BME377T:Development

BME377T course development scratch pad. Feel free to use this as a repository for ideas, notes, and resources.

Resources

Project Resources

• Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher
• Suitcase Drive

People

• Ira Flatow - inventions/creativity talk
• Jeffrey Skoll - CEO of Participant Productions – media company that funds feature films and documentaries that promote social values while still being commercially viable; also founder of Skoll Foundation that promotes social entrepreneurship – Social Edge Program
• Alfie Kohn - prove alternative way is good way; consultant that goes around to school districts and says less testing, more human interaction
• John Taylor Gatto - "Dumbing us down" book - 5-6 essays; 7-lesson school teacher

Videos

• Innovate or Die competition using a bicycle. Aquaduct is a bicycle that filters water while you pedal.
• TED: Ideas worth spreading
  • Sir Ken Robinson talks about how school is killing creativity
    • Innovation on Demand March 2005 article
  • Charles Leadbeater on creative collaboration
    • "Pro-Ams"- "Professional Amateurs", people who do something but want to do it to very high standards. People who do their leisures at very high standards.
  • Cameron Sinclair talks about Open-Source Architecture
  • Amy Smith gives an inspirational speech about simple designs to save millions.
    • More recent news about Smith's work with MIT D-Lab
  • Dan Gilbert discusses synthetic happiness
  • Allison Hunt tells of her story of broken health care systems in a humorous anecdote about her hip-replacement surgery
  • Photographer Gregory Colbert shares his breath-taking video from Ashes and Snow
  • Dean Kamen discusses new prosthetic arm
  • Hans Rosling debunks myths with amazing graphical statistics
    • Follow-up in 2007 about the Trendalyzer, Dollar Street
  • Jacqueline Novogratz reveals ways to make poverty history
  • Jeff Skoll makes movies that make change
• Children's ideas on how to change the world --Invisible Films
• Teenage affluenza is spreading fast
• Imagine the Headlines of the Future
• Stir Your World

Websites

• A Network for Ideas & Actions
• National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance
  • Conference in March 2008!!!!
• Creative Partnerships
• PBS The New Heroes
• SE Competition
• By SE for SE
• Uncommon Heroes Video
• MIT Press
• Social Enterprise Reporter
• MIT D-Lab
  • MIT D-Lab 2
• World Changing: Changing Your Thinking
• Lateral Thinking Exercises
• Footprint Network

Books

• The Myths of Innovation, Scott Berkun (suggested by Natalie Kuldell)
• The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley
• The Ten Faces of Innovation, Tom Kelley
• Thinker Toys, Michael Michalko
• Writing to Change the World, Mary Pipher

Competitions/Contests

• Social Innovations Competition
• Film Your Issue
• Media that Matters Film Festival

Course Description

Recruitment E-mail Draft

We are two BME students who envisioned a course very unlike our technical courses that would allow students to think outside of the box, increase opportunities for brainstorming with peers, and explore career options beyond graduate and medical school. With the help of Dr. Randi Voss, we have created Social Entrepreneurship and Engineering — a project-based course to help draw out and build up creativity, brainstorming, and team building skills towards social innovations.

During the semester, we will study a broad range of social concerns, examine success stories of individuals and groups who made a difference in their community, select an issue on which to concentrate, develop a creative strategy to raise awareness of that particular issue (i.e. film, advertisement, rally speech, etc.) and then attempt to “solve” this issue through whatever ways are relevant.

Although these goals may seem lofty, we believe that this is the best time to think big, to find others who are interested in similar goals, and to explore our potentials. Why wait until we graduate when we can start now?

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” —Margaret Mead

Key phrases

• students teaching students
• thinking outside the box
• developing creative process
• contributing to society
  • thinking about others besides ourselves
• bme more than just med school and grad school
  • other career options?

Grading

• portfolio assessment/standard evaluation

Projects/Structure

1. Creativity-Inspiration-Lateral Thinking (through-out the semester)
   • improv, Improv Encyclopedia
     • name a sequence of words that have nothing to do with each other
     • bring together disparate elements and make a story out of them
   • brainstorming activities
   • This I believe
     • 2-min Personal Intros (passions, hobbies, what do you like to read, music)
   • video clips
   • reading
   • multimedia
   • collages
   • artwork
   • Keith Johnstone reading - Impro and Impro for Storytellers
   • write from the perspective of someone famous but for a completely different field (i.e. Mother Teresa addresses housing)
   • assumption questioning
   • creative writing assignments
   • interviewing
2. Social Issues
   • survey their interests
   • what makes people unhappy, etc.
   • what are the top five things you would like to change?
   • what disturbs you the most?
   • possible create groups based similar goals
   • Short survey of questions that should stimulate them to start thinking about themselves and their goals, like:
     • What makes you laugh, cry, and open your heart?
     • What points do you repeatedly make to those you love?
     • What topics keep you up at night, or help you fall asleep?
     • What do you know to be true?
     • What do you consider to be evil?
     • What is beautiful to you?
     • What do you most respect in others?
     • What excites your curiosity?
     • What disturbs you the most?

If you were ruler of the world, what would you do first? What do you want to accomplish before you die?

1. Story-telling (Advertisement)
   • telling the significance of the issue - improv activities, etc
   • Project: Film, rally speech, advertisement, poster, flyer, first chapter in book, brochure, website, interview, any communication method.
2. Think Tank/Solution
   • Brainstorm solutions
   • Ten faces of innovation (Idea generator, feedback person, etc)
   • DISC model
   • Enneagram (9-types)
   • Proposal
     • General idea of what to do and how to implement
     • Research who to talk to
     • For competition
     • FYI (Film Your Issue)

Things to Research to fill in Structure

• UT for REED collaboration
• Sustainabible Development- student wants to take class, speakers (Mexico)
  • How to get poor (who people get into a bad situation)
  • Different model of mission work
• Research everything, write down everything, compare notes
  • Come up with categories for schedule

Video

1. Ask students what they want to do with their lives
2. Show typical eduation setting - textbooks, exams, GPA - which lead to 9-5 jobs (cubicles) whose purpose is just to earn a living, maintaining the status quo
3. UT phrase - "What starts here changes the World"
4. The reason we started this course - Social Entrepreneurship - to inspire creativity, innovation, to get us to think beyond ourselves, beyond grad and med school
5. Because let's face it - there's a lot to do:
   • show clips/scenes of domestic and social concerns
   • trigger words: FAMINE, POVERTY, IGNORANCE, etc.
6. Outline of the course (in scrapbook style)
   • Foster creativity
   • Examine social issues, success stories
   • Select issue and raise awareness, express its importance
   • Brainstorm and propose a solution
7. After this course, maybe some of you will discover a new calling, some of you may continue to work with your peers outside the course and continue your projects, find a new company, start a new initiative, begin a movement, some of you will learn how to work well with others, but at the very least, this class will make you THINK
8. And for that, there's no reason to wait until you graduate, who says we can't try to change the world now? Who says it can't be us? It always starts small, and it always starts with one person
   • fast clips of famous individuals who's made a difference
9. End with Margaret Mead quote