LAST DAY!

Well today was my last day as a WWWF intern! It's been a lot of fun, and I've learned a lot. I spent today making sure all of my game files were uploaded to the wiki so that the other interns could use them as they continue to develop the game. I'm definitely going to miss working on the game, and I will continue to follow the game's progress from home. The projects page is completely done! All that remains is to add all the new screens and tutorials and flash projects! - but every link is on their, every screen we have up until today is on that page. It's pretty huge hehe. 

It's been great working here, and I hope to do more work in the future!

Best to everyone, and thanks WWWF for the awesome opportunity!

~ Rebecca

HLife Projects Page

The past two days have spent designing, organizing and editing our projects page - Fix It With Food - on my HLife. We have made SO many changes it's probably best to just list a few of them:

- added research section, comments sections, links to games, links to tutorials

- uploaded all .fla's relating to our project along with the .swf's

- created a comic-like layout of our game on the wiki page

- created a gallery of food images

- added better descriptions of game files

- added analysis of title page game files - as well as old version of title page

- added version 2.0 game proposal

- added character development sections - 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0

Yesterday, Leslie, Leticia and I talked to Idit about creating an "ideal" projects page - one that can be used as an example of how designing a game is supposed to look like. Hopefully after yesterday and today's intense work, and some extra work tomorrow, we can achieve this!

Oh and tomorrow is my last day as an intern - or at least coming into the office :(. But I refuse to leave my game, and I'm sure I'll be working on it from afar!

Game Buttons and Animations

Today I watched the button tutorial and was able to add buttons to the screens I completed yesterday. Our game is finally starting to resemble a game and not just flashing pictures! It was sort of difficult at first, but now that I've created an action layer, a lot of the other animations will be easier. I spent a lot of time exploring the various tutorials on the HLife website, and watched a lot of the animation tutorials. Leslie and I also spent time finishing our paper prototype, which we then outlined in sharpie and presented in a video, which we uploaded at the end of the day. We're really focusing in on following the HLife curriculum, trying to follow their class diligently and working towards completing their class to the best of our abilities. 

Game Title Design

Today I created a game title using my new knowledge of motion guides and buttons, that I gained from watching various tutorials on flash, from the HLife wiki. It took me awhile to grasp the concept of motion guides and to use it accurately, but towards the end, I was able to use them in my title screen pretty easily. Buttons I'll have to continue working on tomorrow, although I've already begun the process today. Yesterday I only worked for 3 hours, but I was able to organize all the game screens into one giant project. Today, Jeff showed me some tricks on how to minimize the size of that project so it could be uploaded - for example, I learned how to make symbols and how to use the library. He also taught me how to create both movie symbols and graphic symbols and use them to save memory. 

Today I also got to speak to some of the Rethinkers! We had a sort of vidchat with them and they were able to ask us questions and we all viewed each others pages. I really enjoy having that connection with them, and its a lot of fun following their classwork here in New York. It's nice to hear the sounds of a classroom too, since we are doing their lessons as well!

Organizing Game Screens and Questions

Today, I started off with a few hours of nutritional research, writing down questions and answers with detailed descriptions for answer screens of our games. I've learned a lot about nutrition and I really think that after today, I could see myself having a career in nutrition and health. It was absolutely fascinating how different vitamins and minerals and other molecules could work together to not only cure many common problems but also support general health and well-being. I think the students who play our game will learn a lot from it, and even though the questions are hard, I hope the engaging game screens and actions will keep them interested. The second part of my day, I started taking all the screens and work that Emily, Leslie and I had worked on and putting them into one project. Each section starts off with Leslie's introduction pictures, followed by one of my questions, followed by either one of mine or Emily's game screens, followed by one of my answers. Leticia was a HUGE help later on in the day, when she showed us how to use motion tweens, and I started adding some of that into the final layout. I'm still not completely done with organizing the screens, but by tomorrow, I definitely will be and then I can start using the tutorials on HLife to learn about animation and action buttons. 

Game Screens for MyHLife Game

Today I spent 7 hours reworking the game screens and general idea with Leslie and Emily, joined by Leticia later. We decided that the game should be more of a scavenger hunt game: you will be asked a question at the beginning of each level - for example "What do you eat before working out in the gym to prevent cramps and gain energy?" Then you will be transported to that level - in this case, a level with a gym theme, and you will have to avoid bad foods to choose your answer amongst three healthy choices clearly visible on screen. If you come in contact with a bad food, you lose and must start over. If you come in contact with a healthy food that is not the right answer, you gain a health point, but do not beat the level. These health points can be cashed in for a special treat, such as a cookie or a scoop of ice cream at the end of the game. In the case of the gym, the screen will have apples, oranges and bananas (which are the right answer to the question), for example. So today I created the gym screen, as well as a kitchen and a school classroom screen. I also designed the figure that will be moving throughout the game. Tomorrow, I hope to watch some videos on animation and start making the interactive part of the game!

Keynote Speech, Flash Programming, Projects Pages Updates

It's been very busy these last two days! Yesterday was Idit's NECC presentation, which we got to watch here at the office via GLife. It was amazing to see slides that I and the other interns had put together displayed to thousands across the auditorium and the online community! A little nerve-wracking too. Yesterday, I developed a flash introduction to my game - but I only used one layer. I also spent a lot of time updating my projects page and creating a new one on MyHLife. Today was also flash oriented - I watched and reviewed Daniel's tutorials on Flash to see if I could follow them and then set out to create scenes for my game. I only managed to do three scenes, as I was working with multiple layers, something I had never done before. Working with multiple layers is a whole lot harder than working with just one! And it became even more complicated when I started adding new scenes. It took me awhile to get the hang of it, as programming is not my forte, but I really enjoy challenging myself to create better images. Hopefully next week I'll be able to step up the quality of the scenes I began today, and Leslie (who did some beautiful work! you should go check out her projects page!) and I talked a lot about the direction of our game. As we begin to learn our boundaries as programmers, our approach to the game shifts and often narrows. It is interesting to see how we adapt our game to our strong points (Leslie's graphic design and my animation) and how we change the focus of the game to highlight this.

KMS Wiki Analysis, Flash Design, MyHLife Games

I didn't get to post yesterday so today is a double posting! Yesterday I played 5 games on MyHLife and reviewed two, posting the reviews to my projects page, pretty much in sync with the Rethinkers' curriculum in New Orleans. I also started the excel analysis of the KMS wiki, which i finished this morning. It took me longer than my last analysis because each student had two projects pages (there were divided into small groups to collaborate on games). Today, I downloaded and began experimenting with Flash design, creating three projects (but one hasn't really been completed yet). I also brainstormed with Leslie, and later Aixsha and Leticia on ideas for health games - and we came up with a pretty coherent idea. Tomorrow, Leslie and I will probably start trying to do a proposal in flash, if we can figure it out! It's more complicated than we thought, and we spent a good deal of time playing around with it today. 

End of the Week

Today, I was pretty much wrapping up everything I had been working on this week. I may have finished the bulk of the NECC presentation yesterday, but today I made some last minute edits with Idit. I also reformatted the slides that Leticia and Aixsha had been working on, cleaning up the text and making hyperlinks, as well as continuing to make slides for their presentation. I also reviewed my WCTC game analysis with Jadry and Rim, going through the discrepancies and coming to a resolution. I also emailed with one of the WCTC students, gathering information about his game and becoming good cyber buddies with him. Shannon, Leslie and I also discussed our future plans for MyHlife - Leslie and I are going to go through the course with the Rethinkers in New Orleans, learning to program our own game and coming up with ideas. We hit a snare when we realized that flash was not available to download, but hopefully we will work that out in the next few days. My last hour, I sat with Leticia and Aixsha and worked over the slides with them.

Finished! The end of an Era!

We finished the NECC presentation!!!!!!! A very, very long day but after countless edits, animations, revisions, decisions, reviews, and mini presentations we have completed Idit's presentation and were able to present it to her in it's entirety so that she can start practicing her talk while using it. The presentation includes the best animation I've ever done with a powerpoint, and I learned how to make hyperlinks, which will be very useful in presentations in the future. Emily, Jadry, Leslie and I work very well together, and are a very efficient team - which is good, since I'm sure we'll be working on many more projects this summer together. 

NECC Presentation

I spent my entire day today on Idit's presentation for NECC next week. With the help of Jadry, Emily and now Leslie, we were able to complete the outline (which is currently taped up on the wall on six giant post-it-note-papers) for the presentation as well as collected all the images we would be needed. The first part of the day was focused on design and layout - specifically animation and color scheme. In the mid-afternoon we presented what we had so far to Idit, who had some suggestions and corrections regarding images and content. We then spent the rest of the day adding her corrections and laying out the game plan for tomorrow. Our deadline is Friday at the latest, but we hope to complete it by the end of the day tomorrow. 

WCTC Game Analysis and NECC Presentation

Today was also a very busy day! I spent more than four hours reviewing 4 different games from the WCTC wiki - "Truth and Consequences: Mario 1.v Edition," "Adventure West Virginia," "Brokeville," and a planet narrative game. I played each game many times over, making sure to take all the different paths I could and see all the possible outcomes and screens. After reviewing each game, I used the same code that I learned yesterday to code the games in excel, sending all four analysis to Rebecca. I also contacted the boys whose game I played yesterday (but could not beat!) in hopes that they will be able to answer some questions crucial to our research and provide us with screenshots of game screens we were not able to get to. 

I also started working on a new project today! - Idit's powerpoint presentation for the NECC conference in Houston next Wednesday. Jadry, Emily and I sat down to discuss her outline (an impressive 13 pages) for the presentation, and then, taking a cue from the students' whose work we have been reviewing, we set out to make a paper prototype of the presentation. My main job today was to design the slide background, and with input from Jadry and Emily, I was able to create an original design for Idit's presentation. We will continue to work on this presentation all day tomorrow, and I will be the one to compile all of the images and text that Jadry and Emily are working on into my computer. 

Zeitgest Game Review

A very busy day today! For the first 2 hours, I edited intern bios as well as downloaded the software used to manipulate the photos. I collected, cropped and resized the images, and prepared them to be launched on the website. 

For the larger part of my day I spent playing Zeitgeist and learning how to code it. First, I was given an almost hour long tutorial on how to code a game using excel, similar to the wiki analysis I did last week. Of course, in order to properly complete the analysis, I had to navigate my way through the game, making sure I saw all screens possible and played out all possible scenarios. The game proved to be pretty difficult - made more so by the fact that if you failed or died, you had to go back to the first level, as opposed to the level you were actually on. It was very frustrating! I actually ran out of time before I could beat the game, so I ended up coding the game to the best of my ability in the excel spreadsheet. Emily, Jadry and Rim were also playing and coding, and at the end of the day, we all sat down with Rebecca to compare our answers and to discuss discrepancies in our answers and to come up with new categories and coding questions as needed. I helped Rebecca determine the need for at least three new coding categories, helping to facilitate the gaming research process. 

Intern Bios

Today I worked on writing intern bios for all the interns - a slow process when I don't know interns. I did have a lot of fun googling people and seeing what kind of information I could come up with. I also spent some time setting up an MSN messenger account to help connect with other interns and Shannon better. Towards the end of the day, I began working with Jadry and Leslie to gather screen shots of students' games to be posted on the website. 

FCH Wiki Analysis and Research

Today I was able to finish the FCH wiki analysis that I began yesterday - it came to 4-typed pages, but looked shorter when I formatted it to fit on my projects page. As I continued my analysis, I began to see that FCH was a very unique Globaloria participant: there were much fewer students and they did not utilize their wiki nearly as much as many of the other schools. Today's analysis was mainly focused on their blog, and how there was a feeling of community and support found in the blog, and that was not found on the wiki. I also started working on Rebecca's wiki research project, spending about 40 minutes learning the different code that is used to determine how the wiki was used by the students and how active they were with it. We discovered during our phone conversation that many students were uploading .SWF files or .FLA files but were not putting them on their profile or projects page - leading us to create a new column in the excel spreadsheet and a new code to determine how many documents were uploaded by the students. Originally, we only looked at the files we found on their pages, but particularly in the FCH students, who were more disorganized than other participants, we found that the students were more likely to upload and NOT post, than to do both. 

As a side note, I spent a few minutes today creating a profile on takingitglobal.com. We had talked about this website at our internship orientation, and I was eager to spread my internet horizons and learn more about how community is established via the internet. 

FCH Wiki Analysis

The first three hours of my day were spent exploring FCH's wiki, blogs and games. At first I had a difficult time navigating through the different pages, but I took copious notes while I tried their game, read their comments and blog posts, and surfed the different pages their wiki had to offer. What was interesting about the Globaloria Program at FCH was that all of the students (all female) collaborated together to make one game. I thought this unique collaborative process was inspiring - but what was even more inspiring was what I discovered about the students themselves. After looking through their blogger profiles, I discovered that one of the 17 year old students was a mother, which led me to believe that I was looking at the work of the group of underprivileged female students I had heard about on my first day. Playing their game I discovered that they learned much more than just balancing a budget - they learned to cooperate courteously with one another to create something; learned to be respectful of others ideas and thoughts through the blog and blog comments. It was very cool to see the work of the WWWF making a fundamental difference in a community. 

The second part of the day I began to write my formal analysis of the FCH blog, which despite its inspirational appeal, still suffers from technical difficulties. I also spent a good deal of time creating and formatting my projects page, where I hope to post the complete final analysis tomorrow!

First Day!

Hello! I'm very excited to be working with the World Wide Workshop Foundation this summer! Well, today I spent a good deal of time working on my profile page, where I played around with wiki formatting - and I found a way to get rid of those annoying boxes that sometimes show up on your profile. The dotted boxes are the result of preprogrammed wiki formatting, and are triggered when you hit the space bar before you type something. In order to avoid the boxes, and thus maintain the artistic flow of your profile page, you can add ": " before your text. 

For example, if I wanted to indent the sentence "I have two cats" I would type this code into the edit box:

: I have two cats

which appears as

I have two cats

For larger indentations, add extra ":", leaving a space only after the last one

::::: I have two cats

which appears as

I have two cats

This way, you can create intricate and unique patterns with your text (like I did on my profile page!) without disturbing the rest of your profile. 

The latter part of the day was focused on developing a Facebook group for Globaloria. Jadry and I worked side by side to create a coherent and inviting group so that Globaloria users with Facebook can connect to one another through Facebook, and not just with their own wikis. We spent a lot of time researching the different networks, writing descriptions for each network as well as gathering information to be used in the group description. We also spent a lot of time searching for images and videos, as well as struggling with Facebook applications, as we hoped we could find one that would allow us to upload games directly to our profile pages, and thus give Globaloria participants a chance to share their games via their Facebook pages. We were not successful in finding a working flash program today, but will continue to try in the coming days. We also collaborated on the design of the group - deciding to include general descriptions of the three main networks - MyGlife, MySlife, and MyHlife - under group description as well as creating discussion threads for each of them, allowing all members of the group to participate in discussions and view information on the different networks, even if they do not belong to that particular network. The group is a work in a progress, but already looks good!