The unity task this week started out in quite a bad way, I accidentally update unity and when I opened it up there were a few things missing and a few things I wasn't used to. Nevertheless I pressed on and quickly got back to the version I was using for everything else I do in unity.
The process of doing this unity task went the same way any good story does, the dashing hero overcomes the problem in the end. I started out with the whole update thing but upon solving that issue I was met with yet another. I couldn't get any textures to work and even when they aren't really needed I still like to have them just to make things look better and more distinguished so I can think clearly. I eventually figured out the problem and sorted it out and went step by step through the tutorial. One or two issues here or there but I fixed them after a little deliberation.
I admit I missed a couple unity tutorials over the weeks but if you told me in october that I would be as competent with unity as I am now I would have been surprised because it was a very daunting piece of software to begin with and there is still a lot to learn but I am reasonable happy with my progress over the last few months and am excited to see where I can go from here.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
week 12 reading
I am currently most of the way through the writing process and I am glad because it's not something I specialise in and not really what I had in mind for this course but this is still a skill to have in the toolbox as academic writing is something that may be useful in the future.
The main thing I have learned in this is that the main thing to keep in mind when it comes to academic writing is that one should always read a significant amount more than they write as almost everything needs to be sourced and documented. This is not something I feel I do well with as I tend to get a bit carried away when writing and as a person who can type fast I tend to get into a rhythm with it and the words flow much simpler as I go on. However with academic writing I need to go sentence by sentence and know exactly what it is that I am talking about because it needs a source. I don't like it but it's the world I live in.
The main issue I had is as above, the sourcing of all the things I say. I tend to write in the first person a lot and use a lot of I think and I feel etc. But alas, language like that has no place in that type of writing and it leads to me not really being in the same zone I can be in when writing things that I am more used to writing. I am constantly worried about messing up the referencing section and it just doesn't allow me to be as comfortable writing as I normally am.
The main thing I have learned in this is that the main thing to keep in mind when it comes to academic writing is that one should always read a significant amount more than they write as almost everything needs to be sourced and documented. This is not something I feel I do well with as I tend to get a bit carried away when writing and as a person who can type fast I tend to get into a rhythm with it and the words flow much simpler as I go on. However with academic writing I need to go sentence by sentence and know exactly what it is that I am talking about because it needs a source. I don't like it but it's the world I live in.
The main issue I had is as above, the sourcing of all the things I say. I tend to write in the first person a lot and use a lot of I think and I feel etc. But alas, language like that has no place in that type of writing and it leads to me not really being in the same zone I can be in when writing things that I am more used to writing. I am constantly worried about messing up the referencing section and it just doesn't allow me to be as comfortable writing as I normally am.
Thursday, April 2, 2020
week 10 reading
Week 10
I used this week to get access to a couple more papers which I will be mentioning in my final project. I searched around on google scholar for a few more papers as the reading portion is more important than the writing portion. I plan to just submit everything in the last couple weeks as it suits my style of writing a lot more. I'm finding out more and more about video games use in the speech and language development department for young people.
I can't really talk about personal experience in my writing which is generally how I like to write so it is a bit of a challenge in that aspect so I'll share a bit of personal experience here because why not. I grew up playing a lot of video games and I've always been above average in speech and language, I even scored in the top 2% of spellers in the country on a standardized aptitude test. I don't really know to what extent the video game hobby really helped me out with that but upon reading all these papers maybe it's not quite as clear anymore. Perhaps video games did gift me with this natural ability to read and write or at the very least played a small role in my development.
Progress is slow but consistent in my writing and it's not really my bag so to speak but I think what I am writing is at the very least acceptable. Not crazy about it but don't really hate it.
I used this week to get access to a couple more papers which I will be mentioning in my final project. I searched around on google scholar for a few more papers as the reading portion is more important than the writing portion. I plan to just submit everything in the last couple weeks as it suits my style of writing a lot more. I'm finding out more and more about video games use in the speech and language development department for young people.
I can't really talk about personal experience in my writing which is generally how I like to write so it is a bit of a challenge in that aspect so I'll share a bit of personal experience here because why not. I grew up playing a lot of video games and I've always been above average in speech and language, I even scored in the top 2% of spellers in the country on a standardized aptitude test. I don't really know to what extent the video game hobby really helped me out with that but upon reading all these papers maybe it's not quite as clear anymore. Perhaps video games did gift me with this natural ability to read and write or at the very least played a small role in my development.
Progress is slow but consistent in my writing and it's not really my bag so to speak but I think what I am writing is at the very least acceptable. Not crazy about it but don't really hate it.
Thursday, March 5, 2020
reading 6
In the reading I have done this week I got together a couple of interesting papers on video games impact on speech and language development. Obviously papers like these focus mainly on people who have difficulty with speech and language development. I learned in my reading that dyslexia has some impact on somewhere around 10% of the population.
Dyslexia is a severely invalidating learning disability that affects literacy acquisition despite normal intelligence and adequate instruction.
Dyslexia is the main ailment that is focused on in quite a few of the papers I've looked at, both the ones I'll be using and the ones I won't be using. This is because dyslexia is a very common condition with a strong impact on the topic of my paper.
The main paper which caught my attention is one about video games aiding children with dyslexia in learning to read better. The paper puts forth that 12 hours of action video games had a positive effect on the reading comprehension skills and the reading speed which was measured in syllables per second. It also posits that this is because the high pace and reactions needed to play action video games translated into an attention span improvement which impacted reading abilities. More reading in the future will hopefully yield more interesting things like this.
I was initially intimidated by the scope of this project but as I read more and more I feel that it will be easier than I initially thought. The more I read the more confident I become about this project, I have fallen behind slightly but I will be back on the horse soon.
Dyslexia is a severely invalidating learning disability that affects literacy acquisition despite normal intelligence and adequate instruction.
Dyslexia is the main ailment that is focused on in quite a few of the papers I've looked at, both the ones I'll be using and the ones I won't be using. This is because dyslexia is a very common condition with a strong impact on the topic of my paper.
The main paper which caught my attention is one about video games aiding children with dyslexia in learning to read better. The paper puts forth that 12 hours of action video games had a positive effect on the reading comprehension skills and the reading speed which was measured in syllables per second. It also posits that this is because the high pace and reactions needed to play action video games translated into an attention span improvement which impacted reading abilities. More reading in the future will hopefully yield more interesting things like this.
I was initially intimidated by the scope of this project but as I read more and more I feel that it will be easier than I initially thought. The more I read the more confident I become about this project, I have fallen behind slightly but I will be back on the horse soon.
Thursday, February 20, 2020
reading 4
Reading 4, Week 4
The reading this week was about how to write properly in an academic setting. The aim is to have a hypothesis and a conclusion based on evidence pulled from reliable sources. Nobody is reading to hear an opinion, they want facts backed up by evidence. The way we achieve this is by citing sources whenever relevant info such as a statistic is mentioned.
The first step in a piece of academic writing is to state a conclusion in the opening paragraph so people know what the piece is about. next we support our argument with a variety of evidence that has been gathered.avoid quoting word for word as that doesn't show you've understood what you're citing and there's no point reading my paper if all I do is talk about other papers.
Next you must provide detail, you want there to be a very clear conclusion reached in the paper. Achieve this by quoting other papers and paraphrasing what others have said on the topic at hand. Summarizing things in a short sentence or two is helpful with this.
Don't be repetitive. No matter how interesting the topic at hand is, it will be boring if every sentence is 10 words or if you only quote people or only quote the same people etc. Avoid repeating yourself.
A good way to strengthen an argument is to summarize other papers/paragraphs from papers in a couple sentences. This shows why you have reached your conclusion and citing your sources is a very valuable tool in writing a good academic piece of writing.
The reading this week was about how to write properly in an academic setting. The aim is to have a hypothesis and a conclusion based on evidence pulled from reliable sources. Nobody is reading to hear an opinion, they want facts backed up by evidence. The way we achieve this is by citing sources whenever relevant info such as a statistic is mentioned.
The first step in a piece of academic writing is to state a conclusion in the opening paragraph so people know what the piece is about. next we support our argument with a variety of evidence that has been gathered.avoid quoting word for word as that doesn't show you've understood what you're citing and there's no point reading my paper if all I do is talk about other papers.
Next you must provide detail, you want there to be a very clear conclusion reached in the paper. Achieve this by quoting other papers and paraphrasing what others have said on the topic at hand. Summarizing things in a short sentence or two is helpful with this.
Don't be repetitive. No matter how interesting the topic at hand is, it will be boring if every sentence is 10 words or if you only quote people or only quote the same people etc. Avoid repeating yourself.
A good way to strengthen an argument is to summarize other papers/paragraphs from papers in a couple sentences. This shows why you have reached your conclusion and citing your sources is a very valuable tool in writing a good academic piece of writing.
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Learning Challenge
Learning challenge
I low key am a bit of a geography nerd, world capitals to be exact. I know all of europe, a couple random ones, most big countries but the one that's pulled up a blank for me for a while has been the capitals of south america. So I decided to finally try learn them, I'm going to look at the list for a while then do a sporcle quiz and see how I do.
Alright I'm back, there's 12 countries in south america and I was able to learn all but 3 of them. No matter what I did I couldn't get the capital of guyana, suriname or bolivia. My brain just doesn't like those ones for some reason.
When I was 12 I did US states and I still know a couple of them, comes in good at pub quizzes and absolutely nowhere else.
so yeah.
I low key am a bit of a geography nerd, world capitals to be exact. I know all of europe, a couple random ones, most big countries but the one that's pulled up a blank for me for a while has been the capitals of south america. So I decided to finally try learn them, I'm going to look at the list for a while then do a sporcle quiz and see how I do.
Alright I'm back, there's 12 countries in south america and I was able to learn all but 3 of them. No matter what I did I couldn't get the capital of guyana, suriname or bolivia. My brain just doesn't like those ones for some reason.
When I was 12 I did US states and I still know a couple of them, comes in good at pub quizzes and absolutely nowhere else.
so yeah.
Growth Mindset
Growth Mindset
I don't know how personal I'm allowed to go in these blog posts but I've had a couple setbacks that have nothing to do with college recently, also I've been really sick the past couple days so my signature upbeat demeanor may be a little compromised here but oh well.
It's really easy to be positive when everything is going your way which it normally is to some extent but I'm sick as hell right now so it's a little difficult. The thing that triggered me thinking about growth was a reddit post "what would you have missed if you died a year ago" or something like that and I remember thinking I was doing great a year ago but I would have missed so much if I died a year ago. I didn't think the last 12 months would have an awful lot different in store for me but in the last year I feel that I have grown more than I have any other year, I'm almost like a whole new person. So no matter how good or bad you feel like you're doing just know that the next year could take a crazy turn for you. I'm more excited for the future than ever before because I feel like I'm not done growing and changing. Even as I sit here sick as heck I'm excited to feel better soon, I'm excited to get back to training and fighting, learn new things, have new thoughts. It's this attitude towards growth that drives me forward to grow and evolve as time passes by.
"This isn't even reached my final form" - some anime man, I think dragonball, yeah Mr. Dragonball.
I don't know how personal I'm allowed to go in these blog posts but I've had a couple setbacks that have nothing to do with college recently, also I've been really sick the past couple days so my signature upbeat demeanor may be a little compromised here but oh well.
It's really easy to be positive when everything is going your way which it normally is to some extent but I'm sick as hell right now so it's a little difficult. The thing that triggered me thinking about growth was a reddit post "what would you have missed if you died a year ago" or something like that and I remember thinking I was doing great a year ago but I would have missed so much if I died a year ago. I didn't think the last 12 months would have an awful lot different in store for me but in the last year I feel that I have grown more than I have any other year, I'm almost like a whole new person. So no matter how good or bad you feel like you're doing just know that the next year could take a crazy turn for you. I'm more excited for the future than ever before because I feel like I'm not done growing and changing. Even as I sit here sick as heck I'm excited to feel better soon, I'm excited to get back to training and fighting, learn new things, have new thoughts. It's this attitude towards growth that drives me forward to grow and evolve as time passes by.
"This isn't even reached my final form" - some anime man, I think dragonball, yeah Mr. Dragonball.
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