Digital Humanities – Spring 2018

A system I interact with on a daily basis is college, specifically my major in early childhood/childhood education. Those who are not in this major may not know that it is a rigorous program, with many specific requirements. I became a student at SUNY Cortland my sophomore year, as I transferred from a private college close to my home. Although I was an education major at both schools, I could not begin to fathom the difference in the programs. While both are revered programs, in my opinion, SUNY Cortland’s is better by far. I am so amazed and lucky to be receiving so much preparation for my future as an educator, as I believe my experiences here are going to take me far in the real world for decades to come.

Although I adore this program and all that it entails, it definitely would have benefited me to have a critical reading of what I was walking into when I transferred. When I was younger, I had always been told that college was a place to explore all of your vast interests, and to take any and all courses that excite you to discover what it is you truly want to do in life. Although I believe college is a place to discover who you are, it is definitely not one where you can just take courses willy nilly just because they sound fun, unless you want to be in college for ten years and amass hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. As I said, when I entered SUNY Cortland, I had already been an education major, and I had a few education courses and prerequisites already under my belt. However, I soon discovered that schools can accept whatever courses they want to and leave the others in the dust; therefore, only half of the credits that I had taken counted for something, and the rest counted as elective credit. I had been told by my first adviser that there was absolutely no chance of me graduating on time, which made absolutely no sense to me; wasn’t this only my second year of college? How could I be so far behind? Well, it turns out I was right, and the adviser that I received the next year informed me of the options that I had. Yes, I would have to take three courses over summer and winter sessions, but I would graduate on time. Anyway, coming back from that long tangent, it would have been extremely useful for me to have a critical reading of the options that I had and didn’t have within this program, the courses I would have to take and how useful they would or wouldn’t be, the placements I would be in and how much more beneficial they would be than any education class I would ever take. As my younger sister plans to attend SUNY Cortland when it is her time for college, I will assure that she is taking with her all that I have learned throughout my time, with the hopes that she will make mistakes and learn so many things for herself, but that she will have me as her backbone.

A new game that I tried playing is a new app called SUP Racing. It is a racing game where you select what type of car you wish to drive. They come in all different sizes and styles with attributes specific to each individual vehicle. By racing and winning, you earn coins and are able to upgrade your vehicle. You can unlock new skins as well as power ups to boost your performance. After you gain enough experience in the game, you can build your own race tracks and actually race against other people on them. It is interesting to play because you are on a server and playing against other real people. The game did eventually get boring and I stopped playing but I think a little kid would definitely get addicted to this type of game, and would probably even spend their parents money on extra coins to upgrade sooner than later. I give the game a 5.8/10.

 

Peter McKasty

Digital Mapping has many benefits, one being it allows for new questions to be asked. When new questions are asked then new research can be done to answer those questions which in the end will give us new data on a subject that probably was not explored further because of earlier findings. In general, digital mapping allows us to see trends or patterns that we as historians or humanists would not have seen by reading text. The visual aspect of it is what I think helps to benefit the user the most because you can interact with the data in a whole new way using websites like carto and applying that newly found data to the subject being research. Digital Mapping is a tool that can open many doors and create new ones that were once shut.

The game I played that I have never played before was the game Word Connect on iOS. It is a word creation game where you have to connect a series of letters to make words that fill in the empty blocks. I have played plenty of word games before but this one was different in the way you created the words and how to move on throughout levels. It got more and more challenging as I progressed through it and again the basic premise of the game is to build words. There were also other modes where you can do crosswords. As for relating it to the class, the game does a good job of having the player use their critical thinking skills to get through these challenges and it also can be a good teaching tool where you can create a game that has a whole bunch of history terms and connect them to the right time period or lesson.

What systems do you interact with in your day-to-day life that would benefit from a critical reading, and what would that reading look like?

 

The systems I interact with on a day-to-day basis that I think would benefit from a critical reading would be my PS4 and snapchat. I interact with these systems every single day, I am a big console player and always have been since I was little. I played all the playstation systems from ps1 all the way to the new ps4. I think a critical reading that showcases the benefits of the system and how its social norms reflect society would be a great topic to research. Why people are drawn to consoles and why people would rather play a soccer video game than going outside and playing the actual sport.

The same can be said for Snapchat. This app can be found on the Apple Store as well as many other devices. It is a way to stay connected on a personal level with friends who you don’t see everyday because they can be apart of what you’re doing and you can be apart of what they’re doing. That is what I think attracts people the most to it, that connivence of feeling connected to those that aren’t necessary in your personal circle or live close to you where you can see them often. A critical reading on this app would be very beneficial to understand the human need of connectivity and how society relies on the need of acknowledgment from others. Both these systems are very important to me and being able to have a critical reading on both could lead me to more research on people and the influence of the system.

 

-JP Ospina

If I could create any game in the world, I would create the “How to Get Away with Murder” board game. This board game would be based almost identically on the TV show.

This board game would be unlike many others in the sense that it would have virtual reality “stopping points” where the player would have to successfully finish a challenge within virtual reality before continuing with the board game.

The virtual reality aspect of the game is when the player is being interviewed by law enforcement regarding a crime, and when a player is trying to “cover-up” their crime. The board game would also be story-based, meaning that as players move along they have the ability to make certain choices that could change the outcome of the game.

In order to “win” or complete the game, a player would have to make it through without persecution for all of the events through season three of the show. This means that they will have to outsmart the players who are the detectives, and successfully cover-up the crimes they committed.

This game would be made for large crowd numbers to play. Players could choose to be one of Annalise Keating’s law students, Annalise, or her two business partners Bonnie and Frank. Players could also choose to be a detective, the ADA, other lawyers or even Nate.

Because the game is multimodal, you would need to enter in to the game system which player you’ve chose, and as you play along you need to digitally enter components of the game in. In certain parts of the game, you would have holograms pop-up and explain the plot of the story and the holograms would show video footage of what is going on throughout the game (the video would be from the TV show).

I would hire actual gamers to help my vision come to life because I did not realize how difficult it could be to explain a vision without knowing any of the technical jargon surrounding game making.

EH