Final Project: Historic Boston Reference Materials

For this assignment, I gathered historically accurate maps of Boston from the time of the American Revolution, which took place between 1765 and 1783, and the Boston Tea Party, which took place on December 16th, 1773. With these dates, I was able to find a few maps of Boston from the time period of 1750-1790.

I was able to find one map that stated at 1:5, 760 scale. From looking at these maps in detail, I was able to find some important made made structures, such as schools, piers on the harbor, and many buildings, as well as important natural structures such as Boston Common and the location of the Charles River. Following are the links to my reference materials, coming from a historical online map database, and harvard.edu

http://maps.bpl.org/id/12106

http://maps.bpl.org/id/10913

http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/3293943?buttons=y

http://maps.bpl.org/id/10916

Class 10: Facebook Events As An "Opt-In" Form of Collaboration

For this assignment, I joined the Facebook group located at https://www.facebook.com/events/1432080547091871/. Anyone can do so simply by clicking the "Join" button! I then shared this event by clicking the "invite" dropdown box and selecting the Facebook group I'd like to share it in. Following are some screenshots of the process!

Class 10: Instagram As A Collaboration Tool

In another class I took here at Boston College, (A marketing class with Prof. Nick Nugent) we learned that we are currently in “the decade of Instagram”. What that means is that Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform and one of the most popular in terms of marketing. If a company or team wanted to collaborate using Instagram as a platform, it would be easy for a few reasons. The first and biggest is the use of hashtags, which can easily group things into categories, and another is the ability for more than one person to run a single account. With the combination of these two, a team could consistently be posting and hash tagging on instagram which would help get their name out and possibly begin a much bigger marketing process.

Instagram is also widely used for a similar reason by individual people such as celebrities. Individuals can market their own products, or create posts to build their fan bases by using Instagram and hashtags.

Instagram is a photo sharing  social media venue.  It has a number of features: There is instant sharing to social media sites with unlimited upload capabilities.  It also allow “tag” capabilities like facebook where you can provide information on the pictures.  I tend to use instagram a lot more than snapchat as instagram allows comments to be posted back and forth which adds to the collaborative nature and benefit of the application.  

Instagram is known as an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that allows users to take photos and videos. Also, it allows users to share those photos on a variety of social networking platforms, including Facebook, Tumblr, and etc. One unique feature of Instagram is that photos are confined in a square shape, which looks similar with Polaroid images. The maximum duration for videos is 15 seconds. In December 2013, Instagram introduced a new feature called “Instagram Direct” which has a feature of sharing photos with a specific user or group of users. Similar with a privacy setting of Facebook, Instagram users can change the setting so that photos are not viewable by general public.

Users can share photos only with people who follow them. If users want to share photos or video clips with users who do not follow them, that recipient will get an alert that photos/clip has been shared.

Class 10: Snapchat As A Collaboration Tool

In one of the recent snapchat updates, they added a feature that allows friends to transfer cash to one another. Snapchat partnered with a company called Square Cash. Square cash is a money transferring app that allows you to transfer money to your friends quick and easy if you don’t have cash in hand. To do this you must first make an account with Square Cash. Once you have an account all you have to do is go to the text chat page of Snapchat and type a dollar sign ($) followed by a numerical value. It will then ask for confirmation before transferring the money to it’s desired destination. For example, if I wanted to send a dollar to a friend of mine, I would go to a blank text chat page on Snapchat, find their username, and send them a message that reads “$1.00.” Once I confirm that I want to send a dollar to that particular friend, it would transfer into their account.

One of the features that was launched last fall is called “my story” which is an interface that lets users share multiple snaps with all of their friends in a feed that will not disappear for 48 hours. Now it is expanded to the “our story” feature.

Snapchat is a great way to communicate with friends, posting pictures and videos creating a great collaborative environment that does not get old as it expires quickly.  As many have said, one picture is worth a thousand words,the messages come across to give it context.  The flexibility of having this social media tool on the iphone makes the use very easy. It is a good venue but I have to say I like instagram better as it is a better ”collaborative” too.  Snapchat has a great financial tool as well called snapcash.

Also in a recent snapchat update, the ability to video chat live with another person was added to the software. Previously snapchat only supported sending photographs and videos up to 10 seconds long, but now with the video chat feature snapchat can become a quick conference collaboration tool. A video chat on snapchat can be opened in only a few seconds, and closed immediately, removing any signing into skype or other video chat software, and can even be quicker than facetime on iPhones because connection can happen much faster, and the other person does not have to have an iPhone.

One piece of information about snapchat that I did not know came from team Dartmouth’s report and told how the app itself was made by three Stanford University students. This is an example of what a simple collaboration project can become.

Class 9: Boston Tea Party Ship

For this assignment, I finished up the boat my teammates and I have been working on in minecraft, it did not need much work, just some sails and ladders to finish the actual building and then some decorative touches.

Class 9: Immersion2015 Outreach

For this assignment, I shared iEDs Facebook video that showed a form of video game that may be possible with virtual reality glasses in the near future. Below are some screenshots of my posts, and at the very bottom is the video itself. If anyone hasn't seen it and is into gaming, check it out its less than 2 minutes long and it is crazy!

Class 9: Collaborative Web Pages With TogetherJS

For this assignment, I met up online with my buddy John Collins from class and we started looking at the TogetherJS website. This site offers a way to do things online together such as watch youtube videos and even plan out a grocery list. Here are some screenshots of what John and I did on the website.

To begin, we met in an audio whiteboard and loaded the togetherJS website. After looking around we found the apps section and I learned how to invite John to use these apps with me.

The first app we used was one for groceries! And here we have our list of milk, cheese, bacon, pickles, and water... because what else could you possibly need?

Next, we loaded the mad libs app but could not really figure it out, so we decided to do the other two instead.

This is the drawing app, pretty straight forward and fun.

And last but not least, we watched the Gangnam Style video together!

Class 9: Google Docs HTML Files

For this assignment, I learned how to save a Google Doc as an HTML file as well as how to upload it to Boston College's "myfiles" available in agora. From there, there is a way to create a ticket (link) for the file you upload to be viewed by the public in HTML format. I chose my Google Glass report to upload to myfiles and create a ticket for.
Below is the link or "ticket" to view my uploaded report, as well as some screenshots of my process using BC myfiles

link: https://wfs.bc.edu/xythoswfs/webui/_xy-22446973_1-t_dWhsA0Ak

Class 9: My own Prezi Presentation

For this assignment, I created my first Prezi presentation on my favorite Immersion2015 report I wrote previously for this course. My favorite technology report was my report on Google Glass. Below are some screenshots of the process I went through creating this Prezi!

Below is my prezi, embedded to this post.

Class 9: My Favorite 3 Prezi Presentations

I signed up for the free prezi account and browsed some of the ones on the website, here are a few screenshots of my favorite three!

Class 9: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

I watched a few videos which explained some basics of writing Hypertext Markup Language as well as what it actually is. What I learned is that HTML is every computer/smartphone/tablets way of displaying what you see on the screen. The actual HTML that makes a web page look the way it does is much less visually pleasing than what we see when we load the webpage. Although it looks somewhat complicated, the videos I watched explained how it is really not so bad.

This is a screenshot of the first video I watched (it is embedded at the bottom of this post) that explained what HTML is and what updates it has gone through. The most up to date version of HTML is 4.01, and is supported by all web browsers. The video also highlighted that when browsers are made and updated, companies put in a lot of work to make sure that all HTML is supported. It closed by explaining how HTML5 is in the works!

The second video explained the basics of how to write in HTML form. It is similar to what we did in a different one of my classes which involved watching tutorials on how to write code to control turtles on the screen and make them eat lettuce. HTML uses what are called tags at the beginning and end of every action, for example a paragraph would start with <p> and end with </p>. This is what tells the computer where to begin a paragraph and where the paragraph ends. Many other functions can be performed in this same way, all of which come together to make a web page display look the way it does.

Below are the videos I watched.

Class 9, Collaborative Building in Minecraft

During class tonight, we were on a minecraft server building stuff together to practice for the things we will be building for the final project.

 I helped make the walkway seen above that goes from the greenhouse to the new area where we all started building.

 I made this little pool and diving board next to the foundation of the house we began building, and below I added some gold around the big X another student made.