November 2010 Archives

By now, I would expect you to have all or most of your screencasts finished. I'm particularly interested in hearing how the iPad screencasts are going.

Today I'd like you to announce your initial plan for a term project.

• What tool(s) will you use?
  
• What do you hope to accomplish? (Artistically? Technically? Personally?)
• How will your project help you to stretch your current skills?
• What do you foresee as the biggest obstacle you face?

Your final presentation should include a website optimized for the iPad, a video that includes clips from beta-testing, and blog entries that chronicle your progress.  (More details on those TBA.)

Scratch

• Screencast w/ audio of first-time volunteer using your Scratch project
• Updated project
• Screencast of you demonstrating changes in project

Inform 7

• Screencast w/ audio of first-time volunteer using your Inform 7 project
  (you can use someone who already knows interactive fiction)
  
• Updated project
• Screencast of you demonstrating changes in project

Web App

• if it's not technically possible to record a screencast from an iPad, document a volunteer's experience as best as you can. (Video camera pointed at screen? We'll figure something out.)
• Updated project
• Screencast of you demonstrating changes in project
• CSS for screen, iPad, mobile, and print.

Blogging

• A main page that operates as the center for this entire portfolio, perhaps with links to separate pages on each unit, perhaps all in one. 
• I recommend that you blog major milestones as you go, rather than wait until the last minute. (You are welcome to use class time to blog.)
  
• The organization is up to you, as are choices that you make about how much information you provide, how you use hyperlinks and linked text, and how to make it as easy as possible for a potential employer to view your accomplishments.
  

We'll start class by discussing our starting point. 

Blog about your term project plans (in terms of your creative, technical, and personal goals), and post a link from this page.

What do you intend to have ready by Thursday?

By Tuesday?

What technical details make you feel confident?
What is one specific area, related to your goals, that you feel you could use a refresher or more instruction?

An alpha release is a rough draft, with plenty of rough spots and "broken" areas. But there should be enough to work with that a patient, forgiving volunteer would be able to get the general idea of what the project is supposed to do.

1. Review: "usability testing" vs. "asking friends what they think of your project"
2. Preview: "Beta Release Report" (due by email at the beginning of class, next Tuesday)
3. Write: respond to a brief prompt
4. Download: JQTouch examples (on iPad or smartphone)
5. Group Sharing: (of today's "Beta Release" assignment)
6. Open Workshop

• What did you learn when you asked a minimum of three volunteers to play/use your project?
• What changes have you already made?
• What further changes (prioritized from most to least important) will you realistically be able to make by the Dec 8 deadline?
• What additional changes would you make, if you had more time? (Prioritize these, starting with the first thing you would do if you had more time, and ending with more ambitious, long-term possibilities.)
  

Present your findings in the form of a short technical report. Length: 500 words of original analysis, plus some useful combination of screenshots, code samples, transcripts, video clips, etc., as needed to support your findings. (Link to a full copy of your beta release, and assume your reader has direct access to it, so there is little need for a detailed summary.)

A short technical report is like a news story, in that it is written in the inverted pyramid format, but unlike a news story in that you are not writing a technical report for the general reader. (For this assignment, you can go ahead and write for your classmates and for me-- insiders who know has happened in the classroom, rather than writing for an outside audience. Feel free to link to older blog entries that provide background information.)

A technical report would not focus on your personal journey of discovery, nor is it a reflective self-assessment. Instead, it focuses on how the process leads to the product.

Submit your report by e-mailing it to me. (You are welcome to post it on your blog, but I am thinking of this report as a down-and-dirty, practical, internal document, so it would not be of much interest to outside readers, and I don't think it would be the most productive use of your time to make this particular document interesting to outside readers.)

JQueryTutorialFiles.zip