Reflecting on Week 1

Well the first full week of the Fall 2010 semester felt like the longest week of my life, so I wanted to distance myself from it for a while to better understand what went on. First I want to discuss how our team worked together and our roles on the team and then talk about our first presentation and the results.

There were definitely some positives and negatives in our team dynamic (we still need a good name for ourselves), so first I will delve into the plusses. I liked how our team would bounce ideas off each other and build on the previous thoughts. It was also good that we were all able to go down paths we were interested in to test the boundaries and limitations of different approaches that went along with the same theme. One thing that should be improved on for this week is decision making. I'm not sure if it was just that no one wanted to step on any toes or if we just weren't confident in our own ideas, but it took the team far too long to pick a direction. I think this could be helped by thinking apart for a while and coming back to the group with a well thought out idea.

The roles that each person played on the team were dynamic and changed over time, but these are the basic Belbin roles that I think everyone played: Chris-Implementer, Jim-Plant, Joyce-Monitor/Evaluator, Alex-Monitor/Evaluator, Jason-Completer/Finisher, and Me-Team worker. This is just the way I see it and they didn't fit for the entire week.

We gave our first presentation on Thursday and it seemed to go pretty well. We were all a little nervous because our pentagonal hexacontahedron didn't fold up on its own and wasn't a new shape, but I think the possible applications are so varied that this doesn't matter as much. Hopefully, I find the computer connector for my camera and get some pics up soon. I really appreciated the feedback from the instructors and classmates and after reverse brainstorming with Dr. Shteyn we will have many leads to follow for this coming Thursday. Personally I have been thinking about scale a lot more. What could we do with this shape if it was the size of a building or the size of a pea? The shape is so versatile that it actually could be applied on many different magnitude scales.

Anyway, this class makes me think A LOT and it kind of tires me out, so I will let you know what's going on at a later date.