Bringing It Home

Over the duration of the semester we've discovered a correlation between games that emulate real life experience with the progression of time. The first games were original thoughts of fun that differed greatly from the monotonous daily choirs children had in the 1700's. Today, games have a tendency to capture a strong essence of real-life activities. 

As a conclusive evaluation of this discovery I thought it would be interesting to jump from the 1940's to  2013. 

Three of the most popular Christmas toys for 2013 are the LeapFrog LeapPad Learning Tablet, the Zoomer Robot Dog, and the Nerf Rebelle Heartbreaker Bow and Arrow. 

It used to be that as mom or dad whipped up a batch of cookies, little Sally would be pushing tins of dough through her Easy Bake Oven. This year as mom or dad swipe their iPad, so does Sally on her tablet. The Leapfrog LeapPad Learning Tablet is basically an iPad for children. It has the ability to connect to Wi-Fi, hold 8 GB of information, and host over 800+ apps. 


 The Zoomer Robot Dog captures the essence of Spot. The robot dog runs, sniffs, wags his tail, sings, barks, responds to his name, lifts his leg to pee and has the ability to learn tricks such as "sit down" and "roll over".

Finally, the Nerf Relle Heartbreaker is a target gift this year. A bow and arrow would capture the essence of hunting but this gift is probably popular this year because it captures the essence of the Hunger Games.  Katniss, the main character, is a beautiful, strong young woman who unintentionally becomes a revolutionary idol for hope. What girl wouldn't want to be like her? Although the movie is fictional the essence captured is of a reality fans will to be real.  

This has been a fun little study. It would be interesting to see if this correlation will continue throughout time or make a rapid reversion back to a kind of 'original fun'.

Sharing Stories from Abroad

San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, Spain 

Study abroad alumni gathered to share their tales from abroad. Shepherd University Study Abroad Office hosted a panel on Monday, November 11th. The versatile panel brought experiences from all over the globe: Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Ireland, England, Italy, Quebec, Russia, Switzerland, and Spain. 

Quebec, Canada

The panel was originally designed as an outreach event for students who do not know much about study abroad. However, it quickly turned into a round table discussion. There were not a lot of people who attended so the hosts reshaped the room to complement the crowd.

I really enjoyed this event. Each person gave a brief account of their study abroad experience.We talked about the cultural differences, the people we met, the programs we attended, the food, the language barriers, the financial restraints, and our unforgettable 'learning moments'. 

Costa Rica

The panel was especially interesting because even though we all experienced new ways of living, our new experiences were sometimes radically different from the one another's.The alumni who studied in Russia and Czech Republic learned to not even make eye contact with people on the street. Conversely, I was taught to greet everyone with a kiss on each cheek.

The Regal Experience

Although sweeping popcorn is not the most ideal job in the world it certainly has its perks: it helps pay rent, it is open late which is conducive for day-time class scheduling, you get to meet a lot of people, and when there is time, you can see FREE MOVIES!    

Co-workers on a week night

Since September I have been able to watch The Butler and Captain Philips. 

The Butler was a very dramatic film. It boldly presented profound stances on slavery and American history. The film evoked all kinds of emotions: happiness, disgust, anger, fear, and even comfort. The high-class acting combined with my low tolerance for inhumanity made my stomach turn.

Although I think that The Butler was a good film, I thought that it was slightly overdone. I felt like the film was written in such a way that every major event in American history from 1920-2009 was forced into the film. Rather than embracing a true narrative with real events or supporting a documentary with some narrative the movie sat somewhere in between the two and by the end of the film I lost interest in both

Captain Phillips, on the other hand, was one of the greatest films I have ever seen. I do not frequently rave about movies but I highly recommend this film. Captain Phillips is based on the Maersk Alabama hijacking by Somali pirates in 2009.The movie was suspenseful and realistic. Normally I hear mixed reviews from guests at the theater but I did not hear one negative comment about this movie.

The acting was phenomenal! Tom Hanks did an award winning job.  In regards to one of the later scenes my roommate said,"That was the most convincing scenes I have ever watched."

The camera never stops moving throughout the film; it intensifies the suspense and embraces the unsteady rock of a ship on the ocean. The use of close-ups and wide shots was brilliantly used. There was just enough emotion captured for the audience to sympathize with the actors and yet it had enough release for there to still be mystery and safety. 

The Butler and Captain Phillips were both based on true stories but Captain Phillips had a rawness to it that completely separates the two even though The Butler was so dramatic.  

Free movies! I'll pop another patch to that.

Sweet Homecoming

Every year Shepherd University hosts a homecoming celebration parade through downtown Shepherdstown before the big game. This years homecoming theme was Hollywood walk of fame.

Student groups chose different Hollywood stars to decorate their floats and banners for the homecoming festivities.  This year "Common Ground",  a student group that I am involved in, chose Dick Van Dyke as their star.  We decorated our float like the roof top scene from Mary Poppins.

        We painted boxes to look like chimneys and cut holes in them so that the smoke (cotton) could billow out of the tops. We also made a giant measuring tape that was put over the back of the float.

On the day of the parade, one of the ladies in our group dressed like Mary Poppins and one of the young men dressed to look like Bert (Dick Van Dyke). The rest of us threw some dirt on our faces and casted ourselves as extra chimney sweepers.

Compared to past I think that there were fewer people than usual but the experience was very fun nonetheless.

Sprinting in Mud IV

Victory! Victory! Victory!

I am almost at a loss for words. I can not believe that presentation day is already here.

• All of my goals and objectives have been met
• I am happy that I chose the project that I did
• I got to work with video, photography, web design, motion graphics, social media, and advertising.
• And, I learned far more that I thought that I would 

There are a few details here and there that I would have liked to spent more time editing but overall I am pleased with the product.

Check it out!

corkboardcurriculum.com

Sprinting in Mud III

The video has been made, the book is for sale, and the website is well on its way to being a final product.

The Video:

I deviated from the original storyboard because the theme was not very consistent with the rest of the website. The video has been a lot of fun but it certainty is not finished.

•  Instead of the tacked photos falling into place on the cork board, I would like to add a camera to the mix and have it weave in and out of the tacked photos placed in three dimensional space.
• I would also like to re-record the audio. I have a native Spanish speaking friend who has agreed to doing the narrative and I think that it will sound much better.
• I need to resize the video so that the graphics fill the entire picture and the background can not be seen.

The Book:

The book is for sale on shopmybook.com. I have done a lot of research on book publishing these past few months and for the purpose of this book I am satisfied with shopmybook.com. The process was pretty painless and it was free! I remember reading that I would be able to get an ISBN number for the book but when I went through the publication process I did not see the option. I might re-edit and re-publish the content but as for now I am okay without having an ISBN number. 

The Website:

In the past week I was able to put the video on the website and work on a few graphics. The tack in the header and the tack and background on a few of the photographs have been added. 

Formatting on the website has been a bit of a struggle. I researched, tried to code, and reformat the size of the video on the main page but its still obnoxiously large. The invisible tables and their formatting has been difficult too. Aside from adding space and resizing images I am not sure how to format the images or text properly. 

Other News:

The Department of Communication Faculty reviewed my capstone project on Monday. I was very nervous. It felt more like a sporadic overview than a formal presentation but they were very gracious. I think I could have spent hours listening to their suggestions but we only had 10 minutes. Their review was beneficial, nontheless. One professor found an error in the content and another professor recommended getting the the website licensed. They also suggested doing an animated self-video as apposed to filming one for the comments/questions page. I corrected the error and got the license, but I am still not sure about animating the self-video:

To Do: 

Must. Finish. Strong.

• Make sure all the content has been correctly typed onto the website
• Add the online quizzes to all of the chapters
• Re-format chapter pages so that the quizzes and downloadable material is on the side.
• Add backgrounds to all of the photos
• Make a Facebook and Twitter page and link them to the site.
• Format the front page of the website (the video size)
• Re-order the photographs on the chapter page so they complement each chapter
• Change the color behind the tack in the header to an off-white
• Add more links and make sure all of the acknowledgements are correct.
• Add a self-video 
• Re-write/code the comments/questions page so that is in in Spanish.
• Add audio to the English words
• Re-edit the video

It is hard to believe there are only 2 full weeks left until our final presentations! 

Shepherdstown's unspoken Magnetism

The town's insatiable longing for originality illuminates the road from the surrounding land to the warmth of downtown. Shepherd is booming with creativity and personality that sprouts from the heart of the community. The land hosts a sweet aroma of sincere work. Organic gardening and painting are not simple hobbies in this town, they are lifestyles.

. . .

Come get your hands dirty.

Bask in the creativity.

Rest in the genuinity. 

Sprinting in Mud Part II

Capstone is definitely on the move! At this point, the website has all of its content. The video images are beginning to be created and I have compared self-publishing options.

I am starting to become more comfortable with Wordpress. However, I am still trying to execute ideas that I have to research in order to accomplish. I had to refresh myself on basic html codes such as how to create a table. Fortunately, I have not encountered any real difficulties in trying to display the content. Wordpress will self-code most information if it is put into the "display" section of the page editor correctly. In the book, a lot of the content was not formatted into tables so I had to code a little but it was not a bad experience 

When I first added the homepage content it did not appear on the website. I deleted it and retyped it. I wrote it in the "visual" window and deleted the content from the "text" than I tried it in the reverse. I googled "My homepage content will not appear on Wordpress website" in every variation. I read possible solutions that varied from re-creating a homepage to editing the permalink. I even created an account in Wordpress questions and I still could not find an answer. After being flustered and feeling like time was being wasted, I decided to edit the other pages and return to the homepage later. After the other pages' content appeared I went back to the homepage and looked specifically at the "front page" settings under "customize" in the "appearance" tab. I saw that the static front page was on "blog" instead of "page". Finally, WAHLA! The homepage appeared.  

My next step was to include an interactive quiz on each of the chapter pages. I did a little research on quiz downloads and learned about Wordpress plugins. Slickquiz had excellent reviews so I installed it onto Wordpress. The installation was a breeze and the plugin is very easy to use. The only difficulty I had was trying to incorporate photos into the quiz. I read about people who had been able to incorporate photos but I was never successful. I tried to copy and past and I tried the < image source... code but it did not work. This is something I would like to go back to as for now, the quizzes are completely functional. 

Then, I wanted to add downloadable content to the website. When the files for chapters 9 and 10 would not upload I thought that I had exceeded the amount of permissible, downloadable materials for the website. I contemplated taking the basic downloads off for chapters 1 and 2 and using the space for chapters 9 and 10. As it turns out, the problem was not the number of files I had, just the size of the files. I downloaded the WP-Filebase download manager plugin to upload the files. The files were too large for the plugin as well. Then I just compressed the files using smallpdf.com, a new-found website, and the files uploaded beautifully. 

I met with Monica, my capstone advisor, and she gave me a lot of great advice. I have been so focused on the "how to do's" that I have not taken those few steps back to look at the website and think, "now, how can this be better." After meeting with Monica I was able to look at the website a little differently. I am really looking forward to applying the suggestions she had such as adding an audible pronunciation option to each of the English words. Although I do not foresee the implication of all of these ideas immediately put into action I think that within a few weeks the website will be on an entirely new level. 

There are also a few details such as adding social media links to the website that I would like to do as well. They will not be difficult its just a matter of time and priorities within the project as a whole.

Joyfully sloshing through it! 

In other news, I downloaded the Illustrator 30-day trial to build images for the video. This is not quite in full throttle but I have allotted time specifically to editing these images and finishing the video before Monday.

As far as the book is concerned, I have compared several different self-publishing companies such as Outskirts and Shopmybook.com. Outskirts seemed ideal at first and then I realized that they were way out of my budget so I think I am going to go with Shopmybook.com

All in all, I am pleased with the direction of the project. There is still a lot of work left to be done and even more left to be learned but I am enjoying this project more and more.  

Photo

Like Swiss on Water- talking about kayaking with a Swiss voice

Kayaking on the river :

Some people kayak for freedom and some people kayak to be social. My name is Alfred Gunther and I kayak for life. I am the engine of my success. There are times I fight against the brute of the current and other times I embrace the ride like an eagle on high.

Eastern European Dance

Saturday, October 5th I had the wonderful pleasure of watching the Duquesne University Tamburitzans. The Tamburitzans (Tammies) are a group of Duquesne University students who perform Eastern European songs and dances all over the United States. This past weekend they performed their season kick-off at the Capitol Theater in Chambersburg, PA.

The high energy performance included songs and dances from Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Ukraine, Macedonia, Slovakia and Russia.There was an anecdote before every song explaining the cultural relevance to each of the instruments being played, the dances being performed, or the style of music being showcased.

I thought that the Potter's Dance, which was a Slovakian piece, was interesting. The female dancers were tossed like clay and formed into a pot by the male dancers who acted as the potters. The clear narrative made the piece an especially memorable act. I also really enjoyed Shopska Petorka I Dimo Oro, the Macedonian Men's dance, and the final Slovakian Gypsy Dances. The dances were fun and incorporated a great variety of movement.

Another highly notable aspect of the performance were the costumes. Each costume had its own intricate design that reflected unique cultural differences. From head coverings, to embroidered aprons, to rubber boats, the costumes complemented the high-standard brilliance of the rest of the show.

Believe it or not, most of the students in the Tammies are not music or dance majors. They are a talented group with a variety of interest who commonly enjoy music and dance.

This was the second opportunity I have had to watch the Tammies. One of my closest friends from high school, Rachel, is a performer in the group and this is her last year. Although the show varies from year to year I was extremely impressed by the performance on both occasions. I highly recommend going to see this famous group perform. It is an unforgettable experience!

*The videos are not from the October 5th performance.

1930-1940's Games

The 1930's looks like it started a board game boom. Monopoly, Sorry and Scrabble all became popular during this decade. The new gaming tradition did not end in the 1940's either. Other board game such as Parcheesi became well known too.

Although money has always been an American hot topic, it was an extremely sensitive subject in the 1930's. It makes sense that Monopoly did so well. The game is unquestionably a byproduct of its time. There is no doubt that Monopoly was created to complement what was on societies mind. It could be argued, however, that it was created to encourage positive, fanciful thoughts about money to take people's minds off of the harsh realities they were living. Nonetheless, correlation between money, Monopoly and the 1930's is quite apparent.

The View Master 3-D toy was also very popular in the 1930's. This toy is particularly interesting because it was used to aid soldiers for training in WWII. Coincidence? No way. The View Master 3-D was probably created first as a training tool and then someone realized how much children would enjoy them. In the 1940's WWII models planes and vehicles also became popular. Understandably, the war made a great impact on the toys made in the 1930's and 40's.

Other popular toys in the 1940's were toys such as the portable electronic phonograph, piano sets and the xylophone. In addition to the invention of the phonograph, the birth of musical toys makes sense during the 1940's. Jazz and other music genres were increasingly popular.

As predicted, games and toys seem to reflect the essence of real-life more directly as time passes. In one way or another every single game from these two decades relates to an adult activity whether it is going to war or out to a Saturday night Jazz show.

Monopoly Photo
Airplane Photo
Xylophone Photo 

Sprinting in Mud

I am frustrated with the amount of work I have to show at this point in my capstone project. I started the website, I have a complete storyboard for the video, and I have decided to self-publish the book, but I really wanted to be father along by this point.

Shepherd University students have free website space on the Shepherd domain. Generally, I would be delighted to go with the free option but this time I wanted to step outside of the familiar territory. If a year from now an employer says, “I need my business online,” but I do not understand how to get their website running, it would not matter how brilliant the draft appeared, I would not have met their needs.

I researched the best website builders for hours. I compared prices, packages, accessibility, reliability, their benefits, and I read at least 30 reviews. Through all the reading I kept coming back to the same 4 websites: Wix, Web.com, GoDaddy, and iPage. After a while, it seemed as though no matter what website I encountered there was always some horror story. Financially, Wix seemed the best. I had heard of GoDaddy before and Web.com seemed like it offered the most. I started to create a website with Web.com then I realized that I could not afford it and I went with iPage instead. In the end iPage seemed like it had the best balance of everything that I was most interested in for this project.

I created and bought a domain for my capstone project: corkboardcurriculum.com. I was incredibly pleased that the domain was available. After the domain was created, iPage gives users the option of working with Weebly, Wordpress, or a more difficult program. I decided to go with Wordpress and downloaded it immediately. After I downloaded Wordpress I could not edit the website so I uninstalled it and reinstalled it. I was still unable to edit the website so I watched a few tutorials to see what I should be expecting to see. I did exactly as the tutorials showed and it still did not work. The aggravated part of me was yelling, “Why isn’t this working!?” and the optimistic part of me was saying, “You are uncomfortable- this is wonderful, it means you are learning.” I took five and called iPage user support to ask what in the world I was doing wrong. As it turns out, the domain and the website just had not made a connection, and the website was temporarily uneditable.

Needless to say, I have been learning tremendously even from the smallest aspects of this project. Finally, I was able to get into Wordpress, which is also completely new to me, and start the website.

Initially, I proposed to learn in Webpages, but I am just as satisfied learning Wordpress. Wordpress is not particularly difficult. The little things such as stopping to learn how to make a drop-down menu have been time consuming, yet rewarding. The general structure of the website is finished; now, it just needs all the content.

Like previously stated, the storyboard is complete and the video will be started this week. Before I start editing I would like to have the storyboard looked-over but I am feeling confident with it’s progress.

As far as the book-publishing goes, I pulled the reigns a little. I am not sure if I stopped pursuing this aspect as persistently because I know that it is in my hands and not in the hands of a third-party or if I have poorly prioritized. Nonetheless, I need to find out what my next step is here and do it.

All in all I am learning. I do not feel threatened by time just yet, but I do feel like getting this project to this point has been like getting a steam locomotive from stop to rolling on the right tracks. Fortunately, she’s a comin’ along!  

Mud Photo

Train Photo

1900-1920's Games

I think we've hit a research jackpot!

In the very first Game Design blog I had expressed a hoped to "See a correlation between America's political, economic and social state in relationship to it's game preference" overtime. I wanted to see if Monopoly, for example, was marketed in a time when house marketing, personal finance and investment become exceedingly popular. I also wanted to see if the game was created to influence it's decade or if the game was a byproduct of its time.

Then, as expressed in a later blog, I thought it would also be interesting to track a correlation between games that captured the essence of an experience with those of original experience.

The early 20th century decades were brilliant years for this research:

Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs and Erector Sets all became popular during this time. They were created as an attempt, "To mold children's minds early in the hopes of becoming engineers". They captured the essence of a real-life experience in order to influence.

For the first time in game/toy history there is an obvious correlation between games and toys, and America's social state.

The Teddy Bear also became popular during the early 20th Century. Unlike the products made to influence their time the Teddy Bear was a byproduct of its time. The bears were based off of a political cartoon illustrating Roosevelt's hunting trip to Mississippi earlier that year.

Although there were songs such as "Ring Around the Rosey" that capture a moment in history, according to the research gathered, the Teddy Bear was the very first toy to showcase an event in time.

Raggedy Ann and Kewpie dolls were also popular in the 1920's. Raggedy Ann was especially popular because she was said to be a symbol of simpler times. Although the doll reflected the past, she brought comfort to the world around her. Raggedy Ann was originally a story character who displayed trustworthiness, kindness and spunk. It seemed to make sense to market the character's values especially as America entered into the Depression. She was a byproduct of the desired values throughout the early 20th century.

Finally, the 1927 invention of polystyrene made toy cars and model sets far easier to produce. Their new popularity was a byproduct of an invention, however, they quite possibly could have been marketed to encourage young engineers, mechanics or car sales.

In addition the new toys, there were many new games such as hide-and-go-seek and ping-pong. Unlike many of the new toys, the games seemed to have been created as an original means of having fun.

The 20th century was full of new innovations. The research was richer than any other time previously studied. There was evidence new correlations and far more information to compare.

Reference 1
Reference 2
Raggedy Ann Photo
Lincoln Logs Photo
Reference 3

iPod. eHarmony. H.H.Greg. E-moderating... ¿E-moderating?

An E-moderator moderates online communication between students and teachers.  As explained in E-moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online a learners experience is central to knowledge construction.

E-moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online is different from A Practical Guide to Developing Effective Web-based Learning because is focuses more on the interaction between students and teachers.

Although the educational website toward capstone is not being created as an online course, understanding the importance of communication in the learning process is helping to mold the website in a whole new way. Initially, I was going to design the website based primarily on the principles I learned in A Practical Guide to Developing Effective Web-based Learning. Although I will probably present information in the same ways that were suggested in A Practical Guide to Developing Effective Web-based Learning. I would like to adopt the importance of communication into my thinking and create a portal for website viewers to contact me. I do not think that e-moderating is the most appropriate choice for this website, however, I would like to be able to hear from website viewers and answer questions for them whether they are students or teachers.

This resource did not seem like an influential book for this capstone project at first, then I realized that it had far more to offer than I thought.

Book Photo

1600's Games

Researching games from the 1600's in the United States is difficult because the Declaration of Independence was not signed until the late 1700's. Consequently, 17th Century Native American and European toys and games will be discussed instead.

One popular Native American Indian game was the bowl and dice game. The bowl and dice game has three separate phases. The object of the game is to win more sticks than any other player. Arguably, this could be considered a game that catches the essence of gathering materials for survival. However, its primary purpose seems more like an original means of having fun.

In the UK, children played with dolls and they played skittles. Children did not have nearly as many luxuries as kids do today. The majority of children in the 1700's had to rely on their own imaginations and didn't have toys.

As it was stated in the 1700's Games blog, dolls do capture an essence of real-life experience, but skittles does not.

The fact that children were being creative and thinking of ways to have fun seems original. However, it is hard to distinguish imaginative games as an essence of life experience or not. The children could have been playing house or pretending to play school, but they also could been creating games such as "freeze-tag"as well.

The 17th Century is certainly different from the 18th and 19th century. It will be interesting to see how it also differs from the 20th century and see whether or not it is an outlier in the experience and time correlation or not.

Painting 1
Painting 2