Andrew Davidson

This year, for the first time, HCDE is partnering with the UW’s Pipeline Project to offer an Alternative Spring Break (ASB) experience for HCDE undergraduate students.

ASB is an outreach program that provides opportunities for teams of undergraduate students to spend their spring break in a rural or tribal community of Washington State, working with local elementary and middle schools.

HCDE is launching its first ASB program, and will send a team of five undergraduates to lead middle school students in a Human Centered Design Workshop. HCDE students will work with the school and community leaders to identify a problem or need that can be addressed by our user-centered design process. Over the course of a week, the middle school students, guided by the HCDE student team, will research the problem, design and prototype a solution, and present their project idea. This workshop will build on HCDE’s existing UCD Charette for K-12 Outreach program.

Full details, including application information for interested students, may be found here: Human Centered Design Workshop for ASB.

Watch this inspiring video for a glimpse of what ASB is all about:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENU1ZvGXi4?version=3&rel=0&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]

UW|360: Alternative Spring Break
youtu.be/rENU1ZvGXi4

A few weeks ago, there was a fairly massive internet outage, mostly affecting users on the east coast of the United States. The cause was a standard malicious hack called a DDoS attack. It was aimed at a large DNS provider, Dyn. (What We Know About Friday’s Massive East Coast Internet Outage: Wired, 10.21.16)

This was different from the run-of-the-mill DDoS attack in that it appears to be the first time that this technique “… relied on hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices.” (Hackers Used New Weapons to Disrupt Major Websites Across U.S.: NY Times, 10.21.16)

So this means that now vulnerability for massive cyber mischief is not limited to every personal computer on the planet that can be infected by malware. It also includes all of those small, internet-enabled devices that we are peppering the planet with in order to have smarter homes and even smarter cities. (A New Era of Internet Attacks Powered by Everyday Devices: NY Times, 10.22.16)

And, of course, now the standard locking of the barn door after the cows have escaped begins, and the product recalls commence. (Chinese IoT firm recalls 4.3 million connected cameras after giant botnet attack: Wired UK, 10.25.16)

Once again, no surprise, but it turns out that most of these Internet of Things (IoT) devices are not designed with the higher levels of security that are embedded in modern computers that connect to the internet. I’m not entirely sure that I want my house or my car to become so smart. (Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway – With Me in It: Wired, 07.21.15)

And this week, more news about this attack revealed that one of the vulnerabilities was in the ZigBee radio protocol that is embedded in many current IoT devices. (Why Light Bulbs May Be the Next Hacker Target: NY Times, 11.03.16).

In our physical computing classes in HCDE, we often use inexpensive XBee radios, based on the ZigBee standard, for prototyping wireless interactive systems. We’re not designing real products for the market with them, but we should be aware of the inherent security risks in any smart devices.

Seymour Papert. Credit Jodi Hilton for The New York Times

Seymour Papert, known for his pioneering ideas about teaching technology, died recently. (nyti.ms/2aY3xKs)

He developed a theory of education known as constructionism that formed the basis of so many project-based and hands-on learning systems.

Papert, whose seminal 1980 book “Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas” influenced so many educators, was a towering thinker in the field. He was the creator of the LOGO programming.

Fortunately his legacy, in his work and his students, is strong, and will continue to inspire us all.