Youtube Challenges

We have had number of challenges when making our Youtube video. We had multiple cameras filming us at different angles, and at the end we wanted to integrate them. After the initial recording we realized one of the cameras did not capture the sound, at all. Another camera, we realized, the sound was so low that we could barely hear us speaking. For this reason we had to record multiple times. During the editing process we tried best to make the sound consistent throughout the film. During the editing process, we also realized that the sound and the image separated whenever we tried to trim the video. Later we realized we had to convert the .mts file to .wmv or .avi file before making any trimming process. Another difficult part was to shrink our time to 10 minutes. When we were done, the recording was over 14 minutes. We realized that even taking out 5 to 7 seconds to trim the duration to 10 minutes was very hard, just because we wanted to have it in there.

Anyway with all that said, I am really excited with what we have. We plan to have our final meeting this afternoon, and I am really looking forward to sharing the video with the rest of the class on Monday. It has taken long hour to compile but seeing the final product (almost), it’s worth it. I hope that our video carries the message that we intended to do.

We have also had many help from Michelle (letting us use her house), James (the camera operator) and Rene (setting) and many others. We couldn’t have done it without their help.

The Dangers of Confusing Engineering with Science

Illustration: Harry Campbell.

From IEEE Spectrum article "Engineering is not Science."

I'd like to quickly highlight an article that brings us back to a seemingly timeless question: what exactly is an engineer? Henry Petroski, a professor of engineering and history at Duke University, writes about the importance of distinguishing scientists and engineers in this month's IEEE Spectrum. (note: IEEE stands for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and is a non-profit professional association. Spectrum is their monthly magazine.)

In the article, Mr. Petroski argues two key points:

1. Engineering and science are distinct fields. "Science is about understanding the origins, nature, and behavior of the universe and all it contains; engineering is about solving problems by rearranging the stuff of the world to make new things."
2. The United States government should increase funding for engineering fields. "Scientists might argue that the government needs to invest in basic scientific research that will lead to unspecified discoveries about energy, water, and waste. Although a good deal is already known about those things, it certainly would not hurt to know more, but what would really move things forward would be investments in engineering."

This underfunding and confusion between the fields leads to a dangerous impact: "...it can leave politicians,policymakers, and the general public unable to make informed decisions about the technical challenges facing the world today."

While I agree that it is important to make the distinction between the fields, I was bothered by the article's implication that science and scientists are "higher ranking" than engineering. Upon reflection, that public perception is probably true -- how many times when news broadcasts have discussed solving world issues has a scientist been brought in as the expert vs. an engineer? (Another question to consider is how many times has that technical expert been a woman -- but that's an issue for another post.)

If you take the time to read the article, be sure to check out the comments section. Being engineers, most of the commenters are quick to agree with the "We are definitely NOT scientists! HMPH!" sentiment. Something that struck me, however, was a quip that was being copied over and over again: Engineers learn to build. Scientists build to learn. Really? Engineers = builders? Is anyone else conjuring up images of the children's television show Bob the Builder? I can understand trying to come up with a succinct statement to remember how to differentiate the two fields -- hey, it worked for 'i' before 'e' except after 'c' or the sound of 'a' as in "neighbor" and "weigh". Even if we agree with the statement, then a new question arises -- how are we different from designers? Yikes. We recognize that engineering is a complex intersection of math, science, designing, and a multitude of other fields. I don't think it's wrong to state that fact openly -- we should give the American public more credit for being able to understand fields aren't always black and white.

As a final note, the article highlights the issues that arise when engineering and science are not properly distinguished. However, it fails to mention any solutions for how we can promote engineering and emphasize its differences from science. How do you think this can be accomplished? I'd love to hear your responses in the comments!

Software for help?

Robin just got back from a visit to Tufts, and learned about this awesome stop-action movie software:
http://www.samanimation.com/

Check it out in case it is helpful for your youtube videos. :-)

Confessions

In the conversation Angela, Lorie, and I had last week regarding suggested changes/improvements in engineering education, I made an attempt to describe a relationship between ENE and academia. I said that if we wanted to change ENE, there might be a need for a change in academia as a prerequisite. If we want to change the shape of ENE (say circle peg), and want it to fit into academia (say square hole), then we have to make the square hole large enough to encapsulate the circle or we lose some of the circle as it gets trimmed into the square hole. Essentially that is what I believe happens now whether we intend to or not. I suggested, though ambitious, that it might be necessary to create an alternative to the academy but recognized that it would require the equivalent respect/resources/status or we would be duplicate some behaviors that got us to where we are now. I don't have disdain for the academy per se, but I think trying to mold ourselves as engineers and ENE into something means we generated an identity from pictures of others. I know we need a guide when we don't know what we look like and want to project an image, but I felt like the need to be recognized by academia kind of distracted us because we wanted status and prestige and respect. Personally, I am willing to forgo that status and attached respect because I'm not so concerned about image (or so I think). Because of that I'm okay with challenging the shape of the square hole or creating a completely new shape for ENE to coexist with academia so it does not have to fit into it. Have we done enough and grown enough to be big enough to walk on our own as a field and can we educate in a responsible novel fashion freely? Then I was politely reminded by my YouTube partner that I could afford to do that because I already have the stamp of approval as I graduated from the top ACADEMY in my field, so I carry credibility and respect and need to defend less than some others. I hadn't considered it really because I don't want around with it stamped on my face, but it is very much true. I'm in reflective mode a week later and still don't know what to do with it. So I give it to you.

The Engineer of 2020 and Purdue

I thought that some people would be interested in seeing Purdue's thoughts on the Engineer of 2020. https://engineering.purdue.edu/Engr/Academics/Engineer2020/

The 20 attributes are listed under three headings: abilities, knowledge areas, and qualities. I was trying to separate the Engineer of 2020 skills into the two areas of epistemology and ontology. It seems that I can probably group the items under the knowledge areas heading with epistemology. Also, many of the items under abilities can probably be grouped under ontology. However, the qualities heading seems to be a mixture of both. Furthermore, they are more like desired outcomes (or what we hope for-the ideal engineer) than the qualities of every engineer. Please let me know your thoughts.

The boundary work of Los Andes University, Bogotá-Colombia

Los Andes is the University were I used to workback in my country. Is a very new university (it has 62 years) and was "the first non confessional private university in Colombia, independent from all political parties."*

I think is interesting the parallel with Purdue because both have a very strong engineering school. Actually, I have bee

n thinking a lot in this parallel and how can it be connected to the boundary work we have been doing in this class... So I came up with the following micro-research about the themes Los Andes' engineering school published in its own magazine, during the last eleven years.

Here are the numbers...

The upper part of the charts shows the chapters used in the magazine to classify the articles. The lower part of the chart shows the classification I made based on the titles, abstracts, and sometimes based on a skim of the article if the theme wasn’t yet clear. I know that this second classification is biased by my experience and knowledge, but I found some interesting things during this almost twenty years of publication.

First of all is interesting how the names of the chapters change along the years. At the very beginning, when there was only one issue per year, the magazine had two parts: Research, and Research summaries. Both addressed the technical themes; although the second one took into account some boundary and education articles. Then, a third chapter came out: Opinion. In that last classification felt all the few education articles in that time. Some other parts of the magazine came, such as information, memory, or in memoriam; but what I found more interesting is how they changed the name of the first part to Engineering instead of Research. But how other themes such as engineering education can’t be research? Or engineering?

Looking at the most popular themes, the articles into the chapters called Engineering or Research, are almost the same as the ones I classified as technical articles. Adding boundary articles to technical ones, is more alike the engineering/research chapters’ amount of articles. Although in the first years, and in the middle years (magazines 10-13) this similarity decreases.

Another interesting thing I saw is that Engineering Education articles are sometimes classified as Engineer, and some other times as Opinion. I can say that during these years, engineering education is on the boundary of what the School of Engineering at Los Andes consider as part of Engineering discipline. I found it very interesting, because I can see it from the inside.

I also can notice the importance that the School of Engineering gave to engineering education from 2003 and especially during 2004 (magazine 20), which was a couple years after the curriculum changed, and few years before the construction of the new engineering building.

… So this is another “boundary work” about engineering.

* http://www.uniandes.edu.co/About_Uniandes.pdf

free video camera and editting help at Hicks Undergraduate library

Class
After Ben found this place I went to the Hicks undergraduate library to get a 2nd video camera on Friday, reserved for 3 days. They said in the lab in the subbasement that they are open and usually staffed  7x24 to help with Windows Moviemaker this week. They were not sure if they will always staff 2-600am. There are  Sony video cameras at Hicks available with a purdue ID to use for free for 1-3 days.I am at Hicks now at 10:43pm and it like downtown Chicago at Rush Hour. But there is staff to help with Windows Moviemaker, conversion of tapes and any MovieMaker editing problems that you have. They are really customer  friendly.You have to go to Hicks to reserve cameras. you can reserve video conversion machines at http://www.dlc.purdue.edu/
click on reserve a compeuter
search by device for miniDV deck if you are using tape was we were.
reserve a PC, stations 3,4,5,10
you need the same amount of conversion minutes as you have DV tape.
dan, Natalie, Ben