dmosley3 – ENG 151.ON1 Spring 2017

Final

Zoology is a virtual game that can be played with an Oculus Rift headset or google cardboard. Its objective is to raise awareness to the tightly compiled spaces, night cages, and poor living conditions animals endure while living in zoos, circuses, and aquariums. The zoo segment is inside chapter 1. The game begins with the player being a zookeeper. The goal is for the zookeeper is to rescue all the animals in the zoo within 30 hours. Doing so, the zookeeper will encounter a series of mini games that will teach the player how to rescue each type of animal. Once all the animals are out of the zoo, the zookeeper will drop all the animal off at a set location, built within the game. Then the player will be able to advance to chapter 2. Chapter 2 will be the same concept but now the zookeeper will be rescuing animals from the circus. Finally, will be Chapter 3 where the zookeepers mission is to rescue all fish in the aquarium and return them back to the ocean. All in all, this game will be educational and entertaining, and a fun way to learn about animals and animal cruelty.

The whole idea of keeping animals in zoos can have positive and negative impacts. There has been examples of animal cruelty inside of zoos. Many cruelty treated zoo animals experience negative changes in behavior. The New York Times Upfront stated, “Zoos provide animals with few opportunities to engage in natural behavior and little mental stimulation. In these artificial, restricted conditions, animals may have a mental breakdown and develop “zoochosis”–a form of psychosis that can cause them to sway or pace continually, chew on their own limbs until they bleed, or pull out their own fur or feathers” (New York Times Upfront, “Are Zoos Ethical?”). This article is stating that zoo animals can experience detrimental mental effects from living in the zoo that can cause them to hurt themselves. Worland stated, “….. giving new insights into how they may suffer from anxiety and depression when they are removed from nature” (Worland, “The Future of Zoos”). Worland is stating that the zoo animals are also suffering from anxiety and depression just from living in captivity.

When releasing the animals back into the wild, they might have trouble adjusting to life outside of captivity. Morell Virginia stated, “The young science of reintroduction biology is struggling to map out those strategies for success” (Virginia, “Into the Wild: Reintroduced Animals Face Daunting Odds”). Virginia is insisting that zoo animals have not been very successful in adjusting to their new lives after being released. We should release the animals into the preserves or sanctuaries to help them be able to survive. We should track the animals and monitor them every once and awhile so they don’t struggle with adjusting to a new lifestyle. As an alternative to people visiting zoos, we are offering people the ability to see and learn about the animals in the new virtual reality game that we have created. Our goal is to prevent all animals from behavioral changes, by teaching kids why and how places like zoos, circuses, and aquariums impact the animals lives

User Interface is the varying method of having interactive visuals for the user to respond to. Think of an iPhone; it’s easy to use because of it’s interface which includes legible text, icons, and colors that are attractive to the brain. In Zoology, we are able to navigate it by a main menu, which shows levels and settings. With your VR headset and haptic feedback gloves, you will have a holographic imagery of the main menu, settings, and you will be able to click what you want to do next by just reaching out. However, a cheaper and simpler alternative will include a joystick, and google cardboard. In the game, our goal is to educate about animals and life captive in the zoo. With the addition of a story and virtual graphics we are able to enrich that experience and add some fun.

The proper user experience comes with an easy navigational experience. The choices of using a joystick, haptic feedback gloves or a balance board. Joystick which is the common and more traditional game controller will have a twist in which instead of a screen that you look at, you will have goggles on to mimic the VR 3D effect. Nevertheless, users will not have the complete experience to feel like you’re in Zoology world, because it uses less resources and is less expensive. It can be used with consoles such as Sony’s playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox. Since Wii was built on the idea of user motion, we will try to improve its use of balance boards and joysticks to recreate a more realistic movement experience in the virtual world. According to research done in Comparing two types of navigational interfaces for Virtual Reality, Forty university students participated in this study. Results show that participants were more efficient when performing navigation tasks using the Joystick than with the Balance Board. This statement proves that the Balance board isn’t yet completely ideal for the accessibility when it comes to virtual reality. Haptic feedback is a tool that will be increase the effect of realism when playing console games.

Zoology is operated by a virtual headset and gloves set that can take you through the game with the menu options operation being apart of the headset. Additions on the prototype is adding more players to the game so that multiple people can rescue the animals and players will also be able to challenge one another. Past the prototype, the headsets will be able to sync to other headsets online, and around the world. Once headsets are able to sync around the world, multiple people will be able to choose options to rescue animals around the world from bad habitats.

The target audience of our Virtual Reality game are kids aged 5-12. However, our primary target market are the parents of the children, since they our the main contributors of household income. The Virtual Reality game will demonstrate animal cruelty in a way that’s not obvious. Also it will educate children on different types of species such as, the Rhinopithecus bieti, and the Short nosed sea snake. This game will allow kids to experience these animals first hand rather than to read about them. Its one of our long term goals to be able to sell our Virtual Reality game to public and private schools. This game can be used in animal science classes, or a Bioscience class. Our company feels with the VR game, schools will be able to incorporate it into their curriculum allowing students to be graded on the chapters they complete.

We will sell our game “Zoology” through different Application stores such as iTunes, Google Play, PlayStation 4, and XBOX One. For PlayStation 4 and XBOX One, the game will cost $23.99. People will have to use a VR headset to play the game on XBOX One and PlayStation 4. On the two applications store such as iTunes and Google Play, the game would only cost $2.99. Also, users will be able to use Google Cardboard to play the game on their phone. We will promote our game “Zoology” through various social media handles such as, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus, we will pay famous Youtubers gamers to promote our game on their channel. Also, we will create an advertisement to be played on Youtube and on Television which will consist of a video that demonstrates trailers of the different parts of the game. On top of that, when people explore different websites, they will have the ability to see the advertisement on the side of their webpage. Lastly, we will also create unique flyer to be hung at game shops and and featured in magazines like the National Geographic.

This game has potential to raise awareness about the intentions of zoos, circuses, aquariums and all animal captive environments. We believe this game will start making children have mixed emotions about these places. For instance author Lisa Uddin, stated in her book Zoo Renewal “what is it about zoos that provokes our bad feelings?” (Uddin). Children will realize watching animals suffer, and perform for human entertainment is not right. In addition, this game could influence a change in policy for these companies. For example, circuses can prohibit the use of animals, or zoos can change their concept and only be used for learning purposes of rare breed species. Only animals that are exotic and or going into extinction should be cared for at the zoo. On top of that, their environment should resemble the environment in the wild. Therefore each animal should have a large amount of space with trees and insects.

Nevertheless, this virtual game can also be therapeutic to people that have a zoo-phobia or a ophidio-phobia. Patients would be able to hold and interact with the animals that they have a fear of touching in the real world. Virtual Reality has been proven to be effective as a healing technique. It may not cure all animal fears, but it has the potential to reduce them.

All in all, this Virtual Reality game is a new and refreshing way to deal with social issues. This game will not only educate, but it will also teach children to be more empathetic towards animals. This game deals with an issue that not fully recognized enough by society. A lot of research went into making this game so we are sure this VR game will be successful.

References

“Are Zoos Ethical?”. New York Times Upfront, vol. 149, Issue 5, 21 November 2016, pp. 22.EBSCOhost, http://ezproxy.stevenson.edu:2063/eds/detail/detail?vid=7&sid=86c2b539-fbb7-46ac-9038-63fbb7f48f9d%40sessionmgr104&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=119640923&db=eue. Accessed 1 May 2017.

Teixera, Luis. “A VR360° player with enhanced haptic feedback.” VR360HD. ACM, n.d. Web. 10 May 2017. Web.http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2993404 Accessed 6 May 2017

Uddin, Lisa. “Zoo Renewal.” Project MUSE. University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Web. 10 May Web.https://muse.jhu.edu/book/39497. Accessed 6 May 2017

Virginia, Morell. “Into the Wild: Reintroduced Animals Face Daunting Odds.” ScienceMagazine, vol. 320, 9 May 2008, pp. 742-743. Web. http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/124/1247142843.pdf. Accessed 1 May 2017.

Worland, Justin. “The Future of Zoos.” Time, vol. 189, Issue 7/8, 27 February 2017, pp. 54-61. EBSCOhost, http://ezproxy.stevenson.edu:2063/eds/detail/detail?vid=5&sid=86c2b539-fbb7-46ac-903863fbb7f48f9d%40sessionmgr104&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=121318862. Accessed 1 May 2017.

Zoom

For many years, humans have been going to Zoos to stare at wild animals for their own entertainment. Animals are improperly cared for in zoos, aquariums, police forces, and circuses. According to Captive Animals Protection Society “African elephants in the wild live more than three times as long as those kept in zoos”(CAPS). Meaning humans are potentially endangering the lives animals. Also, zoos are killing animals. In a study found by Captive Animals Protection Society a zoo in Copenhagen killed a perfectly healthy giraffe (CAPS). Well, thanks to my new virtual reality game some awareness will be discussed in regards to zoos. The objective of the game Zoolo is to free all the animals in the zoo within 30 hours. In the game a picture of a animal will appear on the corner of the screen. It’s your job to read different chapters of the given animal manuel to know how to safely remove the animal from the zoo. For example, if a image of a snake appears, you will have to read chapter 12 of the manual to see what materials will be needed to complete this task. If you skip this step your virtual person can potentially die or get harmed. Once all the animals are rescued within 30 hours you must load them onto a truck and the GPS will guide you where to go. When the mission is complete you will move onto the next level. A timer will be prominent in the corner of the game and the pause function can be used. This game can be played using an Oculus Rift VR headset, or a google cardboard. The target market of this game are children aged 8-16. The purpose of this game is to educate kids on different animals. Some of the animals featured in the game will be rare species, and each chapter will provide a brief summary of each animal. In addition, this game will instruct kids how to correctly handle animals. The goal is to make children empathetic about what they see in the zoo. Children will witness the tightly compiled space, the night cages, and the poor living conditions the animals endure while living in zoos.

Sources

“10 facts about zoos.” Captive Animals Protection Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2017.

Sarnaí

I designed my avatar to look similar to me, but my alter ego. Since there is not many female gunters, I gave her glasses so she can fit the nerdy description and not be recognized in school. Also she has short hair so when she fights litches and bad guys it won’t be in her face.

Digital Reading, in a Digital Environment?

In U.S. history, I was taught Cuneiform, developed by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia in 3500 BCE was one the earliest forms of writing. Sumerians drew symbols on clay, metal, stone and wax to communicate, trade goods, track daily events, follow astronomy and write literature. Later, Egyptian hieroglyphs emerged in the Early Bronze Age, which soon contributed to the Latin Alphabet which Americans now refer to as the alphabet. All this goes to show that the world is continuously evolving and progressing. Especially, the technology in the school system. Classes no longer have rusty wooden desks and green chalkboards. Now, lectures and assignments are conducted on smartboards and projectors which teachers control by using computers. According to the article is “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” the author conveyed that because of technology like cellphones and email, we are reading more than we ever did in previous decades (Carr). Numerous debates have occurred recently on whether schools should promote digital reading or if students comprehend better from paper books. After completing thorough research, I believe digital reading is not detrimental, yet actually beneficial to how we comprehend literature for the future.

For starters, we live in digital age. Almost everything in the 21st century requires us to utilize our online sources. For instance, most test and quizzes in college and highschool are given electronically, also online classes are now offered for multiple subjects. Point Of Sale systems are in nearly every workplace, and Global Positioning Systems are built off the Internet. It is no surprise authors are shifting towards the E-book market. In fact, in the article “The Reading Brain In the Digital Age” the author claimed “e-books currently make up between 15 and 20 percent of all trade books sales”(Jabr). E-books are rising to popularity because of their convenience. When traveling, you can enjoy any book you please without the hassle of the weight of paper books. E-books are also accessible on many devices such as, Kindles, IPads, Tablets, computers and cellphones. Despite that, the dispute continuously arises concerning if a student comprehends texts better physically or electronically. Well, a study conducted by The University of Leicester found “ students scored equally well regardless of the medium, but differed in how they remembered the information”(qtd in Jabr). Therefore, this evidence proves that digital reading is not harmful to how we comprehend literature. Nevertheless, information retention can differ by the individual and study habits. With this intention, I hope that you can see that E-books may be more fitting for the school’s environment, and digital reading will not alter how students grasp literature.

Photo Credits: Nikos Pappa, Yannis Voutsalsas

In addition, the qualities people love most about books are now offered and enhanced onlined. Hyperlinks ultimately played a huge role in this. Hyperlink defined by the dictionary is “an electronic link providing direct access from one distinctive marked place in a hypertext or hypermedia document to another in the same or a different document” (Merriam-Webster). The most common excuse people prefer reading paper books oppose to online articles is because they typically feel that they can interpret text better when it is written on paper. However hyperlinks provide readers with additional information supporting the text. For example, when clicking hyperlinks, a whole array of information can appear ranging from graphics, videos, definitions, and even additional articles. All are very resourceful when writing research papers on subjects you have no prior knowledge of. In contrast, doing research from old-fashioned paper books will limit the amount of information that can be found, and may require you to search through other books which can be a tedious process. On top of that, in the article “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age” the author suggested that, “People also like to have as much control over a text as possible—to highlight with chemical ink, easily write notes to themselves in the margins”(Jabr). While the author is correct, I find annotating literature on paper useful as well, now thanks to websites like Hypothesis and Scribble.com this feature is available online. Readers are now able to highlight in various colors, write in the margins write and discuss articles globally for clarity or to view others stance. All in all, the Internet offers an extreme amount of resources that a paper book can not fulfill.

To demonstrate, I personally do not read paper books as much as I did in my early years, however I read more now because of the Internet than I did before. Social media outlets such as, Twitter, Facebook and blogs allow me to read without feeling obligated. If I am curious about what’s happening around the world economically, politically and socially all I have to do is type in keywords in the search engine and hundreds of articles with responses, and opinions appear. I could discover this same information reading a newspaper, but I never have the urge to since the newspaper only contains the article. Identically, with the dictionary and thesaurus, these books are always available in school, but would you rather flip through six-thousand plus pages to find one word, or just type in the word and get an answer in less than a minute? Not to mention, since, schools have promoted Internet use I have been able to take notes more efficiently, write stronger research papers and complete homework without the heavy load of several books. All beneficial for both teachers and students.

In conclusion, based off the information I gathered from previous articles I feel the education system should continue to adapt to the digital age. I feel we have already made a great deal of progress judging from the computers and access codes we have available in school. However, that is not enough. I was not aware that students are able to annotate online until my second semester in college. If I did not know, imagine the amount of other students who do not know this resource is available. Also, as I mentioned previously I am now capable to take more efficient notes in class. Teachers often convert their lessons into powerpoints which allows me to write down everything that’s important, and refer back to before taking a test. Whereas, in Statistics I find it very hard to take notes because my professor free hand writes his lessons and I often find his handwriting is hard to see and read. All in all, technology should continue to be used and enhanced in our education system.

Reading & Writing

Daria Mosley

Have you ever been given a difficult writing topic and thought to yourself “How am I going to write this paper?” Well that’s my life in a nutshell as a college student enrolled in English 151. January 26, 2017 my English professor; Allison Licastro assigned my class the task of writing a personal narrative of how we all learned how to read and write. Sounds broad right? My first response was a little sarcastic because it’s obvious everyone learns to read and write naturally just like how we’ve learned our first language. However, thinking deeper that’s not how I learned to read and write, yeah I knew a lot of words when I was a child but that doesn’t mean I knew how to spell them or even how I broaden my vocabulary. Throughout my journey many people, classes and internet sources have played a role into my academic success. Surprisingly as most would think my journey started in Kindergarten.

At the age of five I attended Abundant Life Academy, located in Syracuse New York. If you assumed it is a Christian school, your right, yet I have no memory of learning anything related to the bible. To me, the school seemed more similar to a public school because I had one teacher who taught basic subjects like English and Math, and in between we’d have snack time, nap-time and show-n-tell. Nevertheless, going back to the matter of learning how to read and write my teacher, Mrs. Suzie did indeed teach me. My class was a pretty small size, I’d say there were about fifteen of us and all our desk were divided in rows. Mrs. Suzie’s desk was located in the back, but she always positioned a chair in front of the class when she taught. During English, she would write one syllable words on flash cards and together the class would repeat the term aloud. I clearly recall learning the words my, me, day, be and to. She taught us how to say them and how to properly use them in a sentence. Later came the two syllable words such as, Monday, seven, picture, music and apple. She taught us two syllable words visually by giving us pictures of the word and we would have to write and spell the word under the picture. I feel that method was very effective because not only did I know how to spell and pronounce the word, now I also knew what adults were referring to when the words were said. I must admit Abundant Life Academy was an impressive school. Not only did we learn how to read and write sentences, we also learned how to write in cursive. I always had seen cursive around the house for instance, letters on the kitchen table, papers on my Dad’s night stand and sticky notes on the refrigerator. Although, I seen it everywhere I never understood what was actually written, so I just figured it was some weird kind of adult language. All students were given a blue book that was devoted to cursive. The beginning consisted of writing out the alphabet from lowercase to uppercase letters then came writing basic sentences like “The dog is brown.” My cursive was not in any way the neatest especially the letters S and Z but after Kindergarten I never had to write in cursive again. Until this assignment I never realized how beneficial Kindergarten actually was for my reading and writing journey. However, after reading book Tyrell by Coe Booth the way I viewed literature changed forever.

Cursive.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cursive.JPG. March 6, 2017

Throughout elementary and middle school I was an active reader. I loved books from Roald Dahl and Judy Blume in fact, Are you there god? Its me, Margaret. was one of my favorite books for a long time. Every night I dedicated at least an hour or two, to reading chapter books. Plus they would help me fall asleep. Every book I read had a similar storyline. Either the character was going on a quest where at the end he or she would have learned a lesson, or the character was a female who would soon find a love interest and from there a story would form. After reading mostly every book of my shelf I relocated to where my mom kept her books. She suggested the book Tyrell was a good read, but after looking at the cover I felt a little intimidated because for once the character on the front was not animated. Despite the appearance of the book, the summary on the back seemed interesting so I decided to give it a try. The first line of chapter one was “When I pick Novisha up from school, she actin’ all weird and shit” I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Not only did the character curse, but he used slang that I used too. Also Tyrell main goal was to provide for his brother because his mother was in and out of their lives. The book’s language was so current that I didn’t even feel like I was reading a book, more like I was there. I couldn’t put the book down, I finished all 307 pages in three days. It never occurred to me that authors could express sexual events and inappropriate words in literature until I read that book. I was always under the impression stories had to be appropriate so everyone could enjoy. Now knowing that writing didn’t have to be relatable or suitable to everyone I was open to reading more controversial stories that could change my way of thinking and writing.

Booth, Coe. Tyrell, coebooth.com, January 31, 2017

Finally, I want to fast forward to my freshman year of college to explain how public speaking reinforced the way I wrote. I know what you’re thinking, “how could public speaking possibly strengthen my writing” well behind every good speaker is a great writer. In this class we had to do an informative speech, argumentative speech, commemorative speech, a debate and an inspirational speech. The first rule my professor John Castagna taught me was to write a speech that my audience would relate to, so my informative speech focused on the importance of sleep for college students. I informed them how a lack of sleep could impact their lives, socially, mentally and physically. I even gave my class advice on how to improve their sleeping habits. In addition, I learned how to write attention grabbers in the introduction and depending on the topic I needed to establish credibility immediately. The class taught me how to make my writing conversational so the students would not feel obligated to listen to me, but they would gain knowledge every time I spoke. Also, I learned how to deliver a message persuasively by using expert opinions, comparisons and considering the opposed point of view, then giving an alternative. Public speaking molded me to keep in mind why should the audience care. What’s the point of telling a story or relying a message that the audience will not remember? So now, I try to write in a way that’s memorable and to choose topics I am most passionate about to I can display that energy in my writing.

Photo by: Pete Souza. President Barack Obama and Jon Favreau, head speechwriter, edit a speech on health care in the Oval Office, Sept. 9, 2009,

All in all, this assignment wasn’t as hard as I thought. Many other sources contributed to my reading and writing skills such as, dictionary.com, TED.com, Web articles and critics from previous English teachers. Ultimately, I feel Kindergarten provided me with basic knowledge, Tyrell allowed me to view literature with a different perspective and public speaking influenced me to write with a purpose. Considering I am only a freshman, I have much room for improvement, so I’m hoping taking this English course will enhance my critical thinking and polish my writing.