Teenagers Unfriend Facebook

Driven to Distraction, Some Teenagers Unfriend Facebook - NYTimes.com:

We decided we spent way too much time obsessing over Facebook and it would be better if we took a break from it,” Halley said.

By mutual agreement, the two friends now allow themselves to log on to Facebook on the first Saturday of every month — and only on that day.

The two are among the many teenagers, especially girls, who are recognizing the huge distraction Facebook presents — the hours it consumes every day, to say nothing of the toll it takes during finals and college applications, according to parents, teachers and the students themselves.

Luring the Young Into Digital Jobs

New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs - NYTimes.com

Hybrid careers like Dr. Halamka’s that combine computing with other fields will increasingly be the new American jobs of the future, labor experts say. In other words, the nation’s economy is going to need more cool nerds. But not enough young people are embracing computing — often because they are leery of being branded nerds.

Educators and technologists say two things need to change: the image of computing work, and computer science education in high schools. Teacher groups, professional organizations like the Association for Computing Machinery and the National Science Foundation are pushing for these changes, but so are major technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Intel. One step in their campaign came the week of Dec. 7, National Computer Science Education Week, which was celebrated with events in schools and online.

Today, introductory courses in computer science are too often focused merely on teaching students to use software like word processing and spreadsheet programs, said Janice C. Cuny, a program director at the National Science Foundation. The Advanced Placement curriculum, she added, concentrates narrowly on programming. “We’re not showing and teaching kids the magic of computing,” Ms. Cuny said.

Teaching craft in a designed world

Teaching craft in a designed world - Nick de la Mare - On Design - Creativity Online

I think at this point it's important to remember that craft, by definition, is fundamentally a dedicated mastery of a chosen subject matter, not necessarily just the deep understanding of a specific material or tool. Richard Sennett, in The Craftsman, cites a commonly understood 10,000 hour figure as the time needed to master any particular skill, from violin, to carpentry, to painting, to surgery:
'As skill progresses, it becomes more problem-attuned, such as the lab technician worrying about procedure—whereas people with primitive levels of skill struggle just to get things to work. At its higher reaches, technique is no longer a mechanical activity; people can feel fully and think deeply about what they are doing, once they do it well.'

Four Things I’ve Learned About Designers — AIGA | the professional association for design

Four Things I’ve Learned About Designers — AIGA | the professional association for design

For the last two years, I’ve been doing to designers what they usually do unto others. Which is to say, I’ve been observing and studying them, asking a lot of questions and trying to discern patterns. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

Augmented Reality Advertising

Consumed - The Hype Around Augmented Reality - NYTimes.com

Very broadly, augmented reality can be thought of as an inversion of the venerable “virtual reality” buzz concept. Instead of plunging us into a completely digital environment, augmented reality means placing digital things into the regular old world. Those things might be bits of information or renderings of imaginary objects. And they, of course, aren’t really in the real world at all — they just appear to be there if you filter your gaze through the proper screen.

D.I.Y. Games

Can D.I.Y. Supplant the First-Person Shooter? - NYTimes.com

These game designers, a self-described indie scene, form a tightly knit group with a do-it-yourself culture and a rebellious spirit — something like a ’zine movement for video games. New and cheap technologies have enabled the movement’s rise. New tools for production and distribution — through smartphones, over the Web and via downloadable services on PlayStation, Wii and Xbox consoles — now make it possible for individuals to conceive, develop and publish their own games.

Rohrer himself is a kind of Thoreauvian game designer, a 31-year-old back-to-the-land programmer-philosopher who lives in Las Cruces, N.M., where he codes his eccentrically engrossing games, which can feel like digitally mediated poetic moods, on an ancient computer and makes them available free online. “Now anyone can do it,” he says, “which is not how the mainstream video-game industry works.”

Email 101

Great advice for students learning how to communicate effectively with your Professors OR anyone using email:
Design Educator: Email 101

I will not begin this post with the word “netiquette” (you can get the book for more details), because the term dates to the 1980s and this is something I hope someone, especially my students, will read. I’m writing this because someone has to tell this generation of students about the meaning of the poor choices they repeatedly make , most especially in regards to email. OK, ok, twist my arm, I will. Listen up!

Living Climate Change Through Design Thinking

Living Climate Change: Actionable Ideas About Our Future

Help us expand the conversation.
Living Climate Change is a place where the most defining challenge of our time is explored through design thinking. It's also a place to show, discuss, and share compelling and provocative thoughts and ideas about the future.

Student Bloggers on College Life

M.I.T. Lets Student Bloggers Post Without Censoring - NYTimes.com

Dozens of colleges — including Amherst, Bates, Carleton, Colby, Vassar, Wellesley and Yale — are embracing student blogs on their Web sites, seeing them as a powerful marketing tool for high school students, who these days are less interested in official messages and statistics than in first-hand narratives and direct interaction with current students.

Masters Of Design 2009 - Fast Company

Masters Of Design 2009 - Fast Company

Be sure to also check out the Past Masters.

Client Advice from FreelanceSwitch.com

12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them – FreelanceSwitch

There are loads of different types of clients out there and chances are at some point you’ll get to meet all of them. So let’s take a look through some typical clients and see if you recognise a few of your own in there!

Photoshop Disasters Blog

PhotoshopDisasters

Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop.

International Journal of Design

International Journal of Design

The International Journal of Design is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to publishing research papers in all fields of design, including industrial design, visual communication design, interface design, animation and game design, architectural design, urban design, and other design related fields. It aims to provide an international forum for the exchange of ideas and findings from researchers across different cultures and encourages research on the impact of cultural factors on design theory and practice. It also seeks to promote the transfer of knowledge between professionals in academia and industry by emphasizing research in which results are of interest or applicable to design practices.

College Advice, From People Who Have Been There Awhile

Op-Ed Contributors - College Advice, From People Who Have Been There Awhile - NYTimes.com

Educators give some helpful advice to young adults entering school this fall.

quirky | social product development

quirky | social product development

Everyone has a product idea. Chances are, you do, too. Our 22-year-old entrepreneur-in-chief, Ben, has launched two successful companies based on this premise, with write-ups in Reader's Digest, Businessweek, Entrepreneur, and other mainstream media - including more than one primetime appearance on CNBC.

Among other things, mophie and kluster made him something of a posterboy for aspiring inventors. Over the past few years, he's received literally thousands of emails from people all around the world looking for the same answer: I have this idea for a product and saw your article/tv show/website and want your help getting it out of my head and into the marketplace - how do I start?

Design to Improve Life Winners

INDEX:DESIGN TO IMPROVE LIFE

Here are the winners of INDEX:Award 2009. They show us, how design has the power to be part of the solution to major global challenges like climate changes, pollution, natural disasters, poverty, overconsumption and other important issues.

Back to School Tips from Lifehack.org

Freshman 15: Coping with the First Year of College

What you do in your first year of college can have a big impact on the rest of your college years – not to mention on the rest of your life. A few missteps might be possible to undo later on, but too many wrong moves and you might well find it impossible to recover later. Blow off too many classes, for example, and your grades will suffer – and no matter how much you reform your ways in ensuing years, your GPA will always suffer. Do poorly enough, and you might find yourself on academic probation or even thrown out come the end of the school year!

It doesn’t have to be that way. And your first year doesn’t have to be an endless drudge, either. What’s important right now is not that you bury yourself in schoolwork until you bleed, sweat, and crap knowledge, but to establish a healthy balance of academic work, social activity, and just plain living – a balance that once established, you’ll find easy to maintain through the rest of college and into your future.

Back to School: Talk to Your Professor!

In one of my earliest posts here at Lifehack, I explained how to talk to a professor – today, I want to talk about why you should talk with your professors.

Back to School: Keep an Academic Reading Journal

Aside from partying, the thing you’re probably going to do most in college is read. Assuming you’re at all serious about your education, you’ll read so much that words will come out your ears. Unfortunately, much of what you read will also go pouring out your ears, or so it will seem looking back.

One of the best habits you can develop in college — or even in high school, if you have the discipline — is to keep an academic reading journal. This is more or less what it sounds like: a journal recording everything you read, with an added layer of academic analysis. The idea is, you record what you read, key ideas and quotes from the text, and your own reflections on the work, allowing you to fairly accurately recreate your initial reading at a later date, pershaps a much later date.

Inspiration from Design Glut

Design Glut

The Design Glut website is here to inspire you. We interview creative entrepreneurs about how they got started and what they've learned along the way. We usually post 2-3 interviews a week. Our goal is to create a resource to help you springboard into working on your own projects.

Design Pricing

A great post with links on estimating pricing for design projects:
The design pricing formula | David Airey, graphic designer

Student Graphic Design Projects on Flickr

Flickr: AIGA Design Educators Community

Great samples of student work from class projects. Look & Learn.