The goals of this project as set forth were:
1) Create an inventory of everything you own as well as the stuff that you share, rent, or borrow. Be sure to note if this is an inventory for on or off campus or both.
2) Assign values to each of the following categories for each object: Country of Origin, Primary Material, Expected Life Expectancy, End of Life Cycle, Monetary Value. Standardize category terminology as best you can to ease in sorting and analysis.
3) Create personally meaningful categories for your stuff. E.g. essential, unnecessary, fluff, junk, found, important, required, sentimental, gift, etc.
4) Rank order your stuff from most important to least important and make a printout and or save the sheet. Next, experiment with sorting your list according to category. Make printouts / save sheets as you see fit.
5) Analyze trends you discover from the different sorts.
6) Write a 3 page (c. 1000 words) reaction and reflection on your research. Turn in the excel file(s) as well. Additional material such as photos, drawings, charts, maps, etc. can be included beyond the 3 typewritten pages.
1) Choose one object from your list and research a full life cycle of that object. What are its materials? Where did the come from? Who made it? Where was it assembled? Where was it shipped from? How much did it cost? Are there hidden costs? etc. An example of this kind of cycle will be posted on course tools. Choose and interesting object!
2) Document your research in a format you see appropriate. Typewritten paper, website, photos, maps, charts and graphs, etc.
Projects will be turned in to your GSI during your weekly discussion. The project is worth 600 points and will be evaluated according to:
a) depth and thoroughness of the research
b) originality and quality of the documents created
c) design and usability of the documents created
d depth and quality of the insights documented
This website was hand coded and runs off of a back end written in MySQL and PHP while the actual display of the text and everything is handled with XHTML and CSS. The neat looking pie charts were made with Illustrator.
Here is a sample of what some of the code that generates the information tables when requested looks like:
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query, MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
array_push($id, $row['id']);
array_push($item, $row['item']);
array_push($material, $row['material']);
array_push($origin, $row['origin']);
array_push($life, $row['life']);
array_push($total_quantity, $row['number']);
if ($row['m_value'] == "0") {
$thisvar = "<1";
array_push($total_value, $thisvar);
} else {
array_push($total_value, $row['m_value']);
}
array_push($average_distance, $row['distance']);
array_push($average_usage, $row['w_usage']);
array_push($sink_float, $row['sinkfloat']);
array_push($personal, $row['p_value']);
array_push($cycle, $row['cycle']);
}
for ($i=0;$i<=(count($id)-1);$i++) {
if (is_int($i/2)) {
$row = "a";
} else {
$row = "b";
}
echo "<tr>\n";
echo "\t<th class=\"col_m_" . $row . "\">" . $item[$i] . "</th>\n";
echo "\t<th class=\"row_" . $row . "\">" . $cycle[$i] . "</th>\n";
echo "\t<th class=\"row_" . $row . "\">" . $material[$i] . "</th>\n";
echo "\t<th class=\"row_" . $row . "\">" . $life[$i] . "</th>\n";
echo "\t<th class=\"row_" . $row . "\">" . $average_usage[$i] . "/7</th>\n";
echo "\t<th class=\"row_" . $row . "\">$" . $total_value[$i] . "</th>\n";
echo "<tr>\n";
}