I am again taking a class at RIT that uses Remy Decausemaker’s great website/online course system. As with the other times I have used it, another tag and RSS Feed was needed for the course, so that I may have a place to write about my experiences in the class. That way the professor will understand that my playing of World of Warcraft in his class will help my course project! (Yes it seriously will, more on that in a little bit further down) It seems the whole First Flight experience, the first assignment for the course where you set up your website’s RSS Feed, get on the IRC channel to talk to all the other students, and learn about Github, have all stayed the same, with the website being steadily improved each time I use it. Hats off to Remy Decausemaker and his coding and web chops!
Now about that whole World of Warcraft(WOW) thing. This class I just completed the First Flight assignment for is Production Studio with Professor Stephen Jacobs(SJ). This is a new course for the program, but it basically gives professors and students class time to push personal projects forward. Some in the class are pitching projects they would like to work on to SJ, while others, such as myself, will work on projects SJ has started with others in the academic, health, and gaming fields. The project I hope to work on, (SJ needs to see what people want to work on, so that the whole class in not working on one thing) is a project to bring diabetes to WOW characters. This will be through a mod that users can freely download to add to their WOW experience. This idea comes from a nurse that worked as Blizzard’s (studio that makes WOW) on-staff nurse a few years ago. She wants to bring public health education to people through games, but thinks that using existing games with large player bases will get more traction than a standalone game. It seems like a interesting project to work on, with lots of creative ways to simulate. Hopefully I will be working on this project! I should know by next Tuesday, so check back then!
Andrew Mandula 