Architecture in My Workplace

As this week's discussion is about cubicles vs open space, I thought I would elaborate more in my blog about that. I am not a teacher so I will not talk about bridges between teaching and architecture.

I think the workplace must be designed according to the type of work one is performing. If a job requires a lot of collaboration, bouncing off ideas, creating something, one will be more productive when working in an open space. Someone who is advising students or personal issues or working on immigration documents that do not require creativity and collaboration, would need a private closed space. Our office provides immigration advising to international students, faculty and staff but there is a programing team that meet regularly for event panning, outreach activities, etc. They usually meat in someone's small office or conference room which which does not inspire one to be creative. I think that someone would perform better and come up with many more different ideas if a meeting was conducted in an open space with a lot of natural light coming in, in a room with bright wall colors.

Our office has a small open area, it's an area for our interns who work for programming team. It's a perfect place for interns to collaborate, bounce off ideas, and work on different projects.

I also noticed that when I give immigration presentations in a formal conference room, all students are very stiff and seem scared to ask questions. I sometimes pick a room that has more relaxed environment, open, with comfy chairs, where we can sit in a circle and those presentations are so much more lively, students feel more relaxed and are not scared to ask questions. What a difference an open, well designed space can make!

The Tale of Two Retail Spaces

My video of Two Retail Spaces posted below. Hope you enjoy it!

Architecture and Interior Design

I thought Sarah Susanka's article "Home by Design" was very interesting and I was able to learn more about the relationships between architecture & interior design and the experiences evoked by them. I wish I read her article before buying my house and would have known what to look for in the house.
For the past two years, the office where I work at, has been remodeled a few times. Recently we remodeled our front lobby. We see a lot of traffic in the lobby and we knew we had to remodel it to make it more welcoming, efficient, and usable. I wish I had a picture before the remodeling. The place was very small, with not much seating. So the front lobby was very cramped during our walk-in hours which reflected poorly on our customer service to our international students. In addition to our remodeled lobby, we have remodeled our offices. We were able to choose our furniture and its style so it fits our work environments. We also do student advising in our offices. I think the new offices are more welcoming to our students. I have a bid window in my office which enlivens the room.

Pictures of the front lobby of my office:

More videos!

Last Friday, Office for International Students and Scholars hosted Valentine Coffee Hour. I really like our coffee hour event, it is always lively and I thought I would make a video about it. I think I did a very good job capturing the mood of the event and students having a great time drinking coffee and socializing with old friends and new friends. Enjoy "Valentine Coffee Hour video::

I also took a 10 minute video of myself and my coworker and compressed it on one minute video. This video is called "Just another work day." I think it is interesting video but I wish I was able to take it at the beginning of the semester when we were very busy and show the volume of students we see in just 10-15 minutes! Enjoy:

Ducks in Action

"Ducks in Action"

Director’s Commentary:

One of my favorite things to do on MSU’s campus besides taking walks is to go feed the ducks especially in winter time. I though I would try to making a compelling video about the ducks. I asked my spouse and my son to come with me so they can feed the ducks and I would take a video. They are not in the video. I did not want them to be part of the video because it would distract the viewer from concentrating on my main object of the movie-the ducks.
I recorded about 20 minutes of video with my camera of the ducks. I was thinking to myself how am I going to fit this all in one minute. I was reviewing the videos for a good one to two hours. I realized that there were a lot of redundant shots and they were not compelling at all. What was most compelling to me were the scenes where I captured the docks flying out of the river and flying back in the river.  I was also able to capture video of the ducks trying to catch the bread in the water and because the stream of the water was so strong, they had to use a lot of energy to swim back up or to fly back up to get more bread. What was captivating was their ability to pick up their heavy bodies from the water and their heavy landing in the water. I also noticed the beautiful colors of their feathers, which I showed at the beginning of the video by zooming in very closely to the two ducks just standing there. There were also two gorgeous big geese. There is one compelling these where I zoomed in very close to the two geese and in the background there is a group of ducks flying back in the water.

I used iMovie to create my one-minute video. Once I put all of my favorite scenes together, I realized that I had over 2 minutes of video. I though I would fast-forward some of the scenes which shrunk my video to less than a minute. But when I watched it, it did not look very compelling to me. It looked like a very boring movie about the ducks. Then I thought of showing some scenes in slow motion especially the ones where ducks were flying. And what a difference it made! Their slow movement of the wings flapping and the heavy landing in the river was so captivating.
I also thought a lot about the storyline for my video. When I put all the scenes together, they were just random scenes. It did not make much sense. Then I thought of starting the video with two ducks just standing there and I added a title “Ducks in Action.” At first I show the ducks in action in the river and then show them flying out of the river in slow motion. The next scene has two big geese just standing there and in the background in slow motion a group of ducks flying back in the river. I end the video with one goose just swimming away. I also added the credits at the end of the video.
I shot the video around 5pm in the evening and that gave me the best lighting.
I also added music in the background of the video. I think it goes very well with the video and with the movement of the ducks.
It took me about 5 hours to put this 1 minute video together. At one point I spent an hour working on 10 seconds of video. I made a couple of different videos and I had my spouse and my brother rate them. And they thought the duck video was the most compelling.

Filmmaking

As I was reviewing the readings and planning for my video project, I have a big admiration for film producers and even commercial producers. It does take a lot of thought, time, creativity to produce an hour and a half movie or even a 30 second commercial. 

As I am working on my project, I came up with this question: Does my video need to be informational and teach something or it can be just about anything but produced and presented in a compelling way? I think the purpose of this module is to give us tools and teach us how to produce a compelling piece of artwork. If we learn how to do that, then as educators we will be able to use these tools in our workplace, classroom to teach students the material in a compelling way. 

I found it interesting when reading "Filmmaking and Research: An Intersection" by Paul Goodman, how camera really could be used for anything. Paul Goodman was discussing the role of camera in research for example, to use camera in organizational research. Today, I took my camera to work and I filmed my coworker (whose office is next to mine) and myself for a few minutes just working and also our student/intern area. When I looked at my recordings, I noticed that out office is very busy in the afternoon and not so much in the morning. There was much more traffic in the afternoon than morning. I hope to put that video on my blog later this week.

I also think that sometimes you can tell so much more with camera than with words. I took a video of students/faculty/staff/visitors on MSU campus just walking/jogging/biking and it was so interesting just to observe everyone rushing through the lunch our to their destinations.

As I am designing a website for children of Lithuanian immigrant families I will find the use of camera very useful.

Compelling videos

I think one of the main purposes in film making is to tell a story and bring out involvement and feelings from the audience. If a film maker is able to make a movie where audience can relate to it, that makes it compelling. This reminds me a lot of times when I turn on TV and try to switch through different TV channels. It takes me 15-20 seconds to determine whether the program on that particular channel is going to be interesting or not. Therefore, if documentary or movie maker did not create a compelling scene that I happened to watch at that moment, I will be switching to another channel.

What I learned from this lesson, that it takes so many components to make a compelling video or compelling movie. You have to think of an idea, you audience, how my audience will associate and what feelings will have towards the movie, and what music will I use in the background.
I think it is very important to learn to use compelling videos in the classroom. Compelling videos would leave meaningful and memorable experiences to students that nurtures more creativity and deeper thinking.
I am not a teacher so I do not have examples of using compelling videos in education. However, I work with international students and our office is thinking how to create compelling videos for new incoming international students, videos that would help them to get around Michigan State University and would help adjust to American lifestyle.