On Friday September 2nd, Haley, Sam, Hannah, and I began our InventionMobs by introducing ourselves and figuring out our what our expertise were and what our negatives were. Interesting enough we each had a variety of traits to invest into this project. Hannah is talented at weaving, while Sam has experience in programming games, and Haley is very physically active in TaeKwonDo. After learning where each member of the group came from and some of our interests, we decided to move on next to what form our project wants to mold into. We have options ranging from pictured videos to clay animation and even to a computer game. With the short amount of time given, our ideas didn’t have enough room to fully flourish so our group decided to schedule proper meeting times throughout the week outside of class time. We also created a Facebook group page “AWESOME ENGLISH GROUP” so each of us can instantly post up any new ideas at any given time that way we can stay connected and that this project won’t be restricted to only the given class times.

Throughout high school your teacher always gave you specific instructions on projects. I was used to just going by the guidelines, so this project was a little more difficult to think of an idea. We had to think of a creative “invention” that involved people outside our group, as well as have a problem to solve. When I first heard this, I had no idea what to do. This was definitely a lot different than in high school.

My professor gave us some ideas, like a painting or a skit, to help us think of what to do for the project. For some reason, I kept thinking about the painting, but I could not figure out how to incorporate other people in it. I thought about this while we walked to a different building to work with our groups. I kept thinking that maybe we could have different people paint different parts of a picture, but I didn’t know how it was going to work.

When my group got together there were other ideas like skits or a movie, but we didn’t know how to incorporate other people into it. But then Shannon thought of a great idea. We could take pictures of people on campus doing creative things. Then we would put the pictures together and have them form another picture. The overall picture would be a brain, since our class has a lot to do with being right-brained. This would be perfect since each group member would have to take pictures themselves, plus we can involve other people outside of the group.

Everyone agreed that this was a good idea, but we didn’t have a problem to solve. Finally, we thought that the problem could be that people don’t think Georgia Tech students are creative. Since our project is full of pictures of students doing creative things, it would solve this problem. We then had to think of where we could get these pictures. We all came up of ideas of where people on campus are creative and wrote it on the white board. We thought about going to Ferst Theater, finding dancers, and multiple other things.

Just walking around campus, I see chalk drawings everywhere. Even just that shows Tech is creative, so I’m hoping that finding creative things won’t be a problem!

The most recent work in English 1101 was a beautifully unorganized group assignment. Being free flowing, and having minimal guidelines, the work was fun. We liked the idea of free reign on a project for once. Yay college! Myself, Quinn, Murtaza and JB groupeed up and began brainstorming.

We thought about the Ze frank “Chillout Song”and other similar projects for a base, and we considered the resources we had around us. We liked the idea of a video, as well as incorporating the city of Atlanta. But a video tour of the city of Atlanta would be far to simple, so we had, and are still in the process of a hardcore brainstorm sesh. We then thought about different views we could present of Atlanta. We thought about free runners and how they see things as well as skate boarders. Me and Quinn both know a free runner and wondered if he would help us film a run throughout different parts of the city. But would that be too complicated? This was our main concern so we thought of different ideas.

We thought about a project on the legend of the “freshmen fifteen”. This would incorporate older students here at tech. We would interview them asking about their freshmen experiences with the dining halls and other aspects of potential weight-gain. We could incorporate the employees of the dining hall and ask them if anything in the dining hall has changed overtime in response to the growing amounts of childhood obesity.

Another idea we had was a speed frame video of “A Day in the life of a Georgia Tech Student”. We figure we would take a constant streaming video of each of our days and speed it up to give those applying to tech a feel for the campus as well as classroom setting and even the rare fun things around Georgia Tech.

For now, we’ve got a great base set of ideas, but we certainly need to narrow our project down. I’m sure we will find our final idea soon, but for now we’re still brain storming.

On friday our group discussed what our social experiment project would be. Eventually after many minutes of silence one group member came up with the idea of walking into a random opposite gender’s dorm, with sweets if various natures, and seeing how the people in the dorm would react socially. We had a good laugh for about 10 minutes and then realized it was a good idea. Of course it sounds morel like a ploy for the 3 guys in the group to meet girls, so we added the fact that the girl in our group had to do it to a guys dorm. Then we started to think, what sweets? We came up with 1 person brings brownies, 1 cupcakes and 1 cookies. We all think that this project is going to be fun over the course of 5 weeks and look to forward to it.

This time my group and I sat down and came up with a base for the project. A main idea of sorts. Since we have to incorporate Ze Frank’s model of using the input of complete strangers for a final product, we thought the best way to start would be to collect information from people.

By leaving out a simple whiteboard with a marker with something such as “Add a thought of the day” written on it, and coming back and taking a picture of it at the end of everyday, we can indirectly interact with many people and ask for their input. This will allow us to collect a lot of information, and since we can use multiple whiteboards we can create a social experiment of sorts.

I hope the idea works out. For the next few steps we need to flesh out the main goal and what we want to learn from the “strangers”.

It is not easy to combine people’s ideas together at the first time people met each other. It is even more difficult for people to talk to each other when people are from different corners of the world. In the beginning of the project, our group discussed a way that was very helpful: shout out one’s interest and habit and have someone type into the computer. If there is repeat, it means the group has something in common.

So we sat in a circle, and shouted out things they want to do for the project. After a few circles, on the Microsoft Word document, “architecture” appeared four times. As a result, we may draw or build a building including our elements of different majors.

For example, Minsik Bang majors at Electrical Engineering; therefore, we can put modern elements and technological equipments into the building. This is the rough idea of our projects. The idea may change slightly due to people’s wellness of actually building a model.

In a word, the group discussing was productive. We used Facebook to help us communicate and computer to combine our ideas together. Using technology to help our group proceed the project, we did a nice job communicating and still are still discussing to make a project which our group members truly feel like to do.

On Friday, my group and I walked into the CULC building ready to ‘create.’ As I walked up the stairs of the modern and industrial building, I felt the ideas flowing into my brain. I was unsure as to what would come of them, but I could feel creativity buzzing through my brain. Kelsey, Devlin, Abbie, and I chose a module with high tables and chairs which promptly sat at and set up command control with our laptops. As a Tech student, I always feel ready to “GO!” with my fingers stroking the keys of my macbook pro. I was feeling a bit unsure about what I want to ‘make’ for our project, so, of course, I let my brain wander a bit to get the juices flowing. Where did I go…? Well, Facebook, of course. Facebook is a great place to refresh the mind, especially is you want to be nosey, social, or play farmville. Luckily, my Facebooking ‘sesh’ was productive and got me thinking about Tech’s diverse student life and their non-stop buzzing about campus. I felt that a project to display the students would be interesting and also fun to create. Since I was sitting in the beautiful CULC building, my mind made a connection to the other neat buildings on campus and all of a sudden…. “I’ve got it!”, I exclaimed to the group. I excitedly suggested a 24-hour documentary of Life at North Ave Dining Hall. Once the idea was on the table, the group began spitting out camera angles, background music, interview questions, and who would be assigned to the 3 AM documentation. I found that the brainstorming session was difficult at first, but once a base idea was suggested, my group and I were able to build on each other’s ideas to create the outline for our work-in-progress. The space was also inspirational for my because of its visual appeal and group-centered design.

In class, we’re currently beginning our invention mob projects. These projects entail each person bringing a handcrafted object and then forming groups. Once in these groups we use the objects as inspiration for a creative, collective brainchild.

I’m in a group of four consisting of Ted Dixon, John Rhinehart, Quinn Campbell, and myself. We’ve decided that we’re going to make a video showing life in the city of Atlanta. A friend of a group member is apparently an expert in parkour, so we’ll film him running through the streets, perhaps starting from the airport, and visually track his progress from 1st and 3rd person points of view. Filming will also possibly start in the morning and end at night, forming an interesting montage. I’m still not sure how our idea formed, especially considering our objects (two paper airplanes, a paper cup, and another one I can’t recall), but the potential output seems promising.

I made a pen holder using recycled paper and candy wraps.  The paper is folded into a shape of cylinder. Candy wraps are folded into the butterfly shape. The theme of my pen holder is love.

My idea comes from an ancient Chinese love story, Shanbo Liang and Yingtai Zhu. Zhu was an ambitious young lady who desired to learn knowledge despite the fact that females were not allowed to enter a school at that century. Therefore, Zhu pretended to be a male and entered the same school as Liang. Zhu and Liang became good friends and later soul mate. Later when Liang discovered Zhu’s actual sex, he fell in love with her. However, when Liang proposed to Zhu, Zhu’s family refused his request. Liang fell sick severely and then died. Zhu felt heart broken and ached so badly with sorrow. She went to see Liang’s grave.  Zhu cried sadly and fell into Liang’s grave. Thunders roared and rain fell.

A spit second later, there appeared two butterflies flying together into the sky. People believe the butterflies were the soul of Liang and Zhu. In my pen holder, I stapled each of two butterflies face to face to represent this love story. I also drew some thistles and thorns to represent those difficulties they needed to go through.