Week 13: building upon my future

In this final blogpost, I want to talk about how this class will influence in the years to come.

I just talked about how this class did a very good job of giving an overall view of the patent industry. I believe I have a good understanding of the patent basics, the application process, and current problems and limitations.

In class we talked about how important it is to file a patent. Unfortunately, not everyone will have a strong foundation knowledge on patents, and this is where I think I can make a difference. Just like I have mentioned before, when companies go on "Shark Tank", one of the most frequently asked questions is "is this patented?". I would definitely be the one in my company to ensure that the answer to that question is a "yes".

As someone with a background knowledge in patents, I want to be the one who ensures my company's product safety through patent filing. And in the event that we are sued by a patent troll, I will know how to handle them because all the trolls are looking for are settlements to make money off of. From this class I also learned the value of open sourcing, and so I would suggest some things to be patented, while others would be good candidates for open sourcing to encourage faster development by larger groups of people.

I think that this class has honestly given me a great advantage when I get into the workforce. I will definitely value intelligence property more than my peers and I can use that to help myself and the company move forward.

Week 13: what I learned

In this blogpost, I want to summarize my learnings and take-aways from this class. I came into this class with minimal knowledge of patents, and really, I only knew the importance of them through the show "Shark Tank". However, after an entire semester of learning about different aspects of patents and the issues with them, I have built a good knowledge foundation of patents.

The lectures were very good at slowly going deeper into the subject. We started off with some general terms and distinguishing a patent with more mainstream and common terms such as copyright and trademark. We learned how to break down a patent application and analyze each part of the application. We learned what a patent really should constitute, for example, non-obviousness and novelty. We went over some patent evolutions such as the cup sleeve patents. It was really interesting to see patents being built on top of each other. But we also went over silly and ridiculous patents that made us question the usefulness and in some cases, safety, of the inventions. We also went over problems with the current patent system and the whole debate over the patent trolls.

In addition, some weeks we had guest speakers who brought in a different perspective from that of the professor's. And each speaker had his or her own specialty, which was very exciting to be part of. We also watched a couple TED talk videos that focused on patents and its capabilities and limitations.

Overall, I thought this class was a very well-balanced course on patents. It did a great job of introducing patents and what they are, and then provided several different aspects of patents through different people's perspectives. I definitely learned a lot and would encourage others to give this class a try.

Week 13: collaborative social media #2

In the last blogpost, I focused on blogposts and Twitter. This time, I want to comment on our YouTube work.

We had weekly YouTube videos relating to our blogposts. I thought this was a very creative combination because I used blogposts to gather my thoughts for the week and do the research but I used YouTube to build upon my blogposts. It was a place where after I have written down so much about a certain topic in the blogpost, I was able to get more creative and share more of my personal opinions. And just the nature of making videos on YouTube really enforced my learning because it was a different type of learning, one that I have never had experience with.

I used to have trouble with public speaking but after making weekly videos, I feel I have definitely gotten better at impromptu and public speaking. And in addition, we were also assigned to watch other's videos and comment on them. This idea of shared learning on YouTube was extremely effective for me. I learned a lot from watching other's videos because I paid attention to not only their content, but also the way they speak and present the video. YouTube comments were also a great way to share our thoughts with our classmates.

Overall, I thought YouTube was a very creative way to learn. I definitely reenforced my learning from class topics through the videos, but I also gained public speaking skills. And again, this social media platform was simply great for classmates to share ideas with each other and give each other feedback.

Week 13: collaborative social media #1

As the semester comes to an end, I am concluding my blogpost series with a reflection upon this entire semester. This class has been very different from my other classes because all assignments and homeworks are completed online through social media. We have weekly blogposts in this bloggger website, videos on YouTube, and tweets on Twitter.

I want to focus on blogposts for now. I thought this idea was quite effective because first of all, Tal made sure we felt that the blogpost was our own. What I mean by that is, we were able to customize it and really personalize it. As a result, I took my blogposts more seriously because it reflected upon who I am and my experiences in this class. Weekly blogposts made it really easy to consolidate my ideas and learnings of each week. The topics of each blogpost ranged every week. Some weeks were summaries and personal opinions on class PowerPoint presentations, and others were compilations of online research on a certain topic. Blogposts definitely helped me retain the knowledge because I spent time researching the material before compiling and writing it into a blogpost. And in addition to all this, it really promoted shared learning because we all had access to each other's blogposts and were able to comment on each other's writings.

Twitter was also a cool addition we had in the middle of the semester. It enforced the idea of shared learning because we were all able to read each other's tweets, which were usually quick opinions on class topics or interesting articles found online.

In this blogpost I focused on blogposts and tweets. I found these two platforms of social media not only helped me learn and retain knowledge better, but also encouraged heavy communication between classmates that further enhanced the learning experience.