Twitter Expert Connect Part 3 – Blog Post
My Twitter Expert Connect is an assignment I had to complete where I had to choose a topic and find some experts on Twitter to help me research my topic. As my topic was Video Game Development I came in contact with 10 video game developers, which were for the most part retro game developers. They gave some very good advice to me, and I was able to continue researching with their help. The project is divided into three parts. Part 1 was to find the experts and get in contact with them. Part 2 was asking them what we wanted to know and keep a conversation with them. Part 3 is writing this Blog Post about the project.
I followed 10 different accounts: @OrabGames, @nesdoug2, @Broke_Studio, @WiseDad_Games, @SoleGoose, @atonofglaciers, @gradualgames, @Noppes_, @mr_isaacs, and @cacciatc. They are all video game developers and they make mostly retro games. I asked them for information about how to start a game, and what applications to use to do so. This information will help me in my Genius Hour project because my topic is Video Game Development, and getting some good advice from experts will be very useful. Here is a list that contains the ten of them: https://twitter.com/21trisp/lists/video-game-developers/members
I first had to get in contact with them and did so by sending them all a polite message to try to get to know them a bit. After a few exchanges, it was now part two of the project, question time. We had to ask them what we wanted to know from them, and during this whole time, we had to make sure we weren’t creepy/rude. I asked them if there was a big market for homebrew games, I also asked them to give me some examples of applications that are made for beginners in video game developing. Most of them answered, sending me links to websites, names of applications or direct answers. I was able to get a good head start on my Genius Hour Project as I use both Twitter and normal research.
The results I got from this were pretty positive. Seven out of my 10 experts answered my questions, and I was able to have a real conversation with some of them. They taught me things about coding and gave me some good propositions of applications I could use for my project. The one I had the longest conversation with was @mr_isaacs, and he spent time answering all of my questions. I was very curious, and most of them were very patient. They all followed me back and were willing to help me in my learning. They provided more information than I had asked for, which made me pretty pleased and got me to an even better start for my Genius Hour project. The process of using Twitter as a source is a really useful, and I might use my connections again in a future Genius Hour Project. Knowing how to do this might also help me in my later life because a one thing employers look at is if you have social media accounts, and I would be able to use Twitter for that.
I chose Video Game Developing as my Genius Hour Project because video games have been something that I always loved to play since I’m small, and I wanted to learn how they were made, and how I could make them. Genius Hour was the perfect opportunity for me to start on this path, and I decided to make it m subject to this project. Twitter has helped me a lot with this subject, and the results I got out of this experiment were over what I expected. Twitter has been a great help for me, and the fact that my questions were answered leaves me with a better start to video game developing.
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Works Cited:
Silva, Raphael. “Twitter Icon.” Pixabay.com, Pixabay, 23 Nov. 2017, pixabay.com/en/twitter-tweet-twitter-icon-2935414/.
Mizter_. “Gamepad Image.” Pixabay.com, Pixabay, 23 Nov. 2016, pixabay.com/en/gamepad-video-game-videogames-gamer-1837422/.
For my SBC8 post, I visited three different blog posts and left comments in all of them. I went to Caleb’s blog post about the number of comments he was getting, to FP’s blog post about what he does after school, and finally, I went to Jacob’s blog post about what he would do if he was a principal. I found all of these posts very interesting and left some comments on them. The number of comments Caleb is getting is insane compared to mine, and Jacob has some interesting ideas for his school. What I enjoy about commenting is the fact that we can explain what we think about people’s blogs, and get some answers from them pretty quickly. A negative aspect of commenting is negative comments. It doesn’t happen to me a lot, but it can happen that people put hate comments, spam comments and other kinds of comments that I don’t allow on my blog. I have only gotten three comments so far, and they were all good quality comments. I have not received comments going out of my guidelines, and it is something I really appreciate.
janjf93. “Free Image: Comment.” Pixabay.com, Pixabay, pixabay.com/en/comment-response-message-statement-1727483/.
Genius Hour
For Genius Hour, my topic was: “How to use HTML and CSS to help people?” I chose the topic because I’ve been wanting to learn HTML and CSS for a long time, and I had done a bit at home, but I really wanted to do it at school. This free topic choice was a great opportunity for me to try it out. The helping people part is because we had to chose a topic that can help people. I chose codeacademy to do this project, and their HTML & CSS course is very useful.
During Genius Hour, we had to research a topic of our choice, and then make a presentation about it for the whole class. The presentation had to be from 2 minutes 30 to 3 minutes. They had to contain a very small amount of text and have a lot of pictures. Another requirement was correct MLA citations for our pictures and sources. My research question was: “What are HTML and CSS, and how can we use it to help other people. I spent about two months researching my topic and making a presentation about it, and it taught me a lot. The fact that it had to be done under three minutes was the hardest part about it, because I had to practice my presentation, and I often times was too short on time or had a lot of time left. Getting rid of the text was also a challenge, because I have always done presentations with a lot of text, and having to learn my speech by heart was really hard for me.
This project helped me grow as a student because I can now handle making good presentations, and it has helped me get over my deadline problem, that is still occurring in 9th grade. I think that what I learned might have inspired other people to go on Codeacademy and try to learn about this. They can also teach other people about this, and share the knowledge around. I think this is helpful because HTML and CSS is the base of what makes a website what it is. HTML and CSS are the codes that make websites look like what they are, it is the code that makes it change colors, font and a lot of other features. This can help, because websites are a fundamental resource for sharing information around the world, and you can share anything you want by simply putting it online. It can be a blog, an article, or even just Facebook, they all use this type of coding.
My next Genius Hour will be about Video Game Development, and our way of learning will be completely different. For Genius Hour 2, we have to find experts on Twitter, get in contact with them, and finally get some information from them. It changes from our normal research format, and I think that it is very beneficial. It can help us get in contact with actual people, who can give us good advice and can answer specific questions. Did you ever notice how articles on Google don’t talk about what you’re searching for when your questions are very specific? That’s why we use actual people so we can get some good and thoughtful answers. What I will learn in my next Genius Hour project will be able to help people around me, because Video Games to me means creativity. I think that making video games enhances our creativity and can help grow a passion. I have always been passionated by Video Games, and have always wanted to learn how they are made. This might be the occasion.
Link to presentation
The picture above looks pretty complicated. And I won’t lie to you, it is. Memorizing all of the different tools is really hard, and I am not done learning about this. I do not think that two months is enough to learn the integrity of this.
Works Cited
Riva, Elisa. “Free Illustration: Light Bulb.” Pixabay.com, Pixabay, pixabay.com/en/light-bulb-idea-genius-yellow-1872376/.
Raza, Mian Shahzad. “HTML”. Pixabay.com, Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/en/code-programming-coding-web-2434271/
For my Week 6 challenge, I decided to take Jueun’s topic, living in Africa. I chose it because I feel that people are very ignorant about how Africa really is. The main question I get is: “Do you see lions?” The answer is no. There are a lot of stereotypes about Africa saying that Africans live in small villages and have mud houses. But there are a lot of big cities in Africa like Dakar, Accra, Abidjan and lots of others. I recommend searching up images of a few of these cities, they are pretty beautiful.
The first part was about how people see Africa, now I’m talking about how I feel about living in Africa. This is my first year living in Senegal, but it is my fifth year living in Africa. It can get pretty hot, even though Dakar is cooler than other African cities that don’t have the sea. Having the ocean next to you is great, because we can go swim on weekends, and it’s pretty good for surfing. The International School of Dakar is one of the best schools I’ve ever been to, and has a great variety of students. The one thing that bugs me is Internet. I am a person who passes a lot of time on Internet, and Senegalese Internet isn’t as fast as European Internet.
Africa is a great continent, and living there is pretty nice. Contrary to what some people may think, Africa is pretty developed and I really like living there, even though there might be some things that Europe does better (Internet.)
My school is ISD, which the International School of Dakar. ISD starts really late compared to other schools I’ve been to. For example, my old school, AISB (American International School of Bamako) started at 7:30 AM, while ISD starts at 8:30 AM. We finish school at 3:20 PM, and I often stay after school until 4:20 PM.
My classes are separated in days. In some schools, you have the same classes every week. But I think that days are better. We have 8 days, and 8 different classes. Each class has a period number, and each day has periods in different order. On odd days, we have odd classes while even classes take place on even days. It might seem a bit complicated if you aren’t familiar with this system of classes, but it gets easier if you have it at your school.
My eight different classes are:
1 – French
2 – Science (Physics for now, soon rotating to Chemistry)
3 – Math
4 – P.E/Health
5 – Design and Technology
6 – Social Studies
7 – Digital Citizenship (SBC class)
8 – Language Arts/English
On day 1, I start with period 1, then 3, 5 and 7. Day 2 is 2, 4, 6 and 8. And so on until the cycle restarts. So your schedule changes every week and I find it better than having the same schedule every week.
I spent a long time thinking about a topic that I loved. I have so many hobbies that it was pretty hard to chose, but I finally decided to write on Soccer. Soccer is my favorite sport, and I don’t have a lot of occasions of playing it as I don’t have a garden and most of the people in my school like to play Basketball and Volleyball. My still school still has a soccer team, and our first training was on Saturday November 4th, the day before I write this post. The soccer training is two hours long, and is pretty tiring considering we are under the sun all the time.
My favorite soccer team is Arsenal, which is a team coming from London. Even though they are portrayed as a bad team by most of my classmates, I still support them. My favorite players are Mesut Özil and Alexis Sanchez. I like them because of their style of playing. They are both very talented players and are capable of scoring beautiful goals.
The last thing I want to talk about is WAISAL, here is the link to their website if you want to check it out. WAISAL stands for West African International Schools Activities League. There is one WAISAL for each sport, and it is a competition that takes place once a year for each sport. Volleyball WAISAL already took place, and Swimming WAISAL is soon. I’m talking about it because I do trainings for High School soccer, and Soccer WAISAL is in April. It takes place at LCS, Lincoln Community School, which the International School in Accra, Ghana.
This is a picture of the view that I have from my apartment. I edited it using BeFunky so that it looks like this.
I took this picture with the worst tool to take pictures, a smartphone. But this smartphone in particular has its ratings going down because of its camera. So I consider that I did a good job with my phone. Hope you enjoy it. (And maybe make it your wallpaper.)
Try to guess what the sentence is. This time it won’t be a free cookie but a free ice cream. Trust me, it isn’t a scam.
All images come from Pixabay. No attribution required.
Image comes from Pixabay. No attribution required.
Jake always loved to go see the sunset. He ran out of his house with his two brothers Henry and Jim to go admire it. When they arrived, they noticed something had changed with their habitual spot. There was a car wheel where they usually sat.
-“What is a car wheel doing here?” Jake asked
The brothers tried to come up with some theories, but they were all completely crazy. They finished on the conclusion that a car had passed. Here? Where no one ever comes? The sun was about to finish setting when they hear a tire brake noise. Jake saw the car from the corner of his eye, it was coming straight at them. He jumped on Henry and got him out of the way, but when he turned around, it was too late. The car had passed and was already a very far. He was glad he was able to save everyone, or at least that’s what he thought. When he looked at where Jim had been, he was…
Finish the story for me and get a free cookie. This is not a scam, you need to trust me.
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