The Game...the end of yet another era.

WE'VE FINALLY FINISHED OUR GAME!

If you don't believe me check it out here:


FIX IT WITH FOOD
http://www.myhlife.org/usa/la/rethinkwiki/index.php?title=Fix_it_with_Food


(Although there are still a few little kinks, it's come out exactly like we wanted it to. We tried adding sound but after almost a month of game making we gave up...pretty quickly.)

After finishing the game, I went on to try and write a draft of the August newsletter talking about all of the cool new stuff that happened in July. First and formost, I wrote about the topic most familiar to me--the games! I wrote about not only our intern game, but also about the Rethinkers' game and the students and educators from MySLife.org. I also wrote about Idit's, the organization founder, NECC presentation in Texas. She spoke about the vast changes happening between web 1.0 where content is king and eb 2.o where contact is king. She also spoke about Globloria, her latest invention in 1:1 computing. Finally, I wrote about the first West Virginia Educators Workshop. All of the participating educators across West Virginia to learn skills in Flash--skills they would be using during the school year while teaching with Globaloria. Toward the end of the workshop, the educators teamed up into four groups, brainstormed, and began to use Flash to make games!

Lastly, I just finished coding the American University wiki in Excel--a tedious job. There seemed to be a steady pattern there where the gamers were all quite active on the wiki. They all had game assets, most of them were commenting on fellow classmates' wikis, etc.

And Then There Was One

Leticia, the other remaining intern, finishes her internship here at Globaloria today. Tomorrow I will be the last remaining intern...

FLASH

Now that were quite into the game making process I find it appropriate to tell you about it.

We've used Flash to draw up our game and "make it work". We have levels and rules and everything although we're not quite done yet.

All of the little bits and pieces of our game are up our team wiki:

Fix it with Food!

We've also been helping out the kids in New Orleans who seem to be having fun in the process too.

When we're done I'll post it up here for you to play....

So.

We've begun the Rethink curriculum for making our own games and after all of the work I've realized one thing--Flash is awesome. It's hard to learn and master (not that I have at ALL) but when you play around a little and click test movie you get something really cool in return. You get your own little animated movie!


I've also been reading and keeping up with Amu and the Rethink campers' wiki. I've been reading Amu's diary and it sounds like they're making a lot of progress but having a lot of fun too. I can't wait to see the results!

Powerpoint Presentation, the end of an era.

For the last few days I've been working on both a video and a PowerPoint: my retinas burn.

The video, edited in iMovie, was of film we had taken in New Orleans. All in all, it documents what we did while we visited the Rethink camp. The last part, which is still in progress, is uploading the video to YouTube (arghhh).

Making the powerpoint involved making graphics, Photoshopping a BUNCH of things, and, overall, organizing the slides. It was fun and time consuming but in the end, we have a pretty cool slideshow.

THE END.

Our Third and Last Day in New Orleans 6/18/08

Today when we returned to the Rethink Camp, we helped the campers personalize each of their profiles. We tried teaching them basic HTML—embedding images, changing font colors and faces, changing background colors, and even embedding Word documents into their profiles. It was quite gratifying to see that after a while, some of the kids who did not know the day before what Wikis were, were Googling images and embedding them in their profiles. It was also great to see many of the campers’ faces light up as they saw the pictures they had embedded themselves show up on their pages. All of this, of course, came after we uploaded all of the stills we had taken the two days prior and that same day to the myhlife.org file gallery. We also uploaded the footage we had taken for the past two days and that same day to edit in iMovie. After some editing of both the footage and the Wikis—including tweaking on some of the existing profiles and starting few profiles for some of the Rethink staff—we were able to both sit in on one of the camp activities. The kids were asked to create one to two minute commercials that would advertise their ideas for Rethink. One group advertised the new levels of security they hoped Rethink would bring, the other for healthier foods in the cafeterias, and the last for the new innovative cafeterias Rethink would hopefully bring—the last group even made up their very own catchy jingle. Like the day before, the group was asked to summarize in one word what they felt about the day and the future. There was a definite feeling of positivity, hopefulness, and cooperation circulating throughout the room and the campers and it was made obvious through the words chosen to be said.

It was also great to see one of the younger Rethinkers, Ronaldo, mimicking Noa and I. I caught him starting to document the Rethink experience on his own—he sat in the peanut gallery recording some of the commercials on his digital camera!

After saying goodbye to the school and the Rethink camp, we toured some of the more devastated parts of New Orleans affected by hurricane Katrina. It seemed impossible that after three years, some parts were still completely uninhabitable and ruined and even more impossible that we had spent time with kids just a few hours earlier who lived in places like these. To see the shattered homes, high water line markings, and sometimes only remaining foundations and floors or sometimes only front porches with no proprietary house was shocking. Our tour guide/cab driver explained to us how the vast difference between the houses torn to shreds, formerly inhabited by families now living in FEMA trailers, and the completely renewed houses built to better withstand any future hurricanes was because of the fact that some families had insurance for their houses, protecting them against these kinds of troubles, while others, those living in the trailers next to their former houses, didn’t. But there was also a dissonant feeling of optimism as we passed by the vast amount of construction projects on most every street.

And with that, we concluded our three day visit to New Orleans.

Second Day in New Orleans 6/17/08

Phrase of the day: Mystery Meat

Today, we returned to the school to revisit the ReThink campers, however instead of tuning into what they were doing we actually immersed them in the Globaloria program. The campers were introduced to their laptops and asked to create an HLife Wiki profile and for those who didn’t have email, email accounts. The vast variation in technological ability among the kids was apparent as some found it hard to type while others, especially some of the younger ones stayed on top of everything keeping up with Idit as she orchestrated the group on a laptop connected to a projector. The campers also wrote a little about themselves (age, name, grade, neighborhood, and any ideas they may have had). They were also led around the myhlife.org website and shown a few of the flash games and explained to why these games were not only fun and creative but also showed a sense of understanding of health—one game instructed that you would win points as you caught healthy foods such as apples while if you caught unhealthy foods in your basket you’d lose points. As the day continued, the kids then went on to participate in ReThink activities. One particularly interesting skit involved the campers role playing in different scenes that might take place in a New Orleans public school. The different scenes were a fight breaking out between 2 boys as one makes fun of the others clothes, the hardships students might go through in getting their lunches, and finally the trouble of looking for funding for any project a student might want to launch in school. After these skits were acted out, the campers were then asked to reenact them but now the audience filled with remaining kids was asked to yell freeze every time they thought the skit had reached a point where the situation would be different had the people in question—teachers, principals, students, lunch ladies—gone through the ReThink program. Suddenly, each was a very different story and the kids recognized this. The lunch ladies provided healthier and more appetizing choices, security guards weren’t as mean, and more help was provided to the students. After this activity, the campers were asked by the advisors what the word “hope” and “rethink” meant to them in terms of both their schools and their community—New Orleans. Answers were generally along the lines of rebuilding and pushing the schools and community toward a healthier, better, more tight-knit lifestyle. Throughout the entire thing, Noa and I both documented and helped the kids who needed more help than the others.

At the end of the day, the kids looked excited for their future in game making.

Our First Day in New Orleans

Today we--Idit, Amu, Noa, and I--landed in New Orleans and arrived at the public school where the pilot is taking place at about 1 in the afternoon (New Orleans time).

We were introduced to the kids that would be participating in the Rethink camp and they spoke about which games they each played independently, whether they be RPG games, role playing games, or physical games, like Wii. We introduced ourselves to the campers as the WWW and Idit explained what it was that they would be doing with the program. It seemed pretty evident that the kids understood what they were at the camp for--digital literacy would be promoted by their own independent or grouped creations of games. They learned specifically that their games would probably revolve around the idea of the remodeling of their school cafeterias--vocalizations of the kids' ideas were encouraged. The campers then joined up in groups and told stories of their own cafeteria experiences. The groups rounded up and shared ideas and stories as a whole and as a final activity for the campers, the children and the ReThink interns were asked by Amu to explain their feelings for the program in one word or phrase. On the side, we interviewed a few of the girls, some campers and one intern, about what they went through after Hurricane Katrina or what they thought of the program. We also interviewed the organizer of the camp, Jane, about her thoughts.

All throughout, Noa and I documented everything on a camcorder and digital camera.

It was interesting to see how raising all of these questions with such young children fostered such powerful ideas. As a group, school safety and health was discussed deeply. ReThink integrating with Globaloria so far has seemed to impress these children. The campers were excited to express their activism and ideas through gaming.

Overall, WWW was received warmly here in New Orleans.

I've realized that safety and the dissatisfaction with school meals down here in New Orleans is much more of a problem than up in New York. I will never look at the Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School's--my school's--cafeteria in the same way.