assign roles and complete a task in an organized way. Our goal for the clip was to tell students that we want to share their story's. We did this by shooting quick clips of amazing events that are going on around campus. We found that by making the community participate and appear in the video they were all more curious and excited. In this way we captured the audience and increased the positive energy towards the final product that will be airing this friday for the whole public. It's time to get to work! Story will be continued...
We all got to edit and check the articles we had written for our given section. For me working in the people section, having such a powerful leader and example for PERU as Gaston Acurio answer an interview I had set up was very inspiring given that his words were directed to people my age and I could relate directly. What surprised me the most, was that even in the question that I thought was slightly ridiculous where he was his opinion on other restaurants copying his "riquisimas papitas de camote" he answered us confidently, and gave us a solid inteligent argument on the way he views
Today the main challenge was presenting along with your group a prototype of the idea each was randomly assigned to develop. After setting up our tables with QR code prototypes the class went around and took a look: all annotating kind, specific and helpful feedback in coloured post it notes. Yellow post its stood out for the positive attributes of the prototype; characteristics that you should keep up with if it were to be re-designed. Pink post its where meant for people to specify the areas of improvement and give advice, signalling the main problems with the way each had structured their product. This was extremely helpful because at the end we could read the thoughts of the audience from multiple perspectives and found out things that needed to be changed that we were previously unaware off or didn't knew affected our target audience. Now, Gonzalito and I have outlined a clear plan:
Presentation by: Randy Scherer
It has been a huge time since I went to school and it felt like it was over in a blink. Yesterday in class we had a special visit from Randy Scherer, an educator in High Tech High and expert in project based learning. He began his presentation on the innovation process used by Standford University's design school and as he spoke I didn't know that with him, we where about to run the complete process ourselves. I learned that a huge concept when selling a product or delivering a service is EMPATHY. People need to understand their audience. Given that our main issue was that the administration isn't communicating well with the school we found that there had to be a better system to address the people and it was interesting to see how our ideas shifted as we got to know our public. At first we believed that making film was the best way to carry the news in FDR but after identifying our target's needs, desires and personality's we found out that other alternatives would suit them better and started innovating ideas. The more we know who we are producing for: the better we will create something that suits them. A step that for me was effective was having direct contact with the people but at the same time I found one of the most enritching moments to be when we failed at doing this. As a group we tried to ENGAGE, we interviewd users for short and long answers depending on how they reacted and tried to get to know how they interacted with the news to channel all that information into creating a better system. As we saw that student's where not taking the interviews seriously and giving out quick answers to get them done with we realised we had to stop and think. Why where our interviews not going well? We found that we had to drift this idea of an interview into an engaging conversation and change the idea of "news" that was limiting the students to only newspapers, to all the "updates" or media around them. After re-creating the questions we started the interview process all over again and could see the difference. Without stopping to reflect we would not have been able to collect the useful information we gathered that allowed us to create news FOR the people instead of just assume what they needed. The power of visually representing ideas was also something that defenetely stood out since by using the big white boards, post its, drawings, sketches, markers and huge cartulinas we where able to make our thinking paths visual and in a way much more clear. Finally, we ended up with challenging exciting projects as solutions. Out of 100 proposed ideas the ones that where claimed the most include: having an interactive news browser, Insta-post news where student could be involved in photo competitions, television on quiosk lines, QR codes around school and even the popular "crusibreak" - our own original crossword puzzle sent weekly. Now, for wednesday's class we have been separated into different groups with the purpose to create prototypes of the most popular ideas. Along with my partners Gonzalo and Augusto we created QR codes for the break, innovation twitter account, Facebook page and school website. Tomorrow, we will all share what we have created in front of a greater audience where not only the class but Randy Scherer will be present among other high school students. There have been tons of learning experiences through my life but as silly as this might sound one experience that has impacted me until today was "learning" to eat sushi. As a little kid I used to eat terribly. Other than sweets, my daily menu could not go past pasta or chicken nuggets and fries. No veggies, no fruits, no complex looking plates, no exotic dishes at all. I can remember the long hours of crying in EC-4 because I had a party at school the next day and there was going to be pizza- a plate that had tomato and I clearly had no interest in trying. Being selective with the food I ate reflected my fear for trying new things. When I was invited to a friends house where there was a dish I didn't like I said my stomach hurt or that I had eaten earlier, avoiding the situation completely. I prejudged a plate by its looks or made assumptions of what it would taste like.
I remember vividly the time I learned to eat sushi. This was about a year ago, I was in a 2x2 table with my friends Jorge, Michela, Jana and Carope. It was the fourth time we went to EDO that month and not a single sushi had touched my mouth. They started with what they called "positive" peer pressure as usual. This time they kept on going for so long that it finally worked. I tried one. Right away my first thought was spitting the roll out but they stared at me as if it was critical for me to approve their 'worshiped' rolls. I swallowed. That piece of sushi, with ingredients I was completely unaware about, surprisingly delighted me in such way that I can't explain how much I regret not trying it before. I know many may be wondering why a story of how I went out a saturday night with my friends to dinner is so significant. Personally, this experience was a lesson learned and taught me to be open minded to new situations. I found that you never know what you can find if you take risks and that sometimes getting out of your comfort zone into something unfamiliar allows you to find what you truly love. That simple experience marked me and made me into the daring individual I am today. Not only I am not afraid to try new things but it is something I constantly look for. I am always willing to discover, something extremely important in the innovation process and will be a vital mentality to keep for the following two years in order to find out what I am passionate about and what I will dedicate to in the future.
As a team we brainstormed about what will drive us these next two years. Maybe, if this question had been asked a year before, I would have set my main goal to be getting top grades and being accepted at the best college. Now that my perspective has shifted, I know that my real purpose should come from WHY I want to do things. As a class we decided we wanted to be EMPOWERED, INNOVATE, LEAD and SERVE. These four powerful words will keep us motivated through out our high school experience. Now that I have been presented the Innovative project I am already brainstorming some options that will allow me to explode my full potential in a subject I'm passionate for in order to explore my interests, fail, learn, give solutions to a problem and give a hand to my community. Consequentially, I have never been so motivated and eager to start working. Awesome first day!
|
Daniela Delgado"If you don't build your dreams, someone else will hire you to build theirs" Categories
All
Archives
June 2015
|