Technology Game Board

The Technology Game Board is where fun and new(ish) activities are started. I mean, I guess I can put it that way.  The layout for it is like a box, and we basically have to complete most of the boxed assignments in the box, though they all use technology, and- like I mentioned before- are fun and new.

Here's a table of contents for if you would like to find a certain section. Press ctrl and f at the same time, and insert the title in the box to go to that section. The first result will be the titles I inserted here, so just click the down arrow (˅) to find the actual section.

1. The Silhouette Assignment and what it says about me
2. A tour of Lorbeer Middle School, featuring your fellow children Eloisa and Christabella
3. Coding and the emotions it brings
4. Pablo Picasso (and making a head too)
5. How Voki works ft. cheese
6. Magnetic Poetry
7. Google holds too much geographical knowledge
8. I express my musical creativity
9. What is stuff? (a crash course in history)
10. Making those spicy GIFS
11. Observations on websites and being the salesman I naturally am
12. The old Taylor is gone because I customized my blog (not clickbait)
13. More about me because you haven't had enough
14. Literally my life explained in one day using an infographic

Now onto the assignments, hope you enjoy. I know I did. 

The Silhouette Assignment and what it says about me, 9/10/18

I really did enjoy this one, because, as I hope you know, I love myself dearly, and what's a better way to express that than this assignment? The assignment is a little bit self explanatory- I mean, the word silhouette is in it, and we all know what silhouette means, but if you don't- or just because I want to be fancy- here's Google telling us.

sil·hou·ette

ˌsilo͞oˈet/

verb

 1. cast or show (someone or something) as a dark shape and outline against a lighter background.

Anyways, that's what we had to do. Just make a silhouette of ourselves and put five nice adjectives that describe us, as well as our names, on that silhouette. Let me show you the step by step process of me doing this, because it is very interesting, and you will be interested.

1. Eloisa attempted to take a picture of me during my second period class, which is History (so Mrs. Crutchfield). However, when uploading this picture, I found out that it didn't really work when I tried to make it into a silhouette, so step two will explain what I did. I love cliffhangers that don't work on topics like these.

Here's the image Eloisa took of me (that's right Eloisa, I'm putting you on the spot ). As you can see, the sky is barely there because I'm short. Also, you can see the confusion and fear on my face.

2. Since my plan backfired, I used Plan B, which I always have because my plans almost always backfire. Plan B is my mom- who does not have a blog link, sorry mom- taking a picture of me in our glorious neighborhood. It was awkward. Did it work, though? Yes. I'm not going to show the picture because for some reason I don't find it necessary, but I will show you the editing process.

I did this

Then I did this:

Those three adjustments I did caused this:

3. The completed look is just me adding my name- and I did it kind of fancily, so I smirked about it for ten minutes thinking about how clever I am. Then I added five adjectives, because I have to. The reason I chose these five adjectives you will see on the picture below this text is because they describe me. The reason I chose the fonts is because I felt like they were cool. Also, I don't really think I'm extremely idiosyncratic, I just really, really like that word. Here's an "ABOUT ME", adjectives addition.

-A tour of Lorbeer Middle School, featuring your fellow children Eloisa and Christabella, 9/11/18

Your homegirls Eloisa and I are yet again here to make some wigs fly. Together we have created what is possibly one of the most beautiful creations ever made. We combined our artistic forces to do a nice slide representing our school, Lorbeer. The slides contain six locations, all of which have images and descriptions. I think the part I put the most effort in was photoshopping our faces on this thing. Let me show you what I mean below, where a link to our slide will be provided as well as various images of our slide (and by various I mean, like, two). We took the pictures during Mrs. Crutchfield's class (second period). Our six locations were the library, balcony, mural (or downstairs hallway in the building), cafeteria, bathrooms, and office. To be honest, it was kind of awkward taking the pictures, but it was also great.

-LMS Tour Slide

Us combining our amazing skills and making this elegant front page

That's the only picture you immediately need to see. You can see all the other quality photos in our actual slide. If you don't, it's your loss. Your eyes would be disappointed that you wouldn't give in to the opportunity of seeing the most angelic and mesmerizing photographs in the world.

Coding and the emotions it brings, 9/12/18

There's this program called codeacademy.com. The name gives away its purpose, as it is a code academy. On this program, I learned the ways of Python. It was confusing, because I'm not great at coding, but I did enjoy it. There was a series of fourteen lessons. I learned about variables, and how you have to put quotation marks and parentheses on things after putting print. If you're confused, this would be an example:

1. print("ms hefler slays")

And if you're still confused about the format, this is what I've been doing.

print "Hello" + "Christabella"

The thing above is called a string. A variable in python is something that defines that the subject might change, hence the name variable. You can assign something to a variable, an example being numbers, like this:

product = 8*7

A comment is information you feel is important to include in your code. To make a comment, you would put the hashtag symbol and then your commentary, like this:

city_pop = 34000
# this variable is about the amount of people the city contains

That's all I have for coding. To be honest, I've never been good at coding, but it was fun to learn about python. It made me so very emotional to overcome my fear of coding. If you would like to learn something similar to this, then check out the website. 


Pablo Picasso (and making a head too), 9/12/18
Being an art student, I learned about Pablo Picasso last year in one of our sponges. I have to be clear, Pablo Picasso was an artist who was very influential, and he definitely changed the art world... however, there's so much other artists as well- but enough said. Like I mentioned literally a sentence ago, Picasso heavily inspired many other artists, and this is due to the fact that he co-invented the art form cubism. I learned a bit more about Picasso for this assignment than I did in art, and I found a really odd fact about him. Picasso's dad was a painter and an art teacher as well, which is probably why Picasso learned at such a young age how to paint beyond his years. That is not the interesting fact though, because I'm much more greater than that to give you a plain fact and call it interesting. What's interesting is that his dad quit doing art because of Picasso's immense talent, as he felt defeated that his own son was better than him. First of all, his dad needs to be more authoritative, because almost the whole population is better at art than I am, but that isn't going to stop me from doing it. As a person who always compares themselves to others in the subject of art, I can understand why he'd want to quit, but it just makes me feel sad that he gave up his passion that easily due to his son having the upper-hand.

Anyways, let's talk about what I have done. I've found out facts about Pablo Picasso, and used his painting Guernica as an example of his famous paintings because this was the painting we analyzed in our art sponge last year. The painting is about a town in Spain being bombed during a war, which happened in 1937 before the painting was made. Picasso wanted to spread awareness about it, which is why he made Guernica. It has a bit of an abstract newspaper feel to it.

Pablo's painting, Guernica

I mentioned in the title that I made a head "inspired" by Pablo Picasso. That I did. The website I used was picassohead.com. I would say that's one great name. Here's the head I made using the website:

So, there's really no serious or pretentious meaning behind it, despite the fact that I'm always pushing my pretentious personality on this blog. I know, I know, I'm sorry to disappoint, I just thought that colors would ruin the simple look I was going for, and I found a black and white scheme to be cool. That's really all. I guess if you want me to make a pretentious story about it, I could. That means I'm going to because I would like to. The two heads represent the many emotions I feel, with black representing my positive emotions and white representing my negative emotions. They intermingle to make a mixture of both, because throughout life that's what we all feel. There, I hope you enjoyed my Ted talk. 


How Voki works ft. cheese, 9/12/18
How do I put this? We had to use this site called Voki.com, and first I found it strange. But then I realized that they have this equal sign goddess, whose image I put on the left corner below this, as one of their characters and I understood.

 On a serious note, though, Voki is a website that you can use to present school assignments visually and vocally. You're probably wondering why, one, every time I explain a website it sounds like I'm advertising it, and two, how it can do this witchcraft. Well, I'll tell you both. To answer one, I'm just naturally a good salesman, but it comes at a price. To answer two, Voki has hundreds of characters you can choose from, including equal sign goddess, and you can make these characters speak by recording your own voice or using bots. You can also customize the character you choose. I enjoy using the bot voices because you can make them have a Scottish accent, British accent, or even an Australian accent. Fancy. Here's my two uses of Voki. For my first use, I shared a cheese poem made in under two minutes (real talent), spoken by cat. Here's the link for that (hint: click on the word link). Also the background they chose for this is Forbidden City, and I thought it was a kind of funny coincidence, because I went there this summer. Here's my second link. I just couldn't let equal sign goddess go to waste. Last, and least for this section, here is my cheese poem. You know you want to hear it.

Cheese is nice
It can be plain

Cheese with rice
Doesn't sound sane

Cheese can slice
But it cannot pain

I like cheese


Magnetic Poetry, 9/14/18
In this assignment, we were given a google drawing with a mixture of words such as unicorn, zing, and even gurgle, and had to make poetry with those words. I don't know about you, but I don't think I'd ever use the word gurgle in a poem, or zing. It was odd, but also fun, doing this assignment. I'm so used to keeping myself in a box of more professional sounding words when making poetry, and so I guess that's why it felt- I don't know- weird, for a bit. Of course, I still had to make a poem that sounded as obnoxiously pompous as possible, because it's me. I tried, but that doesn't mean I succeeded. Anyways, here's my poem. It's not as great as my cheese poem, though that's a hard standard to exceed. My cheese poem was absolutely flawless. 



Now, you can't really see it, so I'll just repeat it below here. Take in mind that I used all the words given only.

You are time
Those roses said an ocean
I dream a hot winter
Sleepy but sunshine
The happy freezing summer
Spring is sad
Rainbow love fall
Good zigzag brother
Jump unicorn sister
Ridiculous zing ice cream
Funny froggy gurgle mooooo

Zip

Notice how in the beginning I kind of tried, and later on I just combined words and laughed dumbly at the "sentences" I made for a few seconds. I guess it's nice to have a not serious assignment. I know this poem has obvious flaws, but just remember my cheese poem and it's all ok. I didn't know what to do with "zip" at the end, so I just literally put it at the end. I'm sorry if you feel offended, zip, but just know this makes you unique in a way.

Google holds too much geographic knowledge, 9/15/18

So, due to the fact that I'm very hopeless at geography, this was a struggle. What I had to do was answer many geographic questions thrown at me on smartypins.withgoogle.com, but I surprisingly got a decent score. This is about all the reasons I got right answers:

32% Traveling

10% School

38% Things my dad said a while ago that I remember for some reason

20% Google searches

I put this assignment as my challenge, because I think some of the questions were things people just don't know, as in the information is so random that someone would just not know. Yes, I am not making sense, but it's been a long time since I've made a good excuse, so leave me be. So, here's a picture of my score:

I'm coming for that knowledge, Google. Here's what I found annoying about the website:

They only give you fifteen seconds or so to find the location for a bonus. Yes, I get that it's a bonus, but the thing is, you have to put the exact location or they mark your answer wrong. It's kind of irritating, because I knew some of the answers immediately, but looking for the exact location took a lot of time. 

Here's what I like about the website:

It's visually appealing and it teaches you new things. The questions they ask are unexpected and vary. You can also select five different categories, which I didn't do. They give you a hint about the location after the bonus time runs out. It takes you towards the area of the location when asking you a question, which is kind of a hint in itself.

This is what it looks like:

 


I express my musical creativity, 9/15/18

Today I used incredibox.com to express my amazing musical talent. My experience with this website was- well, it works? I mean, when you drag different beats and so forth, it automatically pitches to the other thing you chose, so that's neat. I've never really been to a site like this, where the main objective is making music with men wearing fancy suits, but you do something new everyday. The song I made is titled, "Cheese Poem 2" in reminiscent of my cheese poem. I think I already explained incredibox and its purpose, however I will go further without reason. 

There are six different versions you can choose from to create your mix. If you pick a certain one, then certain beats, effects, etc. come with it. Anyways, here's the link to Cheese Poem 2. It was surprisingly pretty enjoyable to do this.


What is stuff? (a crash course in history), 9/15/18
I watched two videos from a Youtube channel called CrashCourse, and I will share what I've learned.

-Intro to History of Science: Crash Course History of Science #1

This video taught me about the Latin term "Nullius In Verba", which is the motto that means to not trust the knowledge of others and claim their facts as true without making a hypothesis, or an educated guess, yourself. The term impacted many scientist due to the fact that it promoted exploration and theory. Also, did you know the word scientist is fairly new, and was made by an English scientist and priest by the name of William Whewell in the 1830s? In the video, they talk about science as more of a concept where knowledge is perceived differently in the eyes of other people. Science has really changed, challenged, and tested society's standards and view points. Obviously, there are some things scientist cannot yet explain or have the solution to, hence why our world is always evolving and why history will never really be complete.

I've added various questions said throughout the video because I like how they evolve. A point made in the video is that we should ask questions about how, or why, because that's how things are created and how the basics of science started.

-Measuring Personality: Crash Course Psychology #22

This was honestly extremely interesting. Who hasn't wondered what determines personality? There's this thing called trait theory, which is if our weird habits can define our personality, and so on. There's certain traits such as extroversion and openness that we all have, however they vary. Everyone is on a spectrum. I consider myself to be an ambivert, meaning both an introvert and an extrovert, and I think most people are. I feel like there's a lot of people who call themselves introverts who are more extroverted, or vice versa. People can be both, or more of one than the other from time to time, depending on the situation, which is why there's a spectrum.

We're probably all in the middle of the arrows, even if some of us are almost at the end of the left or right. These traits of people are used to predict the basics of their personality, and some traits give away more than others.

I also learned about personal control, which is how you perceive your control over the scenarios that happen to you. A person with an internal locus of control is someone who believes they are responsible for their own fate and nothing else is. A person who feels the exact opposite would have an external locus of control. I feel like it's a mixture of both, though I'm more on the external locus of control side than the opposing idea.

Making those spicy GIFs, 9/16/18
So, today I got up at about 10 am and decided to just go straight into making GIFs. I made these on my actual personal email, so it was really difficult to figure out how to upload them on my school account. Eventually, I figured it out, as you can see. The process of this was just taking a whole bunch of pictures with my left hand while using my right hand to do what is in the pictures. This first one is just me making an OK sign. and the second one is me using an outdated Ni Hao Kai-lan magnetic drawer thing. Kudos to you if Ni Hao Kai-lan was your childhood too.


Here's my OK sign.

Here's me writing MMM intelligently. 


Observations on websites and being the salesman I naturally am, 9/16/18
Hello, and welcome to the Joy of Making Observations on Websites, where we will do just that. I'm your host, Christabella, and I'll be talking about these marvelous places throughout this section.

-This Day in History
Our first website is about history. Its name is both self-explanatory and the opposite. What might I mean? Well, think about the title. A day in history could mean, well, a day in history, and it's just that. However, there's a twist. They'll tell you a historical event that happened the day you visited the website. Still confused? Today is September 16th, 2018, therefore the event I have learned about is Gandhi fasting in protest. This also happened on September 16th, however in the year 1932. I thought learning about a historical event that happened on the same day you visit the website is pretty nice, because it shows you can make history any day and it always adds on. If you're interested in learning about Gandhi's influence on India and his protest against the British government, click the article: Gandhi begins fast in protest of caste separation.

-GoodReads
I know mostly all of you, including me, know what GoodReads is and what it does. Basically, you can search for any book and find its rating and people's commentary on it. You can also discover books you might like based off of your preferences, of course. I searched for Harry Potter, but for the wrong reasons. I'm sorry to Lauren and Gwendolyn, I know they won't be happy to hear this, but I wanted to see if I could find a reasonable, yet constructive, realistic, and honestly, a negative review of the book. You're probably wondering, did I? Yeah, I did.

No, I'm kidding. I really did find a decent one, though. I'll put it below here.

Unfortunately this was the most negative review I could find on Harry Potter because it's, well, Harry Potter. I will be 100% honest. It's not that I do not enjoy the book. I just think it's extremely overrated. I have read books that are so much better (of course, in my opinion). Harry Potter is a great book series, but some people, ahem, like Lauren hype it up, and all the hype can kind of make it disappointing when you read it.

Here is a book series I highly recommend to check out on GoodReads and to read. The Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness is amazing and extremely underrated. There's also a movie they're making on it later and I'm excited to watch it and for people to discover it so it gets the hype it deserves. Just, read it. Please, you won't regret it, it's so good.

-VoiceNote
I just downloaded it on my phone because extensions are difficult. VoiceNote is kind of like a Memo app, except you literally just use your voice instead of typing down things. It's really useful, and you can use it as a reminder for an event or an agenda for school. It shows the date and exact time you recorded something, which is something I really need in an app. I used it to put down things I learned about my neighbor's cat, who is adorable. He climbs up the tree near my condo almost everyday, then gets down and licks his paws. He proceeds to hide in the bushes after finishing his clean-up. He's a tabby cat. You can select different languages for it, too. The speech recognition is pretty good, but some mistakes were made, which should be expected. The only thing that really, really annoys me about the app, is the visuals. I know it's not a visual app, it's an audio app and I appreciate it because like most people, I'm too lazy to type. But the visuals are just so, uh.

This is literally the visuals in my eyes. Other than that, and like I said before, it is helpful in its main purpose.


The old Taylor is gone because I customized my blog (not clickbait), 9/16/18
This is honestly the biggest challenge for me. Most of you don't know this, or I'm assuming you don't. If you want to, I am available for speaking. What I mean is, I'm a swell fellow, a nice pal. I need friends. Anyways, most of you don't know this, but I hate change. I don't like changing. It makes me feel nostalgic and regretful. Change has to come, though, so today I challenged myself to change. I customized my blog. I know what you're thinking. It's as unlikely as Mr. Lee getting Google Classroom. But Mr. Lee did get Google Classroom, and I did customize my blog. It's shocking, but true. Do I regret it? Honestly, somewhat, yes. My blog is iconic and I don't like changing it. Also, this article is very helpful on how to customize blogs, if you're unsure.

Here's the old Taylor, the one I truly do miss, and I think looks a little better.

Now here's the new Taylor. I just changed the fonts. That's literally it because there's no way I would change more. I hope you enjoyed my emotional transformation.

  

Also, I made the sidebar and blog a little bit bigger overall, because I've wanted to change it so that you could see things more clearly in it. I didn't know you could change the format or length of the blog, so I just thought that was pretty neat.


More about me because you haven't had enough, 9/16/18
I know I've made a lot of about me posts, from literally every post I have made except the one about Daniel's idea to nothing else since I just defined my egotistical values. However, I honestly do love writing about myself, so, I will do just that. This is an ABOUT ME, about me, Christabella. I was born at 1:00 pm on the day of Norwegian independence. My hobbies are playing roblox, writing about myself, drawing, Peppa Pig, and gathering information. I also do a lot of procrastinating, stressing out, and being extra. I have an older sister (she's twenty-seven), a momther, and a father. My mother, who I literally have never called "mom" before (just momther/mother), is both a mom and a mother because she's great. I'm half Chinese and half Mexican, but for some reason a billion people think I'm Filipino. You can find out a lot about me on my blog, because it's practically all I write about. I mean, you know my schedule, my likes and dislikes, my hobbies, and all that jazz. Some of my friends (but not all of them, as I said some) are Eloisa, Daniel, Ava, Gwendolyn, Lauren, and Hannah. I will now ramble about these few people. Eloisa is basically me but an upgraded, better version, and if you asked her, she would agree, but deny the better part. Stop being humble, you and I both know it's true. We've had more than fifteen people ask if we're related, so we pratically are, or at least we are at heart. Daniel is great, but he can be oblivious at times. He's still great, though. You should check out his blog because he needs promo and I will gladly give him that. Ava is an art god, a blogger god, and an everything god. She is the absolute most perfect and well-rounded child ever. Gwendolyn likes the Beatles, and I think that one sentence practically defines what you'd expect. No, that is not an insult, Gwendolyn, don't get upset, it means you're more mature and stuff. Lauren is a wild card. Literally, just imagine picking up a wild card, and that wild card personified is Lauren. Hannah is your typical Californian. Below are some pictures of me, ooohhhhhh. The reason I talked about other people for my about post is because you all know too much about me. Sure, it's my fault, but I can't help being someone who willingly says everything about themselves.

Me and my fellow crutchler children: Sydny (who doesn't have a blog), Natalie, Lauren, and Eloisa

My school photo last year, wow. Don't I look so happy and bright?

Also, here are my two delightful comments to my friends, Eloisa and Armando.

Literally my life explained in one day on an infographic, 9/16/18

I know this infographic isn't too clear, which is why I'll leave a link to it below if you want to see a clearer version

-A link to a day in my life, the infographic

Basically, the infographic just explained my life, and what I do during each day. I mostly just eat, sleep, socialize, and use technology. I also breathe. Making the infographic was kind of challenging, because I wanted to do something cool, but in the end, I didn't because I don't want to stress myself out. To make some of the images, I just used Google drawings, downloaded the file, then uploaded it. Most of the images there are provided by Piktochart, a website made just for making infographics. It's a helpful website that I use a lot for school assignments. For the pie graphs, I used Create A Graph to make them. 

This is the end of my Technology Game Board journey. I hope you learned something from my page, or thought it was nice, or something like that. I know I had a lot of fun challenging myself to use technology in ways I don't usually do, or spicing things up a bit. It was a great assignment, and I would enjoy doing one like this again.

Farewell.