Class 12: Google Drive Folders

For this assignment, I had to create a folder in my Google Drive and add files to it dealing with the Immersion 2015 Outreach. Here are some process screenshots of how I did it.

The first thing to do is click where it says "New" in red and then select folder from the top of the list that is provided.

After that, I named the folder "Immersion 2015 Outreach" and clicked "create"

Finally, I put some of our class Immersion Outreach documents into this folder simply by finding them and then click + dragging them into the folder. I have a few Google Docs that contain researcher contacts, as well as a Google Spreadsheet that we used for Facebook groups dealing with Immersion.
Here is a sharable link to view my folder: https://drive.google.com/a/bc.edu/folderview?id=0B_q29QgiquC0fkQteF93dWdxeExzUU9fNW03ekFrcndxQ1RVN3JSd0d2ckV4ODNDbUgtSjA&usp=sharing

Class 12: What is Google Drive?

Google Drive is Google's response to the popular trend of companies offering cloud based storage to their users. Apple has the popular "iCloud", Microsoft has Microsoft Cloud and OneDrive, and Google's version of all of this is called "Google Drive". Google Drive has a bunch of features that can all come in handy in business environments as well as academic or simply for personal use. All someone needs to do to have their own Google Drive is create a free Gmail (Google E-mail) account and one will be set up and waiting for you with 5 free gigabytes of cloud storage to use any way you'd like.

A wonderful feature of Google Drive is its simple and easy to use connection and compatibility with all of Google's other apps. For example, above I've put a picture of one of my Google Drives (This is the one I use for all my school work which is linked to my Boston College gmail account), as we can see, most of the files I have here on my home page are Google Docs files (Google's word processor app) and a few Google Slides files (Googles presentation app, much like Microsoft PowerPoint). From my Google Drive I can see all of these files, and open them, along with the program that runs them with one simple click.

On the left side of the screen when Google Drive is open, there are a few options to click, one being "Shared With Me". By clicking this, a new screen will open that has only files that were shared with you by other people, thus making Google Drive a very versatile and easy to use collaboration tool as well as personal tool. Here in my Shared With Me section we can see multiple Google Docs that Prof. Walsh has shared with me for this class, which make them easy for me to find and keep track of. There is also a Google Slide that was shared with me by a fellow student where we had to do a group presentation as our final, this of course made it much easier for our group to add/edit the presentation and all be on the same page when it came time to present.

A few other useful features of Google Drive include the "starred" folder. By clicking the star on any of your Google files, they will immediately be put in this folder to make them easy to find and access. There is also a "recent" folder, which of course makes it easy to find something you may have just been working on the day before rather than search through all of your files to find it. And lastly, down in the bottom left corner on the Google Drive homepage, it will tell you how much of your cloud storage you have used, which serves as a constant reminder so that you don't wind up running out at an inconvenient time. What happens when you finally run out? You may be wondering and the answer is simple; Google will then offer you additional storage space for a fee much smaller than the cost of the average flash drive, and exponentially less than the cost of an average external hard drive to plug into the computer (without any of the hassle of transporting it).

Immersion 2015 Outreach (Bent's Fort AND Impact of VR)

For this assignment I shared two iED Facebook posts with my Facebook and google plus groups that I found. Here is a few screenshots:

Final Project: My First Old Boston Building

For this assignment, I entered the world that I created in World Painter and built a building to scale in the proper location. I chose to build the Old South Meeting House which is located on the corner of what would be "Milk Street". This is the building where the Boston Tea Party was planned.

 First thing to do was clear out some of the annoying grass that grows in minecraft, reason being sometimes it will prevent you from putting a block in certain places (where flowers are for example) so clearing most of the area helps with building.

 Next was the foundation of the building, using dimensions that fit the scale of the world I created in World Painter.

 Next I built the roof up at an angle from each side so they would meet exactly in the middle and the roof would not be lop-sided.

 After this I built the tower that is located in the front of the building, and is roughly 1.5 times the height of the rest of the building.

 Next it was time for windows!

 Here I used black blocks to represent the clocks that are located on both sides of the tower, right below the top window.

 Here I punched some holes and spaced them out. I would later fill in these in with glass to make the side windows

 Next, same thing on the other side

 Just a nice sunset pic when my windows were complete.

Last, I added the final entrance located on the right side of the building and my old south meeting house was done! Compare to a picture of the actual old south meeting house seen below.

Some of the more rounded things like the clocks and oval tops of the windows are difficult to make in minecraft being it is constructed completely out of squares, but this was my best effort! Hope you all like it.

Final Project: My 4 Hours With World Painter

For this assignment, I had to use the World Painter software we downloaded to construct a replica of geographical Boston, circa 1700s. I must admit this software was difficult to use, and I am still not comfortable using it, I more or less had to revert back to a trial and error style of building which consumed a lot of time, but at the end I think it looked pretty close to the map of old Boston I was referencing while building. Here are some process screenshots:

 I began with a blank, generated World Painter map which can been seen above. These maps come full of random hills and things of that nature, so the first thing I did was smooth out the whole terrain, which can be seen below.

 Next, I began raising the outskirt of the Boston landmass so that I could fill the outside part of it with water, which is a key factor in this project looking realistic.

 Here I finally have the Boston shaped land mass and have filled the outside with water. Next I would have to add the roads that go through Boston as precisely as I could, so that later building areas could be located in the correct place.

 Here I've completed some main roads that ran through Boston at the time. I did so by referencing the maps we used in our class Google Doc. The large open area in the top left side of the map will eventually become a virtual representation of Boston Common.

Lastly I added more of the smaller roads to help identify where I was while walking around (usually flying for an arial perspective) in minecraft. This helped me locate the building ground for my replica of the old south meeting house which I will detail in my next post.

Immersion 2015 (cfp)

For this assignment, I had to share the Immersion call for speakers event with the groups I have joined on Facebook by using the "invite" feature and then choosing to share the event in a group. At the time I shared these, there were 19 "going" members in the group. Here are a few screenshots of me sharing.

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