Feeling Overwhelmed?

I know that sometimes keeping up with things can be a little overwhelming. I'm no different than most people. When I first started being an intern, keeping up with things (updating my progress chart) was a little difficult, and also finding the time to complete my work as needed. I was able to overcome this. I decide to set aside time from my schedule of being a Father, a Husband, and a Student each week to work on the things I needed to work on and update the documents that needed worked on. I explained to my family and school that I have made a commitment to this and I need to see it through. I planned when to do my homework, and I also scheduled time to be an intern. To my surprise, everyone was very accepting of this. I guess all I needed to do was to exercise my time managment skills. I know somethings in life at times have to become before others, I never forget this. I'm not saying I'm perfect, I still at times struggle to balance these 3 roles I play out, but if people are understanding then things will go well.

I hope you find inspiration in this.

Top 5 tips on managing your wiki

Managing a wiki can be a hard thing to do if you don't stay on it. If you only update your wiki once a week, then you'll have to think back or look at your notes on what you did, upload all the files that need to be uploaded, and after awhile it can be a bit of a headache. But I have 5 tips for you on successful wiki management.

1). "Constantly update" If you constantly update your wiki, you won't fall behind on it. Even if it's the smallest, tiniest bit of content such as a word or a picture or sentence, take a few minutes and just update it. Upload that one picture you have and add it to the page needed. 5 minutes max, even if that.

2). "Organize and Structure" Organization is key. When you upload a swf file to be viewed in the wiki, put it in the right section, possibly with other swf files if needed. Also give it a name or a title if no name or title is appropriate for your file. Pictures can be done this way as well. Give your page or pages some structure. Use categories or sections.

3). "Spelling" If you are unsure of how a word is spelled, use any spell check you can find. If you can't find a spell checker, use http://www.dictionary.com/ . Not only is this good to do anyways, it'll make your wiki look a little better and make people think you know what you're doing. :)

4). "Check out everyone else" If you are using an RSS feed to see changes on wikis, don't hesitate to look to see what changes someone has done. This might inspire you or keep you on your toes. If it's in a class situation, you'll see what you have missed. Seeing what someone else has done may help you out with your own wiki.

5). "Link It!" When you create a new page on a wiki, make sure that the is a link to that page. Don't let it just sit in wiki-limbo. If you worked hard on it and put some great content on that page, make sure that there is a link to it. Also place the link in the correct section (See: "Organize and Structure"), area, or even with an object where it's needed. Maybe near something related.

These are my 5 tips to you as a wiki user and a wiki master. You may have different ideas on managing your wiki, but these topics are key and very helpful. Plus it'll make for good looking pages.

Ideas for games

I've been trying to think of current social issues for games so it I can make it easier for new students to find ideas for their games, but I haven't been able to find a decent topic. It seems right now what the papers are covering is the upcoming election, war, and and tensions between the US and Iran. I want find something new. maybe I'm not looking hard enough. Well, the search still continues.

Paper Prototyping - July Workshop 2008

Daniel had a great presentation on paper prototyping. He showed his video that he produced a while back. He included some audience participation and let one of the educators "play" his paper prototype. I thought that was cool.

WWWS July Workshop Press Conference

This press conference is great. I am starting to understand a little bit better where this program is going. The purpose of Globaloria / WorldWideWorkshop is becoming clearer. Seeing the new schools coming into the program for year 2 pilot, and seeing the look in their eyes, made something in my brain "click". I can't wait to see what year 2 is going to bring. The new schools and students for me to help out. There is a lot pushing this forward and I'm glad to be helping it along.

A Concept to teach

I am in process this week to create a game concept that will help current and incoming students to chose what kind of game to make. Whether it be a game for social change or for educational purposes. I'm not exactly sure how to go about it. A concept that I have in mind is like a poll or a personality quiz of such to help them out. Each answer would add to a total, then after the game was over, based on the score, an out put would reveal to them what type of game they should make. A listing of ideas would then be presented to them. I hope this works.

A possible game

I found this game online. It's called Mencia Madness 3. The game is hosted by Comedy Central and based off of their show Mind of Mencia. The game itself is uneducational but I believe I can do the same thing, but with a purpose. A purpose to teach maybe a health game. I'll find the link to the game again and post it here to show anyone what their game is like. (maybe you all can give me some ideas)

Lost: One train of thought

It seemed to a little hard this week getting back on track. the presentation took a lot of my attention. So any ideas I had before the presentation, went right out the window. lol So if any ideas come to your mind, let me know.

Charleston Presentation

I can now start back to blogging. It has been a while since my last post but I have been so busy getting the final touches together on the game and the presentation with Leah. But now I can put it all to rest and get back to my normal duties, online mentoring and creating tutorials. I was so nervous about the presentation that I couldn't get to sleep until late last night. Coffee became my best friend today. I enjoyed meeting everyone and getting to see some new faces. I hope things went well and that our presentation was enjoyed by all. I was nervous, and what made it worse was that Leah and I were to go last (at least I thought we were last). I hope the game we created can go on to be further expanded.

On an interesting note, when we were presenting the game in the beginning, when everyone was going around checking out the games, First Lady Manchin was looking at our game and said to me, "Maybe the tourism department should have this on their website." That made me feel like we did something fantastic! Also, if I'm not mistaken when I was introduced to Fmr. Gov. Gaston Caperton, I think he recognized me by name. That made me feel great. Overall, it was a fantastic event. I had a great time.

Whoever reads this, and you were there.... thank you from the bottom of my digital heart. And Lee, the Clay Center was great, thank you sir.

Completely Unrelated

Let it be known on May 5th, 2008... I became CompTIA A+ certified. I just thought I would shout this from the roof top. Sorry for the inconvenience. That is all... carry on... stop looking at me!!! lol :P

New tutorial on the way

I am starting to make my donation game for Globaloria. I have some great ideas while working with this. I'm gonna make documentary-style tutorials on what I am doing, showing what it is like to be a programmer. I do have some great things in mind, and I hope it works out well for me.

I'm still taking requests on tutorials. Please email me at:

deering2@marshall.edu

New Resources for Globaloria

I recently received an Email from Mr. Lee Kraus asking yours truly to look over some possible new resources for students coming up these following years. I thought some of them were good for mainly reference by instructors, but then there were a few I just liked real well that shows some great aspects to game development. I put some of these links up on my del.icio.us account. Check them out and see what you think.

Man High school presentation

It was a great opportunity to see a high schools effort on their game. They had a great concept, but I just wanted to know what the reason and the story was behind the game. Great concept for the game, just needed to more.

Goal line in sight?

My class is coming down to the wire for our game. I have the rafting taken care of and I am waiting on Matt and Jerry for there part so we can slam it all together. I have found some great work arounds for what I did. I am going to make some tutorials about the Actionscript aspect of the game I believe this going to be great!

I found something....

I found something that will be really great for ideas and tutorials.
Flashperfection.com.
it seems to be what the gaming side of things can help with and that it has other wide variety of things dealing with flash. I haven't explored everything just yet but I believe this to be a great companion to any flash class or course.

WebEx RTC Presentation

I thought the presentation of the Randolph boys were great. I liked the game and where they were going with it. Alot of advice was given and I hope it was taken into consideration. The only problem I had with the session in particular was that apparently my phone was giving the feed back, so I had to ask questions through the chat window, but they were ignored. Hey what am I gonna do about it right?

Mini-Worshop

Recently I attended a Mini-Workshop, a virtual workshop on the net. It was very cool on how it was presented. I know stuff like this has been going on for awhile, like teleconferences and video conferences, but seeing the action going on on your computer was just cool as ever. I would like to be apart of more seminars like this. This also maybe a new way of schooling for those who are home bound or sick and able to see up close and personal what is going on. I know video classes happen but doing it from home would be great.

Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V

I recently heard of an incident where there was something that went not as the person expected when it came to copying code. I have had problems like that in the past and trust me it can be very frustrating when you think you got it. Here's a little tip, higlight the section of code you are looking for and hold Ctrl down and hit C. That is the keyboard shortcut for copy. It's very quick as opposed to right click and copy. Then when you have the code you are looking for, go to where you want to put it and hold Ctrl down again and hit V. That's to paste the selection where you want to to br... Yet another keyboard shortcut.

Spring Break Thoughts

I know this week is spring break, and alot of kids are gone home for the week or if they are in college, they went to the beach to escape the cold (or get a tan). But I am here, sitting in front of my computer working on the final parts of MCTC's final game. I almost have the whitewater rafting game done. I planned on making at least 1 tutorial this week on what I have done with actionscript in this game. I have learned TONS of more code, having to look it up online and and stuff on what I want to do. My reflections on coding is this, if ya can't figure it out on your own, find someone who did and have them explain it to you.

Reflections of an Intern, Pt 1

This internship so far has been great. All the things that I have been asked to do, haven't been outrageous or ridiculous, but definitely challenging. I like a good challenge in a subject or field I am most comfortable in. Lee has been most supportive and instrumental in the progress of my time as an intern. But I would like to be, possibly, more involved at some point. I'm not sure right now in what part I would like to be more involved in, but only if they would like for me to be. The curriculum is definitely great for the students, but some of the assignments I would like to see more invasive assignments and delve deeper into the ActionScript programming. I believe that to be most important when it comes to Flash. Yeah animation is important, don't get me wrong, but it wouldn't be Flash if it wasn't for ActionScript.

That's my two cents, and I want change back please. :)