Fire and Ice

As part of an activity for my Design Thinking course (U101) , we had to create a map with markers to indicate the countries of origin of various items of food, clothing and others. This is my map: It was so interesting to look through labels and find out where things come from! I knew we'd end up with a lot of stuff from China but clothes from Hungary? Trousers from Jordan? Books made in Dubai?? I did have a few non surprising items like maple syrup from Canada, a hawaiian print dress from (where else?) Hawaii and toys made in China but it is still very interesting and something to think about... (The full map with details is here.)

This is pretty cool... (view the animation here) A bit of fun but also part of my U101 Design Thinking course. Even though I am struggling to keep up, I am really enjoying the discovery process and also finding cool little toys like this one!

As part of my D esign Thinking course , I had to take photos of objects I like and then submit them to the Online Design Studio. They are intended to act as practice for taking and uploading photos which I already have lots of experience on… but I still took a while to do it. Why? I just couldn’t decide on only 3 objects to photograph! In the end the three things I chose probably say a lot about me, so I thought it would be fun to share them with you and explain my choices further. The first object that I chose was a Smart car. I chose this pretty quickly because it is something that has always made me smile. I used to own one and even though I have nothing against the car I have now, if I could I would go back to my Smart in a second. The second object took a bit longer to pick. I was looking around the kitchen for inspiration and considered my blender (which I love but not THAT much), my slow cooker (which is great but let’s not get carried away) and finally settled on ...

Remember that course that I blogged about a while ago? Well, I signed up. I am now the proud owner of my very own U101 box and am on the initial part of what I hope is a journey of discovery. Already I am very impressed with the way the course is presented, the use of technologies like videos and podcasts, and the cool software we can download to share our work with other students. The forums are already buzzing and officially the course hasn't even started! The course materials box has caused quite a stir among the students and there are even reports of some students going out and buying some of the items in the box (like masking tape, metal ruler, pencil, etc) so that they don't have to use the ones provided as they are so pretty... I bet some of those students are also scrapbookers and want to have some U101 stash to stroke :) It's quite exciting to be on a course for its first presentation and I will try and blog about my experiences as I progress. My only worry right ...