Ice-breaker Game

I was inspired by the group presentation about Ice-breaker which I think is very interesting, so I went online and searched ice-breaker games and found this one!

Ice-breaker – Electric Shock Game

• Ask students stand in a circle and hold hands with their neighbors from both sides (leave enough space outside the circle for people to run around the circle)
• Ask all students to close their eyes
• The instructor will touch someone’s head and that person will be an “electric generator”
• The “electric generator” will squeeze the hands of his/her neighbors (both sides)
• Once the student’s hand gets squeezed, he/she will continue to “pass the electric current” by squeezing the neighbor’s hand, and so on: if students A gets squeezed on his left hand, he will squeeze the hand of his neighbor on the right side
• As the “electric current” transfers along the circle, there will be a student whose both hands get squeezed, then he/she will be the one who gets “electric shock”. Therefore, he/she will shout out “Electric shock!” After he/she shouts out, his/her neighbors (both sides) will start running around the circle in different directions
• Once they start running outside the circle, the instructor will take up one of the two positions that the runners leave
• Two runners will compete for the remaining position 
• The loser will stand in the circle and shout out his/her self-introduction (or let him/her sing a song)

iMovie Experience

I really learnt a lot from doing the movie assignment by using iMovie. This was my first time using iMovie to make a short clip. It is very easy to use and offers many great functions. I tried different functions, including changing the time of picture displaying, using Ken Burns, adding text, and adding transitions. I also add music for this movie to make it more interesting and fun. 

Although for this class, we were only requested to use photos to make a movie, I have already used iMovie to edit a video for my other class. I imported a video from my iPhone and tried to edit it by adding text, transitions, images and music. I felt excited after I finished editing my video and really appreciated this class in which I learnt a lot and made some progress on technology.

Group Projects

Go and Check Our PAGE - JIRMFACTORY!

http://jirmfactory.weebly.com/?fb_action_ids=10152908764530488&fb_action_types=weeblyapp%3Ashare

For the final group project, we made a website by using Weebly. It was a really interesting and fun experience. We decided to do a website introducing what we can do and enjoy at NYU. Everyone contributed to the website by sharing the information that is useful and related to NYU students. We shared the information for restaurants, bars, recreation places, and many other resources that students can try at NYU.  We also made videos and used the skills that we learnt from this class and uploaded to our website so that everyone can watch it. I really enjoyed doing this project, since I not only learned how to make a website through Weebly, but also knew lots of information about NYU through doing the research by myself and reading my group members' sharing. 

Colleagues' Websites

I chose the websites of my group members - Isaiah, Ryan and Mariam. 

Isaiah chose the same background picture (or color?) for every page, which is very coherent and distinctive. He also chose funny pictures for his website and always has creative ideas about each assignment. However, I wish he could add more technical description on some assignment pages, especially for animation assignment and movie assignment. Also, it would be better for him to add the link to "Assignment Page" on each assignment page.

http://irb236.altervista.org

Mariam's website is a very standard one. She has very simple but clear structure for each page. She did a great job for each assignment. But same thing about Mariam's website as Isaiah's: if there were more technical description on some assignment pages, it would be better. 

http://mariamchebly.altervista.org

I really like the color that Ryan chose for his website, which is very relaxing and makes me feel comfortable to watch. Ryan also gives the link to our group page (which I also did) on his home page. I really like his Image assignment page, on which he chose a very cute picture and tried many interesting effects for the photo.

http://ryanbuchanan.altervista.org/index.html 

NYU Classes Platform

NYU Classes Platform is better designed and organized than many other NYU websites. It is very straightforward and easy to use. The different tags are very clear listed on the left side, and well functioning. 

However, I feel that many elements on this platform were not sufficiently used. For example, I never used "Calendar" or "Site Groups" and have no idea what these are for. 

Experience of using different browsers

Internet explorer: 

This is the first browser that I used and it is usually for the windows system. The speed is not that fast and it got frozen sometimes. 

Safari:

This is the one that I'm using now since I bought a Macbook Air. Its speed is faster than IE. The tool bar is concise and easy to use.  But sometimes it quits for no reason.

Chrome: 

It is similar to Safari. Fast speed, easy to use. Also, there are some softwares that can only be installed for Chrome, such as "Unblock Youku" (which is a software only for Chrome used for unblocking some websites). 

Firefox:

Slower than Safari and Chrome (but I'm not sure if it is because I use it on Mac).