Krystle Grant 2: Relationship Of Space To Information. Do We Need College Walls?

This is just a rough draft of my proposed grants. I am looking for grants to support these projects.

As a senior, preparing to graduate from Stony Brook University, I am faced with this penetrating question, “Why did I spend all this money on college?” I am at the point of entering the real world and I feel as if I am not where I want to be academically. College has been more of a journey for me, leading me to a place of finding out what I really want to do in life. However while all of that is beneficial, I will have a degree in the Spring and giant loan dangling over my head, waiting to drop. In the winter I took an online class, and while it was mostly institutional, there was some form of free learning involved and I could not help but thinking if there is another way go through the journey of finding out what it is you want to do with your life while acquiring applicable academics to this path. Do we need the cold concrete walls of a college classroom to do this?

I would say that while the journey was essential to my life, most of what I want to do in the future was not learnt with the concrete walls of my university.

For this project, I intend to study and apply a critical and experimental study on space and information I want to investigate the real tensions between the information contained in brick and mortar environment of colleges and the recipients. I want to explore the relationship between learning in one’s own interior versus learning in expensive buildings. I want to look at the urbanized world in the U.S and investigate why we are still adhering to rigid rules about learning in such environments. A documentary film of students learning in an interior and exterior environment will be produced. After collecting data via observatory techniques, I propose to design a new learning space using Google SketchUp which will focus on using technological equipment as the major basis for learning.

In order to implement this study I am asking for an Ipad to use as the technological device that will be used for learning in a portable fashion. I will also need a grant budget of $5000 to cover the materials I need to construct and edit the documentary film (video camera, editing software). My travel expenses will also be covered by this budget, since I plan to carry out the study in the heart of New York City and Brooklyn.