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What I Learned in Net Nar Is!!

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In all honesty, I    struggled so much throughout the Network Narrative course. Being a digital alchemist is hard when you come into something  just to find out you know little -to nothing about the digital world you thought you were so familiar with. I    remember my first day of class I    was so overwhelmed when I    came in to find not a physical professor, but a screen. This was the first course in fours years of attending Kean University, that I  'd taken like this. However,  I    learned so much about the digital world and my professor wasn't even in the room.               Firstly, I  'd like to acknowledge that I've made several mistakes with submitting course work, even till this day, but Alan, our professor, was so patient and understanding with me. Though he wasn't  physically in the room he did everything he could to assist us throughout the course including conference video calls, and through his proxies Marissa and Hailey. I  developed a

Week 10 - Games As A Story, A Story As Games.Backstorying a Classic Computer/Arcade/Console Game

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  The storyline starts here: It’s a rainy afternoon in Brooklyn, New York. Adam Park is at his sentencing. He stand before the judge after pleading guilty to verbal abuse and psychological manipulation. These are  offenses the city has really cracked down on, because we all know New Yorkers speak recklessly. Eager to prove a point and make an example out of Park, the judge mercilessly sentences him to three years of silence, with GIFs and memes as his only means of communication . This game will be interactive and available only through handheld and cellular devices to stimulate a real experience. There will be only 4 people the player (Adam) will be allowed to speak to and he must do so through gif or meme:

Week 11 -Digital Redlining

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I   knew that redlining existed but I never knew that there was a name for it. I    found this weeks discoveries fascinating. As I  am the Vice President for the Black Student Union on campus, I    find redlining to be an issue that excites me to learn about. The technology I    picked to focus on this week were traffic cameras in specific areas in New Jersey. I learned that in more urban areas, the amount of traffic cams, including speed cameras, stoplight cameras, even license plate readers , are found at much more frequent places and there are a lot of them, the area  I looked at was Newark. There were so many working cameras to catch offenses, while in other less urban areas, there were a lot of traffic camera's but most of them were turned of or not working. One might question why the difference in volumes of traffic cams between the two areas? Is it based or discrimination, is it because high population cities & "urban"areas have high crime rates? OR is la

Week 12 Bot, Not, What?

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Okay so, I  hate twitter bots. Its all fun and games with twitter bots until its time so create your own I    have a new appreciation for the people and algorithms behind twitter bots. I    found the tsk of creating my own twitter bot extremely difficult and draining. I am not good with technology at all, so learning this was very difficult for me. I'm not sure what exactly went wrong with my bot, but I    received several emails saying there was some sort of error, which was devastating after putting so much work into those spreadsheets. But I    was able to receive some insightful tweets from my classmates bots. I    was super happy that they were able to have successful bots that even mentioned me in their tweets. While I  was not great a creating my own bot, I wasn't too shabby detecting which tweets were from bots, and which were not. I  made each guess based on what I    felt a computer would understand vs. what a human would. Here were my results from the Bot or Not q

Alchemist week 4 - One Does Not Simply Make NetNarr Memes

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Black Mirror is one of my favorite shows on Netflix right now. The way it highlights the flaws in our society is unconventional ways is fascinating. The Nosedive episode we watched in class is one that I'd seen before and probably my favorite one. It speaks to how shallow our society is and how insignificant the things we place value on are. I  never realized how desperate we are for the approval of others. We literally are so open to expressing our true feelings on the internet with the protection of a screen. The characters in the show that were rating the main character didn't actually directly confront her about their grievances or offer constructive criticism, they just went straight to their phones. The story could've gone in a different direction because the main character could've become clinically depressed. Essentially, people were cyberbullying her, and cyberbullying often tragically results in suicide or other forms of self harm.  This episode was a g

Week 9- Seriously Yours, Games

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I  struggled. I had never realized that empathy games were even a thing. Playing Spent in class last week made me realize how deeply a game can make you think as well as how games can uncover how you prioritize certain things in your life. In the game Sp ent, I    had to choose between, paying a bill and having my child teased at lunch for having it homemade. I    picked my child.  I'd never realized that as much as we as humans like to think that we think logically, a lot of our emotions and actions are motivated my emotion and pride. This game really shined a light on that part of my character. Even a fellow classmate expressed the emotional difficulty in decision making through this game.  I    think that games like this can definitely be beneficial, if not for teaching empathy, then for teaching you about yourself.

Week 8- This is A Game

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I    always considered games, specifically video games,  to be this mindless thing that people do for entertainment, a waste of time and brainpower.  Growing up, I    was never much of a video game kind of girl, I'd rather play games like Monopoly, and Dominoes, games that forced actual human interactions. This was before technology became a thing that no one can function without. When the iPod touch came out, that is when I    realized that I    did like video games, handheld ones. Tap Tap Revolution and Temple Run sucked in my whole generation.  Then Kim Kardashian happened. She revolutionized the shallowness of social media and the addictive qualities of game play and designed Kim Kardashian Hollywood. I    lived and breathed this game for at least 3 months consecutively.  In class my group played the Little Alchemy game. Another addicting game. I    was hellbent on discovering/creating new things. It gave me a new take on game play as well as unco