Project Reflection

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We have officially finished our final project and I must say that the overall experience was great. I enjoyed working with my team to create a poster, it made the entire process so much more fun. Must I add that everyone’s project looked really good. As for the presentations, those went very good as well. It was nice to actually be able to tell people and discuss with them our wicked problem. After all we had been working on this for the entire semester, so it was wonderful being able to actually go out and tell people about it. As for new insights, I learned that crime is something that will never be able to be eradicated. However, through increased law enforcement we can offer a solution to decreasing the rate of it, and that doesn’t apply only to the city of Austin. It can apply to practically any state, city and town. My current feelings on crime, is that there might not be a definite solution, but if we take the appropriate measure we can do something. Ultimately, Austin’s crime rate has gone down within the past year, and we can only hope that it keeps lowering throughout the years.  

Brainstorming Reflection

My group and I shared the results from our interviews during class last Monday. We shared many ideas such as: the stakeholders involved, how crime impacts the Austin community, some history of Austin’s crime, what makes crime so complex, and the main issues that surround our wicked problem. Considering that all of our interviewees came from different backgrounds, they each had distinct perspectives. We all shared our new insights to the issue, and that eventually led us to begin the process of brainstorming for our final project. For our final project, we’ve brainstormed that we want to do a poster. The poster will focus on the causes of crime and ways to improve the overall crime rate here in Austin. Aside from that, we will include facts and statistics from Austin. Considering that we all interviewed people with different perspectives, we all got several new insights on the issue, so, we thought that perhaps adding some quotes from the interviewees on the poster would be a neat idea. Though, we haven’t discussed that very much so we’re still trying to decide. Overall, I feel like we have a good understanding of what’s expected of us on this project. We’ve all been contributing and working well as a team, so I’m excited to finally start our final project.

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Bearing in mind that for our wicked problem we are focused on crime, I figured an attorney would be a great candidate for the interview. I decided to reach out to an Austin criminal defense attorney, Rick Flores. Rick Flores certainly had a unique perspective when it comes to crime, which gave me a whole new insight to the issue in the process. For instance, before the interview I hadn’t thought of teachers or students being stakeholders involved, or how crime is intertwined with the human brain and emotion. After getting Rick Flores’s feedback I realized that crime is a lot more complicated that what I had assumed. Especially here in Austin, with the rapid population growth because the more people an area has, the more prone the area is to criminal activity. After the interview, I do feel like I have a better understanding of the issue in relation to Austin. Knowing what type of people are affected by crime, what are the main reasons for crime, and some history about it surely brought up new questions that as a group we must think about now. Ultimately, I understand that crime is something that can’t entirely be eliminated, but there are things that can be done to decrease the crime rate in Austin, all of which will be beneficial to Austin residents and the community as a whole.

Dr. Kennedy’s presentation

Dr. Kennedy’s presentation was quite interesting. In fact, after the presentation I decided to look up more information on him, and I found out that he has written a book and is co-owner of a shop here Austin, so that’s pretty cool. He took us back in time and gave us some history on the first photograph ever taken, which was fascinating. Not only that, but he also showed us some photographs that he took himself, many of which could each be interpreted in various ways. That ties in with how photography could be a wicked problem to Dr. Kennedy. Each person has their own perspective and understanding of a photograph, meaning that it means something different to each person. A photograph also has the power to bring different emotions to people, it all depends on how they interpret the photograph.

Visual presentation

14480510_1141536322605902_41930744806974604_o I found a web to be the easiest to understand; therefore, I decided to create a web for our issue of crime. Basically, the web focuses on big factors that come into mind when one mentions crime. These factors are: jail, court, and officers. From there I focused on words that are associated with the factors. For instance, for the factor of jail I had: incarceration, felonies, misdemeanors, etc. and other words that go along the lines of that. For the factor of officers I included: police, state troopers, sheriffs and constable. Lastly for court I included words such as: judges, attorneys, prosecutors, defendants and trials.

25 September 2016

Citizenship and social justice are essential ways that we the citizens can contribute to the society to improve the life quality and the society itself. Citizenship and Social Justice connects to crime in a particular way, considering that it’s focused on citizens; therefore, it easily integrates with our wicked problem of crime. Crime is associated with choice. By that I mean that majority of the crimes are because people choose to do the crime. A connection can be built from that because, if the citizens could make better choices that could possibly decrease the number of crimes, therefore lowering Austin’s crime rate all together and making it a better society.

Austin CAN Presentation on Sept 12

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