Tomoka's Blog

It was a week that we finalized our game. Last Tuesday, we got responses from students who played our game. The changes that they listed were that it was too easy to beat the game, game mode needs to be set adventure mode, and time in the game should be at night, so that the monsters would not die by themselves in day time. While Roger was changing the levels and setting of the game, Nikki and I worked on the lighting of the all arenas. Since we have to set the game at night, players will have poor visibility to play. In order to avoid it, we have to set multiple lights in the arenas. After setting all lights, we thought it would be nice to place a building at end of the game, so that players will know where the ending of the game is. Therefore, we build a small house, and inside of it, we put a sign that tells players that they beat the game.

This week our group separated the tasks we have to do. Nikki and I were concentrating on building all five arenas, and Roger made railroads that are connecting all arenas, so that players are able to go next arenas easily. He also made machines that monsters can spawn in those arenas.

Building arenas requires a repetition of same work. It might seem like it is easy to do, but it requires patience. Before starting to build arenas, I had to clear out all the mountains and hills, and it took almost one class period to do it. Sometimes I tried to use TNTs to destroy hills easier and quicker, but on rare occasion, I accidently blow off the ground too much and made a huge hole. Moreover, I often misplaced the blocks in wrong locations and had to start all over again. I made a lot of small mistakes, because I thought in class work time would be not enough to finish building them, so I tried to build them as quickly as possible. From this week, I have learned a lesson that it is not good idea to rush through all the work even if it is short of time. If I rushed, I would ended up getting more work due to small mistake that I have made. Although, I had frustration, we were able to finish making all of the arenas after the conference on Friday. The last thing we have to working on is the setting up a spawn point, which I really worried about. In past classes, I saw many people having trouble with them. I hope we can build it without any problem tomorrow.

This week, our group discussed and planned about rules and design of our game. At first, we could not think of any ideas of them, but after looking for examples of minecraft game on the internet, we finally choose to make a game that is taking place at several arenas. Because I am not that creative, it was difficult to come up with ideas and design the games, but Roger and Nikki came up with ideas that players have to compete with many monsters in those arenas. As they get to higher levels, the arenas get smaller, which makes difficult to players to defeat monsters.

On Thursday, we finally get to start working on our first arenas. But since I had to make an arena at top of the hills, I had to level the top of it to secure a place to build the arena. Even I just started working first arena and made a half of the wall, it is already fun to make an idea real. I cannot wait to finish building it. It is a little frustrating that I cannot work on it outside of class. Until now, I did not what to do with minecraft and was just playing around, but now we have goals to make arenas and make a game that everyone can enjoy playing, so it is much fun to play with minecraft.

In the case study of Charles Jackson, Charles was born in 1985 as a digital native. His mother was literate in reading, and his father was literate in computer. Since he was young, he had chance to learn how to read and use a computer at same time. He even started to type on the computer when he was five years old. Because he was so literate in computer, he had same knowledge in computer as his teacher was. As he gets older, he was more interested in technology than reading. With support from his father, he was able to build a new computer from parts and learn about gaming system and game designing. His online experiences allows him to learn about grammar of the game, computer coding, problem-solving literacy, use menus etc…

In the article, “Sponsors of Literacy”, Brandt defines sponsors of literacy. According to her, sponsors of literacy are “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy- and gain advantage by it in some way.” By this definition of sponsors of literacy, I think there should be at least one sponsor whenever we learn new things or you become literate in new things. Sponsor can be your family, teacher, neighbor, friends etc… but also I think they can be anyone who do not know you at all. The example of this would be the internet. Today many of us have access to the internet through electric devices and have experience searching topic that we were curious or wandered. When we learn about those topics, we became literate in them. For example, I wanted to be literate in sewing during my freshman year in high school. I used a website that teaches everything about sewing. Because of the author of this website, I was able to become literate in sewing. She was my sponsor. So I do not think sponsor have to be acquaintance.  

Throughout this article, the author also talks about how practice of literacy is different by educational levels, family backgrounds, different races, and different genders. She stated a fact that people from majority-race and higher socioeconomic tends to have higher academic performances, because they have higher chance of having sponsor of literacy.

In the article “Born Digital, Palfrey discusses about digital natives who were born after 1980 and had already access to networked digital technologies when they are born. This article is written for digital immigrants who were born before 1980. The purpose of this article is to explain the importance of letting digital natives to access to the new technologies. The author states that new technologies allow digital natives to have “new forms of creativity, learning, entrepreneurship, and innovation”.

In other hand, the author also talks about how digital natives are not feeling the fear of privacy, and it is important to protect them from cyber bullying, online predators, internet addiction etc… which I strongly agree with the author. Even for this unit 2 project, I could not put any pictures that I was in, because I was scared that some stranger would identify me. However, as I look through other’s posts, I think I am the only one who feel this way. I might have old ideas like digital immigrants, but I believe it is important to re-think your actions before you actually post your private information onto any kind of site. So I agree with the author’s point that we need digital immigrants’ help to protect digital natives from negative side of technology.

On Tuesday and Thursday, I have band from 3:30 to 5:30. We have practiced several music in the rehearsal to prepare for the concert that is coming up on September 29th. The purpose for this rhetorical situation is to listen to each other and match style, tone, pitch, articulation, and dynamics that are expected in the particular music. Matching and blending with others are a necessary component to give a big effect and impact on the audience. Another purpose is to adjust my own music I am playing to what my director expects to be like. My director often changes the dynamics in order to give impact on the music so that the parts will be heard and stand out. I have to change myself for those changes. The audiences of this rhetorical situations are my classmates, my director, and myself. The constraints are we only have rehearsal twice a week, which does not give us enough time to be well prepared for the concert. I have heard some people playing wrong notes and even out of tune. It seems that they do not know notes and rhythm well enough so that they are so busy looking at music and not at a conductor, which makes tempos all over the place. Another constraints is a balance of musicians. We have a lot of people who play high pitched instruments and a few people with low pitched instruments. It should be opposite. The low voice is the foundation of the band and is needed to support the band. As we have small low parts, it is difficult to make low parts to be heard and high part to be small. It is challenging to overcome those constraints, but it is worthwhile. 

As I was doing lit log, I notice that I sent text messages to my friends between classes almost every time. We share what is happening in daily life and sometimes help each other to solve homework problems. It is a rhetorical situation. The audience is my friends, and the exigency is to connect with my friends. I believe texting is one of best ways to communicate with people in the fashion that I do not have to worry about their availability. They can check my text messages whenever they have time or they wish to.  Since some of my friends live in Japan, we have a 13 hour difference between two countries. It is difficult to Skype and talk over the phone.

The constraint of this situation is that I cannot read their true feelings underlying the text messages. Unlike texting, I can feel their feelings by their tone of voice on the phone or in a dialogue and correct what I have said easily. Texting is also difficult to express my feelings and thoughts in a sentence as it is time consuming to write and people could have different interpretation of the sentence without appropriate expression and language.

Since I was a child, I always liked making art objects, folding origami, and building wood work. I enjoyed putting my ideas and design into an actual object and building it. I also took ceramics, fiber design, and jewelry classes during my high school years. I still enjoy making stuffed animals and key chains if I have free time. Whenever I am on my project, I get into it and forget all about the time. In my senior year I was exposed to a new way of making things by my engineering class teacher, Mr. Swartzendruber. CAD, computer aided design, is the software used to design and create three dimensional design on the computer. Not only that, it also allows us to assemble all the pieces together to form the final products.

Since all the work is done on the computer, I struggled to familiarize myself with the programs and make use of them.  I could not even make a sphere at first. However, Mr. Swartzendruber helped me go through each steps and shows me how to make a sphere and other problems that I needed to accomplish.  Even I was slow to learn it, he was very patient and encourage me with words and many suggestions.  As I learned and became familiar with programs, I became to enjoy working on CAD. For some projects, I had to stay afterschool and went school early in the morning to finish projects, but it did not bother me.  The more and more I spend time on it, I became able to use CAD better and quicker. And Mr. Swartzendruber knew I was working hard outside of class time.

Music is one of things I treasure in my life and has always been a part of life. Music is very important to me and has affected my life great deal. My parents always play music in our house and have taken my sister and me to orchestra concerts. Since my mother used to play piano, we always had a piano at home. I took a piano lesson for seven years but I did not like it much. When I took band in the 6th grade, I decided to switch to French horn. I have been playing the French horn for almost seven years now. When I started French horn, my band teachers recommend me to take a private lesson. I chose Mrs. Miller as my private teacher, and this is how I met her, my sponsor for French horn. Not only she was a wonderful person but she was great teacher.  Everyone who has taken lessons from her likes her and some of them have become professional players and band directors.

The most important lesson that I learned from her was how it is important to play musically. Without playing instruments musically, the music would make audience bored. However, it was difficult for me to do it. I could play correct notes and articulations, but I did not know how to play musically. Mrs. Miller explained me to picture a situation that would match with music.  For example, if dynamics was piano and all of the notes were slurred, she told me to think about ice link. Thinking about the situation helped me to play more musically and enjoy playing my French horn more. She was patient with me and never got emotional with me even I could not play well. She showed her joy when I played better.

When I thought about who would be my sponsor, the first person that came to my mind was my sister. She is two years older than I and taught me how to write. When I was younger, I always imitated her and wanted to be like her. Before I entered elementary school, I asked her to teach me how to write Japanese characters. Every night she taught me five characters, and I wrote multiple times until I could write them perfectly. I still remember how I was happy and excited to be able to write them.

Another thing that she taught me was how to write a letter. Every anniversary, such as mother’s and father’s day, wedding anniversary, and birthdays, we wrote letters to my parents. However, at beginning, I did not know how and what to write on it, so I copied my sister’s 

message. She did not get angry at me and just told me not to forget to write my name at the end. Even I wrote everything exactly the same as hers, she complimented me. I found enjoyment in writing letters. Since then I have been enjoying writing a letter or a card to my friends and family for their anniversaries.

Similarly my sister also taught me how to text others. When my family and I move to the US, I did not know how to write a text message to others. I was not sure if my grammar was correct or if my sentences even made a sense. I had a fear that people would make fun of my text, even though I knew no one would do that. Every time I got a text message, I told her what I received and asked her advice on what I should response. Whatever she told me to write, I wrote it and sent it. Gradually, I stopped asking her and got confident to text to others.