Reflection

Reflection on Learning and Finished Product

It is time to reflect on my learning in this course and the finished product of my game. I will divide this reflection into:
1. What have I done throughout this course?
2. What have I learned through this course?
3. How will I use this blog and how did I view it when I created it?
4. How did I learn Flash animation and what did the final game look like?

What have I done throughout this course?

• This course has focused on learning APA style citation for post-secondary writing. The first two weeks focused on APA citation and every week following had at least one mention and discussion of it. 
• The course also focused on online discussion posts. As this was an online course and not a face-to-face course, the instructor needed some way to indicate classroom participation and reflection. Discounting the first week, for every week after we were required to write a brief discussion post about one of the topics we focused on during that week.
• These topics were covered in weekly readings focusing on works such as Gardner Campbell's "A Personal Cyberinfrastructure", Sara Diamond's "Reframing the Cathedral", John Suler's "Psychology of Cyberspace", and Anabel Quan-Haase's "Community in the Network Society".
• Finally, the last half of the course focused on the creation of this blog as a means of an online digital portfolio. 

What have I learned through this course?

• Possibly the most useful thing I learned through this course was a new way to organize and write an essay. Prior to taking this course, I had always developed a thesis, come up with 3-5 supporting points for my thesis, and then set about writing my essay. I would use each of the supporting points as the main topic for each of the body paragraphs. In this course I learned to move in the opposite direction. I learned to simply write what I thought in a paragraph format and then develop a thesis which fit the theme of my various body paragraphs. One of the reasons for this may be that I had always been writing history essays which were always longer than this class's 250 word count limit. As such, I needed a very clear focus before I began writing anything. But when I have such a short limit applied, the new method seems to make more sense. 

How will I use this blog and how did I view it when I created it?

• I will not use this blog. When I created it I viewed it as an assignment and a requirement for the Communications 103 course. The reasons for this are multiple.
• It is difficult to post and modify content using Blogger. I currently use Edmodo as a way of communicating with my students and their parents. It is a much easier platform to use and allows me to post any content regardless of the file format. I also use the SD67 (the district in which I teach) website for creating blogs for my classes. It is easy, customizable and once again, I am not limited in the file formats which I can put on the website.
• I have also been spoiled by being introduced to a friend's website for drafting. 

How did I learn Flash animation and what did the final game look like?

• Like most of my learning, I am self-taught. This means a lot of Youtube videos and trial and error. I began with Mr. Photon's tutorial as a means of learning how to animate a piece of ground and a character. This seems to be a common process as the next video I showed my students uses the same script for controlling the character. After Mr. Photon's video, we discovered that we could not animate multiple pieces of ground. Thus I went searching for another tutorial. I had the students try to figure it out and some came up with partial solutions. Eventually, the EA in my class found this video for me by Keith Frislid. The final animating project asks the students to make a game with a minimum of 5 levels, a piece of ground that moves, portals, and bad guys to avoid.
• It was difficult but the class has been half successful so far. By Christmas time, each person in class should have made their own platform game.