Step B- Blog/Reflection

Overall, in the process of creating this final presentation there were some things that were difficult to piece together, but in the end it worked out. For our presentation we chose to use a tri-fold board for the main information about out wicked problem of poverty. Then we also used five other foam posters to show our interviews with images and videos, as well as the interview typed up itself. From the making of this project and the process of gaining information about the problem of poverty, we looked at it like a syimg_4214stem. We chose the parts of the system of poverty that were food security, housing, crime, education, and government. Next, we took each of these parts and got interviews from people who are localized in these specific areas, which provided much information and insight. The “Brainstorming Assignment” and “How the Parts Work” Worksheets aided in providing structure to our center board. This tri-fold board held all of the information about how the parts connect, how the problem of poverty is being dealt with, and the themes and future solutions of poverty. The new insight that I gained from completing this project was to not look at a problem as something that can be solved with one solution, but to look at with the lens that it may need many solutions to actually fix it. Some questions from researching the problem of poverty are: Why has this problem persisted for so long? How can the government step in the help solve this problem? Also, I wonder what just regular people can do to help this problem? In the end, my feeling over this problem of poverty is that more steps need to be taken to solve it, and I know now educating people about the problem needs to be one of the first steps.

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WiP Project Assignment 4: Step B – Blog/Reflection

project_display_displayboard_mockupIn the process of the brainstorming activity, many ideas were shared and multiple insights were discovered. The stakeholders that were interviewed by my group members were all from different backgrounds. The new insights we gained were from the specific stakeholders that were interviewed. The stakeholders included: a governmental legislative leader, Patricia Harless, who gave a perspective from the government’s role, an individual with knowledge about food security, the seu theater director, who gave background from a food insecure perspective, an expert in financial educational services, a financial aid advisor from St. Edward’s University, who highlighted the steps in achieving a good education and the struggles that some individuals face, and an expert on the housing department for those in poverty in the city of Austin, from the HAOCA, who explained what it is like for people in poverty to find housing, and finally a member from the CAN Association, Raul Alvarez, who explained the problem of crime that is provoked by poverty. The one major question that emerged from our interviews was: how can the individual in poverty be influenced in order for them to want to get out from below the poverty line? Overall, my current thoughts about the problem of poverty is that it is a multi-layer issue that takes time to solve, but I believe that our economy needs to be dealt with first, alongside with helping those already in poverty, in order to kick start a change. Then the photo above is an ides of how we will layout our final project, with extra explanation on the “brainstorming worksheet”.

WiP Project Assignment 3: Step B – Blog/Reflection

img_0803-2At the start of this project it was clear what path my group and I were going to take. We decided to focus on poverty as our main wicked problem, but we also chose to add in the other influential parts that impact poverty. With our process of thinking about who we would interview we selected the parts of government, food security, education, housing, and crime. All of these influential parts impact poverty. We found people to interview in each of these sections, and we believe that by having these different sections a larger point of view can be seen from different angles. I chose to take on the government part in this larger working piece of poverty. I interviewed State Representative #126, Patricia Harless. From speaking with her I gathered some new insights on about poverty with what she explained to me. I now understand that this is a major issue because it has always been a prevailing issue. With the continuous decline of the economy and poorer education, poverty increases. Also, she pointed out something very important. She said that in her line of work she “cannot make people work harder or be smarter if they are not willing to,” which really illuminates a major factor of poverty. From this interview, poverty begs the questions of: do we need to first fix the economy in order to tackle the problem of poverty? With those among the prisons, whenever they are released, how can they be helped so poverty does not increase? From interviewing Patricia Harless, my feeling on the problem of poverty still remains that it is a wicked problem. It is a problem with many influential parts, but a place to start the mending, after conversing with Harless, is by helping those who are currently impoverished. We must provide better and improved education, economic, employment systems but this will only start with the reformation of current systems, which is easy to be said but harder to actually implement.

Dr. Kennedy Presentation

During this week, on Monday, Dr. Kennedy came and talked to us about Photography. He spoke about how it impacted his life, the specificity of it, and how it can be seen in everyday life. Dr. Kennedy lectured about Photography’s origins and how he came in contact with it. He went to UT to study Photo Journalism and had excellent teachers who taught him the craft of Photography. To him, Photography is more than just a thing being photographed; it is the way of the image also. He showed us pictures of water that he had taken and it looked like a picture that was easily taken, but it was not. Photography is a wicked problem to Dr. Kennedy in the fact that to get a great picture and for it to turn out the way one wants it to, there are a lot of parts that go into the taking of a great photo. The photograph of the water had many elements that affected it. The current of the water, the lighting, the angle, and the timing of the photo all play key roles in impacting how the photo will turn out. Like other wicked problems, Photography has many parts that impact it. A major topic discussed by him that surprised me was how he could take an image of an ordinary object and disrupt and disfigure its parts to make it into something that he interpreted. He took one picture of an object and changed it into an image of the cosmos. This surprised me because I never imagined that a regular picture of say, a rock could be transformed into something more mind blowing and spectacular. Also, the fact that it could be turned into something that really would make someone think about the image to interpret it surprised me.

Week 6- “Step B” Visual Representation of Poverty

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In the Wicked Problems Seminar class this week we examined the system of poverty and the many parts that interact with it. We also thought about the roles the parts play in influencing poverty and their sub-parts. In my visual representation web drawing I placed the problem we are focusing on in my group, which is poverty, in the middle and connected the center to the parts. The parts of poverty include: food security, housing, incomes, education, health care, and crime. Then from each of those parts I connected their sub-sections. Some sub-sections of the main parts interconnect with other sub-sections of other parts. It is essentially a giant web that interconnects and functions together, with the key tie that they influence poverty.

Week 4 Reflection

With thinking about the theme that we chose for our ‘wicked problems in Austin group theme,’ which is poverty, I believe that my linked course of Innovation can tie into it. Innovation and Invention is thinking about how certain pieces or parts can form together to create an invention or innovation to speed up processes like a conveyor belt, moving items along more quickly and efficiently or even making certain things possible, like flying. The Wright Brothers were the inventors and creators of aviation. They achieved inventing the first powered airplane that could fly in a controlled manner and  this invention changed the way of something completely- it influenced means of transportation. Likewise, I can put on the lens of invention and innovation with looking into the wicked problem of poverty. I can use this lens to look at all of the factors that cause poverty and find the causes of these factors and think of ways to fix them at their roots. Inventions and innovations usually focus on one specific reason of necessity, but later they can be used for many purposes. I believe that I will first have to focus on one area and then build from there. For example, a factor of poverty is education. I can look at this and see what causes people to fall into the category of being uneducated and find the root cause and see how it can be adapted to speed up the process of education or make it possible for more people to get an education.

Austin CAN Presentation on Sep. 12th

This week for the Wicked Problems LLC Seminar class, Raul Alvarez, the overall executive director of the Austin Community Advancement Network (CAN), came and spoke to us about the CAN Dashboard and overall the mission that CAN serves. His overall presentation was very intriguing and informative and the statistics he shared about the entities within the CAN Organization were all together shocking and surprising. The most interesting element that he shared in his presentation was the statistic about crime in Travis County. It was reported that of  “100,000 people” the crime rate reduced an annual “1%” from “5,357” people “in 2010” over a “5-year baseline” to “3,988 in 2014”. This statistic was shocking to me since most crime rates tend to increase. I definitely believe it is important to explore wicked problems locally, so we can see how to fix the problems that are essentially in our backyard, especially now with being a student in Austin. I believe it is crucial to learn about local organizations and work forces that help to end wicked problems to educate us about what is going on around the community and to even take it broader and see where these problems are occurring in the world too.