Reading 2: Planning Your Approach

In order to plan my approach for writing my section of the book this semester I first had to pick the two topics that I would be writing about from the list of topics. The topics I chose were Other forms of expression and Game modifications in the chapter Type of Play.

Based on these topics and the purpose of the paper I then had to create my research question so that I  could begin my research. My questions had to narrow down my field of search and give my research a direction.

The questions I came up with are:
-How and why do player communities modify games?

-How do players express themselves using games and other mediums?

Per the video on crating a search strategy, to help myself with researching the questions I went through and found the key words in each question and proceeded to find the synonyms for these words in order to find different resources in my search.

Picture of Synonyms

After coming up with questions to search I had to create a place for me to keep all the resources I might find while researching so that I don't lose them. I do this using the matrix method shown to us which organises all my research into for neat folders. Like so.

Screenshot of Matrix Method folders

Trying Out Time Strategies

Image of woman from Wikimedia Commons

Time management has never been something I was very good at because I find it very hard to stick to a schedule. However for this class all our tasks for the year are already laid out for us and I feel that knowing whats coming up will be very helpful for me to keep up with my schedule because I know how much time I will roughly have to spend on this class each week. It will also allows me work ahead when I have extra time so that I will have extra time on other days should I need it for other projects.

Luckily I am not the only person who finds it hard to manage my time and so there is plenty of advice online such as the article The Important Habit of Just Starting by Jory Mackay which is all about the disconnect that many people have with being able to see their future and the fear of starting a project,  how just starting can be the biggest hurdle when it comes to any project. But once you find a commitment device that's right for you it can become a lot easier to start projects and therefore a lot easier to finish projects. For example Victor Hugo would lock his clothes in his closet so that he couldn't get dressed to go out and instead had to write.

I have always thought that starting a project even if you don't plan to finish it on that same day makes it easier to continue it another day as it has already been started. While this has worked for me for the most part I still struggled with starting things sometimes but seeing this article about that same idea and how a commitment device can help you with getting things started has given me the idea to find my own commitment device and hopefully use it to start my projects from now on.

However learning how to overcome your procrastination is only one part of the process of time management. You have to make sure that you don't run out of time to complete your projects, to do this you can create a weekly schedule and the article How to build a realistic study plan by Amanda Collins gives you many tips on how to create a schedule that you'll stick to. Amanda suggest that you should first pencil in all the things that you do on a regular day and then find the free hours in-between those things. Then, being realistic about how long different assignments will take you, you fill in the free hours you have with the assignments you have for that week. Most people would tell you to create your schedule the opposite way, starting with when you plan to study. I think that the way that Amanda describes is a lot more realistic.

While these time management strategies are good ones, they unfortunately won't work for everyone and it is up to each individual person to figure out the strategies that work for them.

Teaching Technology Tools

Image of head with technology form Pixabay

To be able to complete the tasks each week I will of course have to learn the tools required for each task. The first one being the blog that you are currently reading this on and after roughly six posts and many more to come I think I can say that I've got that tool down. This is quite like my first year in college when we would have to write up reviews for our final projects.

Bookmarking is another important tool for my tasks as there will be many important pages that could help me later and bookmarking them makes sure that I don't loose them in all the other pages on the internet. I am already familiar with bookmarking as I have used it in previous projects.

As images are also big part of my assignments I will have to learn how to use image editing software and even sometimes software to create my own graphics such as Canvas or Automotivater. I have edited images before but I have never created my own graphics before and I look forward to seeing what I can create.

Some websites I'll have to bookmark for this project are my class announcement blog and the class wikipedia as these sites are design to help us to learn how to use all the required tools which of course will come in very handy.

With practice and persistence I hopefully will be able to get the hang of all the tools I need and provide a high standard end product at the end of the semester.

Assessing Assignments

Image of Lets Do It sticky note from Pixabay

Each week I will have five relatively small assignments to complete. I will have a reading, practice tutorials in Unity3D, reading and writing blog posts on here, working on my semester long project which is making my own game and giving in depth feedback on those projects to the other people on my course.

If I miss any of these tasks on a certain week I have the opportunity to gain back the points from that task by doing the extra credit work from that week. This will help for when I have other big assignments and my have to priorities that for one week.

The assignment that I am most intrigued by is the Unity3D as I've never worked with a program like that and I think it will be interesting to see how to use it to make my very own game. I think that it may be similar to using dreamweaver to code for websites.

I'm looking forward to seeing what these assignments have in store for me.

What I Learned About Growth Mindset

Image displaying fixed and growth mindset from Flickr

Before I had to write up this post I had never heard of Carol Dweck before but now that I have heard her speak on the subject of Growth Mindset I wish I had heard of her sooner.

As someone who is stuck in what Carol would call a fixed mindset, when I am presented with a task that is slightly more challenging then I'm used to I can find it difficult to think about the challenge as a potential for growth during the process instead of a potential for failure at the end. This was something I struggled with especially during school when your entire life revolved around grades, a good grade, a passing grade and a failing grade.

I feel that if during my schooling I had learned about the growth mindset I would have found the transition from primary school, where I was top of my class in English as I loved to read books that had big words, to secondary where I felt I quickly got left behind by all the people who had the growth mindset. Especially when I discovered that I was a hands on learner.

The challenge of learning all these new things in all these new subjects felt daunting and instead of feeling I could learn from the challenge of figuring something out I was scared of not getting a good mark on work and would often think about cheating on my work in order to get good marks. This meant that I learned very little and fell even further behind.

I would like to learn more about Growth Mindset this year and I hope that I cam learn how to get myself out of my fixed mindset and into the growth mindset.

An Introduction About Me You Probably Don't Care About

Image reading Despicable Me from Wikipedia

So this is a story all about how my life went downhill and never stopped.

Talking about myself is not something that I'm very comfortable with but hey lets give it a try anyway. If you have no interest in what I have to say about myself then you can just skip this bit, I won't blame you.

Getting into college was something I didn't think would happen for me but not only did I get into college I made it to my second year, somehow. My college is quite the ways away from my house and I have to take two buses each morning and evening to attend it, but my course is one I really enjoy and the friends I have made keep me coming back again. As last year was my first year it took me a while to get my bearings and I felt that really reflected in my work, so this year I hope to get all my work done to the best standard I can manage. Self discipline has never been something I was good at but no time to learn like the present.

Other then doing college work I also read, draw a lot and of course like any young person I watch a fair amount of Netflix. The genre of books and tv shows/movies I enjoy tends to overlap a good bit as I love sci-fi and fantasy settings in my media. Its just fun to think about all the possibilities of worlds with super advanced technology or magic. The current book I'm reading is Gone by Micheal Grant and even though I'm only half way through it I would recommend it to anyone who also enjoys sci-fi/fantasy. As I said before I also like to draw and paint in my free time and even though I'm not the best at it, it helps me to relax after a stressful day and take my mind off things.

Occasionally I will play video games though there are only two that I really like to play, minecraft and the sims 4, if you have read my other blog posts you’ll know that minecraft is my favourite game but sims is a very close second. I generally don’t play many other games because I can’t afford them or I don’t have the time to invest in them.

Back when I was in secondary school I was never very good at English and while I did pass, it was was a struggle, writing essays was never and never will be my strong suit, so I apologise for the probably lacklustre reviews that I shall be posting here, hopefully with practice I will be able to improve.

There isn’t much more about me that I can talk about so if you read through all this I applaud you and I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Just thought I’d give you a little peek behind the curtain of who runs this blog.

Working Through Workshop 1

Image of a person thinking from Needpix.com

This week during Workshop 1 a task was presented to us.

The first part of this task, answering the questions, What worked well for you last year? and What would you like to change or improve on?, was something I was very familiar with, as feedback is often asked for, and was therefore easy to complete. Answering the questions was the first step, discussing them with the people around me was the next step and in doing this I discovered that many people had similar answers to me. I learned that many of the people around me had the same problems or improvements.

It was the second part of the task that I was not familiar with and was a lot harder to complete though I didn't think it would be so hard when I first read what it was about. After being shown and image of a 4 way junction with a set of lights on every corner and no turning lights or pedestrian buttons we were asked, in plain English, to explain how the junction worked, almost as if we were trying to explain it to say an alien who would have no idea how it worked at all. 

We were allowed to work in groups which I liked because as I stated before it turned out to be a lot harder to do then I originally thought and it was helpful to have other people to bounce ideas off of. However even in groups we learned that it is quite hard to explain information that we all take for granted that we know. Information that is relevant to the life we lead everyday.

Writing out a review for the task has helped me to look back at the task presented and reflect on what I had learned and how it made me feel.

A Review of my Favourite Game, Minecraft

Minecraft is a first person survival game who's design revolves entirely around cubes.

Image of a mountain in Minecraft from Moving at the Speed of Creativity

The game has all sorts of creatures in it, including animals like cats and wolves which can be tamed and also enemies such as zombies and skeletons who spawn at night and attempt to kill the player.

You start the game with no materials and you must find the materials needed to craft food and shelter in your environment. Some materials are readily available and some are harder to find, the availability of certain materials depends on how rare the item is that the player is trying to craft and certain items help you towards the end goal of the game. 

While Minecraft does have an end goal, which is to kill a creature called the ender dragon, the player can work towards, many people, including myself, play it because of the crafting aspect. The player can use any and all of the materials to create buildings and even images of people or characters.

Minecraft is my favourite game because of the fact that you can choose to work towards the end goal of the game or you can create your base and carry on crafting instead.