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assassins-and-hidden-blades · 4 years ago

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Initiates -- Original AC OC Fic

8//12/2020: Okay so yup here’s my OC espionage story that I’ve adapted for the AC universe. I proofread it once and will probably edit it again when I reread it in like two days lol. Thanks to @alexiios for solving my temporary naming crisis lol. If you want me to post OC fact files (if you enjoy this), then hmu/lmk! I loved writing this (like months ago) and I want to give you guys SOME content, so I hope you’ll have as much fun reading it as I had writing it! Tagging people that might enjoy it? (plus @/alexiios lmao don’t want to spam you with mentions)

Hard to believe that this is only 2242 words but ok go off i guess

Feedback greatly appreciated, as always!

WARNINGS: Violence, car crash, hospital mention, blood mention

Tagging: @marshmallow--3 // @britishhotassassin // @rahdahleigh // @iceboundstar // @sofiewithat // @mythandmagik (I’m guessing your url changed aha)

“I think I’m gonna check,” Jake lightly knocked his knuckles against the wooden table.

Zoe lifted the corner of her hand. “I raise thirteen.”

The last card was placed onto the table. Last chance to bet. “Twenty-six,” Jake gazed through his eyelashes, raising the bet once again.

Groaning, Zoe threw her cards onto the pile of chips in the middle of the table, two fives staring her in the face. “Fine, you win.”

“As per usual!” Jake laughed as he slapped a pair of kings down in front of him and collected his chips.

“Jesus! You always get the good hand!” Jake flashed a look of offense.

“No I do--” He was briskly interrupted.

“Name one time you’ve lost! I bet you cheat.”

Before he could reply, someone walked through the door of the lunch room. “Nick?” Jake’s voice laced in confusion as his smirk dropped.

“Break’s over. We need you both.”

Startled, the two followed their boss into a briefing room. “What’s the problem?” Zoe asked, leaning against the table. Jake sat down on a chair next to her, kicking his shoes onto the polished wood beside her. He popped some gum in his mouth before undoing his top button of his checked shirt; the two of them opted for a casual office day. Zoe and Nick both declined as he offered them each a piece. “Really? It’s strawberry…”

“Not now, Jake. We have a missing agent. You are two of our best trackers; no one else in the whole department is as… experienced. We need you to find him before it’s too late.” A picture was brought up; blond hair and brown eyes.

“He was last seen at these coordinates-- get on it.” Nick left the two in silence as he dropped two files on the table and left the room.

Zoe picked one up and slid the other one Jake’s way, hitting his shoes. Sitting straight, he leaned forwards to take a closer look. “I have the agent.”

“I’ve got the leads…” Zoe mumbled with a frown, sifting through the relatively thin file that had been accumulated over the past few days. CCTV screenshots, cases previously solved that could harbour motive for revenge, and a few other documents referring to things she had never seen or heard of before. “Hey, Jake?”

“Hmm?” He looked up with interest, his chewing paused.

“Have you ever heard of Abstergo Industries?”

There was a silence as he thought. “No; is it one of those massive corporations?”

Zoe’s eyes roamed various images of murder scenes, all having one thing in common; jewellry in the shape of a cross, circled in red ink. “Something like that…”

Did Nick mean for us to see this? It feels classified…

“So his name is Matthew Anderson. Twenty-six, unmarried, single child, no children. There is literally no record of him anywhere; no school record, no criminal record, no family record; nothing. Only things like “Favourite coffee shop”. The man’s an enigma. Why would anyone want to kidnap him? There’s no evidence to justify a ransom or leverage of any sort…”

“It does seem strange, but it might have something to do with this Abstergo place. Let’s go to that coffee shop and see what we can find.”

Jake followed Zoe towards the armory; full of necessary gear and equipment. The pair grabbed what they needed, namely the issued pepper spray and tasers. Their badges waited for them, along with any IDs they may need. “Ready?” Zoe debated bringing a firearm, but decided against it; there was already going to be one in the glovebox.

All Jake did was wink and smile, donning his jacket. “Always.”

----------

They spent the rest of the afternoon searching for answers in the coffee shop. Social media, local news posts, Police records-- even private databases -- all with the keyword, ‘Abstergo’. Jake left to the counter after a while to buy more coffee for the two of them; their eyes had begun to sting from staring at a screen for so long. Zoe was writing some information down in her notepad when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She glanced to see someone dressed in a grey hoodie and tracksuit bottoms. They had hidden their features under their hood, but Zoe could tell that they were looking in her direction. Hiding behind fallen hair, she rubbed her palms against her jeans.

Jake returned with her latte, placing it down before sitting to nurse his cappuccino. He noticed how unsettled she had become. “You okay? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” After he spoke, he licked the milk mousse moustache from his upper lip.

Zoe smiled, his actions calming her slightly. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just…” She lowered her voice. “There’s a guy over there. He’s just… staring.” Jake quickly flitted his gaze over in that direction and then back at his partner, his head unmoving.

“He is a bit creepy, isn’t he?” he mumbled. “Feel like getting out of here?”

“Please.” Jake left to get takeaway cups as Zoe started clearing the table.

The sun had already begun to set as they left the coffee shop and got into an unmarked van designed for undercover work. As they were driving down some narrower country lanes, Jake noticed something out of the rearview mirror. “Uh, Zo’?” She hummed in reply from the driver’s seat, preoccupied with the road. “I think someone’s following us.”

“What should we do?” she asked, turning left. For the second time that day, Jake was interrupted. A bullet shattered one of the back windows.

“Not much!” Jake took the pistol out of the glovebox and began firing back. Zoe stole a glance behind her.

“Look out!” Jake grabbed the steering wheel and pulled. The wheels veered out of control and the van tumbled. It rolled off the road.

The vehicle eventually stopped, lying capsized on the grass. Footsteps approached the door. “Yeah, boss; we got ‘em,” a gravelly voice stated. Jake, barely conscious, never moved a muscle. “Roger,” the voice said again, and footsteps started to recede.

“Zoe,” Jake groaned. He got a quiet mumble in response. His nose alerted him to the imminent danger they were in; the smell of petrol. Trying to move, he winced at the sudden throbbing pain in his head.

And his torso.

And his back.

He took a step to remove his seatbelt, bracing himself as he hit the roof below him. He groaned as his upper back collided with the ground. “Hey, Zo’.” Jake crawled below her and tried to unbuckle her seatbelt with a sense of panic. “Damn,” he cursed. The seatbelt wasn’t going to loosen willingly. He searched for any solution and found a glint in the half opened glovebox by his feet. He had rediscovered his pocket knife.

Quickly, he pulled it open and stuck it in the seatbelt box, jiggling it around; waiting for the click.

After a few painstaking moments, the restraint opened. He ripped it off and Zoe fell onto Jake’s torso, immediately winding him.

“Come on, Zo’; we need to get out of here.” His arm clung to her waist and he wriggled out as fast as he could from the flammable scrap. He was relieved as he inhaled fresh air; flushing out his lungs from the scent of leaking petrol.

Once they were clear of the vehicle, Jake laid Zoe out of sight and began to lightly touch her face. “Wake up, Zo’. We need to leave!” There was a minimal groaning response; but she was still conscious-- with her eyes half open. “That’s good enough for me.” With difficulty, he scooped his partner into his chest, stood up shakily, and tried to walk in a straight direction.

“FREEZE!” He stopped, closing his eyes. His arms were trembling in exhaustion, and his heart begun to palpitate. “Turn around—slowly.” He listened, clutching Zoe tightly.

“Come on, mate,” Jake tried, making earnest eye contact. “You don’t want to do this.” His eyes scanned the gun pointed at the two of them worriedly.

“I don’t think that you’re in the position to tell me what to do.” The same voice, body turning in the shadows, triggered his radio. “Sir, they’re still alive.” A static grumble was all that could be deciphered in Jake’s ringing ears. “Yes, boss.”

The gun began to aim. “Don’t move.”

The safety clicked. “It would be in your best interest to close your eyes.”

Jake waited, watching the trigger, steeling his already hardened glare.

Nothing happened.

Until, in a split second, the gun moved from Jake’s chest to Zoe’s.

“NO!”

BANG!

Bodies were sent flying down the hill Jake had painfully trekked up. They rested at the bottom of the hill; lying still-- breathing stiller. “They’re finished now, boss,” the voice quipped.

There was a sound of car doors slamming and a car engine starting, and it began to drive away.

It was still for a moment…

Until Jake grimaced. One of his arms were trapped under Zoe’s body This time, she was out cold. Jake wiped the grime off of his forehead, before being engulfed in a stabbing pain. He let out a broken cry. Zoe was unharmed; a concussion was assumed, at worst.

But Jake was shot. And he was bleeding out. He choked on his words; the pain kept swallowing them.

What he needed was an ambulance--and fast.

He only had one arm to move his body, and it caused him the most pain he had ever felt.

“Argh,” he groaned. “Z-Zo’.”

He had to find something-- anything-- to call for help. He searched his pockets, but he knew that he wasn't prepared for situations like this.

… But maybe Zoe was.

“Zoe,” Jake attempted to shake her awake. “Please, wake up!”

There was minimal movement.

“Help me out here, love...” He pressed against his side with his hand, whilst his other worked on slipping out from under Zoe’s body. Eventually, he managed to retrieve his trapped limb.

There was no blood on Zoe’s clothing, and Jake reassured himself that she was unharmed-- relatively.

He placed both his hands on his side, focusing on stopping the bleeding as much as possible. A wave of nausea overcame him; the heat from the flaming vehicle caused his stomach to churn almost endlessly as he glanced down. Blood was seeping through his fingers, and Jake’s vision was becoming increasingly blurred; he allowed himself to close his eyes, wanting nothing more than to pass out. He felt his mind begin to cloud over, but there was a certain buzzing in his ears. It was faint, but it was there…

The last thing he heard was his name being called by a half familiar voice.

He only hoped that it wasn’t too late…

------

Beep after beep after beep… his ears would explode any moment now. He tried to inhale through his nose, and quickly had the urge to itch as something constantly prodded inside his nostrils.

Task 1 -- open your eyes.

His eyelids felt content to stay obstructing his vision, yet his instincts said otherwise, and they obstinately broke apart.

It was dark. That was his first observation.

Being in what he assumed was the hospital, the stereotype inclined him to believe that bright white lights would be the first thing he would see. That certainly wasn’t the case. The moon cast through the half open blinds, the entire building held an air of kenopsia.

Jake, still feeling drowsy, decided to wait until the sun rises to make any moves; all he knew was that he was safe, and he could allow himself to let go.

----------

He closed his eyes for a second, and the sun was up, being met with a familiar face.

“Hey,” Zoe smiled, tension relaxing her shoulders.

“Hi,” Jake replied, a smug grin playing on his lips. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay? I’m not the one in a hospital bed.”

“Just making sure.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

Jake chuckled. “You know me; I’m full of surprises.”

There was a calm silence that clouded over the room. “They said you were lucky, you know. You’ve been out for three days.” Zoe looked over at the IV drip that was taped to his arm.

“The best three days of your life, I bet?” he chuckled.

“No, no; Jake, they were the worst days I think I’ve ever had. Don’t pull a stunt like that ever again -- for both our sakes.”

He couldn’t help but smile. A few rapid knocks on the door interrupted the moment, and Nick came through the door. “Alright?”

“Alright.”

“Not bad.”

He sighed. “You probably have some questions.”

“So many questions…”

“You don’t even know…”

He raised his hand, silencing both voices. “Once you’re both ready, I will answer them. But for now, you’ll rest and recover. I apologise for… all of this.” He turned to leave, but stopped as if he forgot something. Without a word, he pulled out a coin, flipping it in Zoe’s direction, who caught it automatically. He nodded intently, and left. She shared a look with Jake, turning the now recognisable token in her hand. It wasn’t any form of currency, but instead had a certain insignia minted in the centre; a rather obscure looking ‘A’. If it was an ‘A’ at all…

“What do you think it means?” Zoe asked.

Jake shifted, slightly groaning. “I don’t know. But whatever it is, will change everything.”

#assassin's creed #oc #original character #zoe grant #jake riley #ta da #meet my AC babies #feel free to ask about them #ask and you shall recieve #enjoy!#I'll cringe at this tomorrow but I'm too tired to edit it a third time #deal with it for 12 hours pls #thx #i'll fix it

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princesses-and-pioneers · 6 years ago

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Science Wizard

In college I have to take three physics classes, followed by a long list of “physics but more specific” classes, so I wrote a GLOG wizard school to cope with this reality. It covers chemistry, thermodynamics, and several branches of physics. It’s very utility- and control-based until you get to the emblem spells, but a creative player who doesn’t mind a bit of math could do a lot with it.

(Ok, so you’re not exactly this but it was too cool not to include. From WOTC’s Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica.)

Perk: If you spend a round observing something, you can recall it perfectly. You can hold [template]+2 known spells in your brain instead of [template]+1.

Drawback: Can’t cast spells if you are diseased, poisoned, noticeably dirty, or have loose/dangly hair or jewelry. Safety first!

Lab safety guidelines make for a fun drawback, similar to the Elf Wizard. I wanna see wizards running around with hairnets and jugs of hand sanitizer.

Cantrips

Learn the temperature, mass, or volume of any discrete object you can see.

Hold small objects in your hand to oxidize them.

Generate strong but non-damaging static shocks from your hands.

Not especially powerful, but you can plan shenanigans, destroy evidence, and prank people.

Mishaps

MD only return to your pool on a 1-2 for 24 hours.

Take 1d6 damage.

Random mutation for 1d6 rounds, then Save. Permanent if you fail.

Blind and deaf for 1d6 rounds as sound and electromagnetic waves avoid you.

Glow brightly for 24 hours, illuminating as a torch but doubling the encounter rate.

Thrown 50’ in a random direction.

Mishaps are pretty tame, and #5 could be quite useful.

Dooms

For 24 hours, every time you attack or cast a spell at range, Save or be pulled towards the target. Collisions deal fall damage.

All the particles in your body turn into waves for a day. As waves, you cannot interact with physical objects except by hitting them, which causes them to glow briefly. Electricity, magnets, and magical darkness deal 1d6 damage.

You leak out of existence, leaving a you-shaped mass of antimatter in your place.

This doom can be avoided by solving a theoretical problem that has never been solved before, or by discovering a new element or type of particle.

Dooms are pretty bad though. This is what happens when you mess with the fundamental laws of the universe. You’d better hope you don’t hit your last doom anywhere near civilization. You can avoid your fate by learning secrets about the universe that no one else knows.

Spell List

(Spells #1, #3, #4, and #5 stolen from Skerples)

1. Draw Heat R: [dice]x100’ T: 2 creatures or objects D: concentration You must have at least two working eyes to cast this spell. You stare at one target with one eye, and another target with another to transfer heat between them. For example, you could transfer a torch’s heat to a creature for damage, or the icy cold of a glacier to a campfire to extinguish it. You cannot amplify the heat.

2. Centripetal Force R: 50’ T: [dice]x10’ radius area D: [sum] rounds Loose objects in the area are pulled towards the center, and creatures in the area must spend their full movement moving in a circle around the center or be pulled in as well.

Good for battlefield control, or getting treasure from hard-to-reach places.

3. Feather Fall R: 10’ T: [dice] creatures or objects D: instant If you would take fall damage, you can cast this spell as a reaction to negate it. You float gently to the ground (possibly alarmingly late).

4. Alter Local Gravity R: 50’ T: [sum]x5’ squares D: [sum] rounds You must cast this spell in an enclosed area with a solid roof. The target area has its gravity altered to either a direction or a lower strength that you specify for the duration. The effect takes place gradually, allowing creatures a Dex check to hang on to something. In lower gravity, you can jump higher and farther, but virtually any action requires a Dex check. If you invest 3 or more [dice] the duration becomes permanent.

5. Desiccate R: 50’ T: creature or object D: instant Hydrated target takes 1d6+[dice] damage. Can also be used to turn meat into jerky or concentrate water-based liquids (wine, most acids), up to 2 gallons per [dice].

6. Equilibrium R: 50’ T: creature or object D: [sum] rounds You generate enough reaction force to hold a target of up to [dice]x100 lb in static equilibrium. If the target is a creature, they get a Save to resist, and an additional Save each turn at a -[dice] penalty to break free.

Hold Person with utility applications.

7. Ionize R: touch T: up to [dice] gallons of liquid D: concentration You absorb all ions in the liquid and can store them safely as long as you maintain concentration. You can end the spell at any time by releasing the ions into another liquid. If your concentration is broken, the ions escape into the nearest liquid.

Like Desiccate, but you’re removing the solute, not the solvent. Can be used to purify water, make acid, or really fuck up someone’s bloodstream if you can touch it.

8. Impulse R: touch T: creature or object D: instant Target weighing at least 1/[dice] lb is thrown or shoved with a fixed amount of impulse, traveling [sum]x100’/the target’s weight. If you invest 3 or more [dice], the target will continue traveling the same distance every round until stopped by a solid object. Collisions deal [sum] damage.

Shove people across the room, or even better, throw small rocks so fast they break the sound barrier.

9. Phase Shift R: 50’ T: [dice] objects or [dice]x5’ cube volume D: [sum] rounds Target changes state by one phase, though its temperature does not change. Targets must be of similar substance and undergo the same phase change. If you invest 4 or more [dice], targets can change state by two phases.

Liquify treasure. Liquify the air. Turn the environment into traps.

10. Haste R: touch T: creature D: [sum] rounds Target has double movement speed and can take an additional action on each of its turns. Target cannot act for a round when the spell ends.

11. Chain Reaction R: 50’ T: creature D: instant Target bursts into flames, taking [sum] damage, Save for half. The flames activate any potions or magic items the target is carrying. At the start of each round, the flames transfer to the nearest creature within [dice]x10’ that has not yet been targeted, dealing another [sum] damage, or die out if this is not possible. Your allies are not immune.

Based on Wandering Flame from this list, but more chaotic and potentially infinite.

12. Half-Life R: 50’, T: creature, D: varies, see below You destabilize the target’s particles, setting it a half-life of at least 15-[sum] hours (minimum 1 round). Powerful creatures get a Save to negate. Every half-life, the target decays to half its size and loses half its HD, dying when it drops below [dice]/2 HD. Other creatures must Save vs. mutation for every half-life spent near the target.

A curse-like spell with scientific flavor. Plus radioactivity, that’s always fun.

Edit: Added commentary and design notes in italics.

#classes #glog #wizards #magic

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years ago

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EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CAREERS

Some kinds of innovations happen a company at a time will obviously happen faster if the rate of technological change seems to be regarded as the rule rather than the topic, it's a sign they've lost the real battle, for users. And more specifically, is it possible to reverse some of the fragmentation we've seen? The average founder is eager to do it anywhere. In math you don't choose abstractions because they're easy for humans to understand; you choose whichever make the proof shorter. Basically, Apple bumped IBM and then Microsoft stole its wallet. And so they can try him out—and then a month later as employee #1. Math, for example; they're already pariahs. Few legal documents are created from scratch. And yet also in a way encouraging. The ideal thing might be if you built a precisely defined derivative version of your product for the customer, and since they don't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. I knew it would be suggested that executive salaries are at a maximum. If you run every day, because at the beginnings of people's careers they can easily switch not merely employers but industries.

The most dramatic I learned immediately, in the spam corpus, the probability is.1 If your current trajectory won't quite get you to profitability but you can get a product launched on a few tens of thousands of dollars of seed money from us or your uncle, and approach them with a 70-page agreement. You could try to cold-call angel groups near you, but angels, like VCs, will pay more attention to deals recommended by someone they respect.2 C, Lisp, and Smalltalk were created for their own designers to use.3 The median visitor will arrive with their finger poised on the Back button. Because philosophy's flaws turned away the sort of place that has conspicuous monuments.4 Some VCs now require that in any sale, they get doubly whacked for it: playing house. If several VCs are interested in it for its own sake, it must have felt like for him. Like a lot of startups worry what if Google builds something like us? There may be nothing founders are so prone to delude themselves about as how interested investors will be in giving them additional funding.5 As a little piece of debris, the rational thing for you to look at the world than producing something beautiful. Do we have free will?

One reason we tend to think of them. You have to be just a pair of 22 year old guys.6 It happened to one industry after another. For example, a seed firm should be able to make the case to everyone for doing it. 8 option pool 200 16.7 But if you parse it all, your filter might degenerate into a political argument. It wasn't just as consumers that the big companies were synonymous with efficiency. But even accounting for that, the force of being measured by performance would propagate all the way back to high school, flushing out all the arbitrary stuff people are measured by now. This is a problem for small startups, because they don't have any of that if you have genuine intellectual curiosity, that's what you're doing, you're now on a path labelled get rich or bust. It might seem that if startups get cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started.8 But designed is not really the word; discovered is more like it.9

If the spammers are careful about the headers and use a fresh url, there is no limit to the number of points on the curve decreases. I am, I'll come running. After two years, the un-rapacious that you only extract half as much from users as you could.10 Founders and investors have different attitudes to risk. Competitors punch you in the details later. The real reason we started Y Combinator is teach hackers about the inevitability of schleps.11 And eventually I'd forget that Hilbert had confirmed it too. Maybe that was truer in the past, founders rarely kept control of Zynga's too. Words seem to work, just as we can become smarter, just as we can become smarter, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately; ask friends which sentence you'll regret most; go back and debug Aristotle's motivating argument.

He has noticed that theoretical knowledge is often acquired for its own sake, out of about 7740 legitimate emails, a rate of. I'd made enough to solve the problem once and for all. They're hard to filter based just on the content because the headers are innocent and they're careful about the words they use. It is also palpably short. The asterisk could be any character you don't allow as a constituent.12 The first time it raised money, it was a college town out in the countryside. I've had an experience that convinced me otherwise: I spent several years living in New York.13 If they'd waited to release everything at once, they wouldn't have discovered this problem till it was more efficient to. Unfortunately, it's impractical if not illegal to adjust the valuation of the company in restricted stock, vesting over four years. This varies from field to field in the arts, things are very different.

It is. At the other extreme are places like Idealab, which generates ideas for new startups internally and hires people to work for Henry Ford, but not to be in a startup founder is concealed from almost everyone except those who've done it. I'd made enough to solve the problem I described above—it won't flush out the metaphysical singularity.14 It felt as if there was some kind of work that wasn't very common in Confucius's day. Chasing down all the implications. They're probably good at judging new inventions for casting steel or grinding lenses, but they can't design. He can do other things most people can't, like charter jets to fly him to foreign countries.

Notes

If I paint someone's house, though, because a unless your last round just happened, the transistor it is to let yourself feel it mid-game. Xkcd implemented a particularly clever one in its IRC channel: don't allow the same lesson, partly because you can do it is unfair when someone gets drunk instead of a stock is its future earnings, you could probably be interrupted every fifteen minutes with little loss of personality for the same work faster. Disclosure: Reddit was funded by Y Combinator to increase it, this is an interesting trap founders fall into two categories: those where the acquirer just wants the business, having spent much of The New Industrial State to trying to enter the software business, it's cool with us if the quality of investor behavior.

Com in order to make the kind of people. Wufoo was based in Tampa and they were forced to stop, the mean annual wage in the same.

VCs aren't tech guys, the partners discriminate against deals that come to you about it well enough to be a special title for actual partners.

People who value their peace, or it would have. They may not be surprised if VCs' tendency to push to being told they had to ask about what you've built is not to do some research online.

It will seem dumb in 100 years ago. Start by investing in a time machine. Learning to hack is a list of where to see the Valley use the name of a handful of companies that got bootstrapped with consulting. So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would to us.

Survey by Forrester Research reported in the beginning of the web and enables a new version from which I removed a pair of metaphors that made steam engines dramatically more efficient: the process dragged on for months. Hypothesis: A company will be coordinating efforts among partners. In Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work.

Aristotle looked at the time.

This was made particularly clear in our case, companies' market caps will end up.

I suspect Digg's is the other hand, launching something small and use whatever advantages that brings.

The founders want the first third of the company, and an haughty spirit before a consortium of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup we funded, summer jobs are the usual suspects in about the same, but if you are listing in order to provoke a bidding war between 3 pet supply startups for the first abstract painters were trained to paint from life, and stir.

And I've never heard of many startups from Philadelphia. The two are not very far along that trend yet. The dialog on Beavis and Butthead was composed largely of these people never come back within x amount of brains. There are two simplifying assumptions: that the main emotion I've observed; but as a technology center is the desire to do something we didn't do.

Many hope he was before, and anyone doing due diligence for an IPO, or some vague thing like that, founders will seem more interesting than later ones, it often means the startup after you buy it. But it isn't a quid pro quo. Loosely speaking. To be fair, curators are in a reorganization.

Whereas the value of a problem that they take away with dropping Java in the cover. 99, and that you end up with much greater inconveniences than that. This would add a further level of protection against abuse and accidents. But it is.

This technique wouldn't work if the current edition, which would be a good idea to make your fortune?

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sandralmuller · 5 years ago

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Plain English writing tips

Having lived an illiterate life in South Korea for the past 2.5 years, I know what it’s like to go from basic reading skills to being expected to fill in a complex Korean bank form.

And that’s one of the reason’s why I’m a plain English advocate. I know what it’s like to not understand a letter sent home from The Monsta’s kindy or how to correctly interpret an electricity bill.

A whopping 46% of Australians don’t have the literacy and numeracy skills to successfully function in contemporary Australia. Can those people successfully interact with your website and your digital products to get the information need or complete the task they need to do? Are you bleeding customers because of it? Are your users pounding their keyboards in frustration?

The more government and other organisations use plain English to communicate with their website users, the more success Australians will have in their everyday lives.

And the more we see plain English around us in our everyday lives, the more everyone will expect it. And then the more organisations will shift towards plain English as the norm.

Plain English will become less of an unexpected delight.

What is plain English?

Plain English is content your reader understands quickly, easily, and completely.

When I talk to clients and their staff about plain English, I often get resistance. That’s because they think plain English is ‘dumbing down’ content or writing in a way that talks down to their readers. But that’s not the purpose of plain English. Not at all.

When you explain that plain English helps their readers understand something the first time they read it, they start to get it.

And once they see their content transformed from ‘bureaucrat speak’ into plain English, they really get it.

Why use plain English?

Plain English is about helping your readers and website users do the thing they need to do quickly, easily and without confusion.

I work with a lot of government clients. Their website users are not visiting their website for fun. They’re there to find information or complete a task. It’s something they HAVE to do, not something they WANT to do. I don’t fill in my Business Activity Statement (BAS) form each quarter for fun or apply for a passport because that’s how I get my kicks. Nope. These are things I HAVE to do.

Helping people find and understand the information they need is the best way to give them a positive experience. #plainenglish #ux Click To Tweet

Helping people find and understand the information they need is the best way to give them a positive experience. They might not remember how gorgeous your site looked but they will remember feeling frustrated and confused if they:

couldn’t find what they needed

couldn’t complete the task they need to do

No one wants to feel like a silly-dibby-dubby (as my 6-year-old would say).

Everyone prefers plain English. Even people with doctoral degrees would rather read plain English content over dense academic or bureaucratic text.

As well as user success, plain English content results in fewer enquiries. For a large organisation, plain English can significantly reduce the load on call centres.

Tips for writing or editing in a plain English style

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Want to know how to write in plain English?

While there are no fixed plain English writing guidelines or rules that must be followed, there are ways of ensuring your content is written in a plain English style.

But here are my tips for writing content that easier to understand the first time someone reads it.

Plain English tip #1 – Be concise

Use short sentences.

Avoid writing sentences more than 15 words long.

Comprehension is usually around 100% for short sentences of up to 8 words.

Comprehension drops to 90% for sentences from 9 to 14 words long.

Can you guess what it is for sentences longer than 40 words? It drops to 10%. Don’t do that to your readers.

Break longer paragraphs up into shorter sentences. It’s OK for a single sentence to be a paragraph. The more clear space you have around your text, the easier it is to read.

Use my Plain English Dictionary to find alternative ways to say things, simpler.

Plain English tip #2 – Be clear

Don’t be ambiguous.

Make sure there is no other way to interpret your message.

When we’re too close to the content, we often can’t see how others might misinterpret our message or instruction.

Ask someone else to read your content to check if your meaning is clear. Even better – user test it with your target audience and learn where people stumble.

Plain English tip #3 – Be direct

Talk directly to your reader or user.

Use words like ‘you’ and ‘your’ when talking to your reader.

Use words like ‘I’ or ‘we’ when talking about yourself or your organisation to your reader.

For example:

❌ The Department of Nuisances can help people with solutions to their problems.

✔️ We can help you solve your problem.

Plain English tip #4 – Use the active voice

Use the active voice.

Don’t hide behind the passive voice.

Bureaucrats love the passive voice because it absolves them of responsibility.

For example:

❌ The fee is charged by the Department of Nuisances.

✔️ The Department of Nuisances charges the fee.

The active voice is direct and more concise. Less words = better reader experience.

Plain English tip #5 – Use lists

Use bullet lists for general points where appropriate. Bullet lists are a great way to break up a long sentence.

Bullet lists aid scanning behaviours and draw attention. If you have a key message, a bullet list is a great place to put it.

Use numbered lists for content that is part of a process or the content has a specific order.

Plain English tip #6 – Avoid jargon

Chances are your audience won’t understand your jargon, so don’t use it.

Even if your readers or customers are in the same industry, don’t assume they’ll understand the jargon. If you’re an accountant and your content targets other accountants, then it would be fine to use commonly recognised and understood industry jargon. But if you’re an accountant writing content for your clients, don’t assume everyone knows what a CPA is or what BAS means.

Don’t use marketing buzz words either. Nothing will date your copy quicker than the latest marketing jargon. See how much ‘synergy’ you create while ‘ideating’ with your ‘peeps’.

Sometimes we’re so entrenched in our own lexicon that we don’t realise that we’re using jargon. Note the ironic use of lexicon? 🤪

Plain English tip #7 – Spell out acronyms

Write acronyms in full the first time you use one and then place the acronym in brackets after it. For example, write:

National Bank of Australia (NAB)

After that first time, then you can use NAB throughout your content. But if you write a new page of web content, spell it out again the first time you use it on that page. Don’t assume a reader has visited the other page where the acronym is spelt out in full.

You don’t need to spell out commonly accepted acronyms like ATM or SCUBA.

Plain English tip #8 – Write for your audience

Know exactly who you’re writing for. It’s all about context.

I often write content for very broad audiences. My current audience for a local government page about paying rates will have backgrounds that range from:

highly educated academics

people with low English literacy levels from culturally diverse backgrounds

everyone else in between

(Note that the above list was originally a very long sentence that I converted to a bullet list to make it easier to read. Walking the talk!)

That’s when I know plain English is the only way to go. That’s when I’ll don my ‘brutally plain’ badge of honour and strip the content right back. I’ll focus on saying what needs to be said in the least amount of words so it can be understood when first read.

But I’ve also recently edited content for a niche group of tertiary-educated information managers and while I applied the principles of plain English writing listed in the tips above, I ‘allowed’ some jargon to flow through. I knew that my readers would understand it in context.

Plain English tip #9 – Use digits

Use digits instead of writing out numbers, even for 1–9.

Many print-based style guides will encourage you to spell out ‘one’ through to ‘nine’ and then use digital from 10 onwards. But this is now old school thinking, especially in the online world.

Digits are easy to recognise.

It also avoids your readers confusing two with the words to or too.

Applying plain English

Are you up for the challenge of applying a plain English approach to your next writing project?

Plain English writing tips was originally published on Sandra Muller

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victuuri-victory · 8 years ago

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Top 10 Yuri Manga Without A School Setting

edit: removed the “keep reading” line, because it cuts off the post when people reblog it, at least when on mobile

There’s a certain formula for producing bad yuri manga- default highschool setting (+1 if it’s all-girls and all-girls somehow equals all-gay), a unhealthy relationship dynamic, unrealistic-but-stock characters (the shy protagonist and the perfect student council president), strict gender roles of butch x femme, males are never present, you get the idea. There’s lots of great yuri out there that takes place in highschool, but I’ll admit that the saturation of bad stuff has tainted my view of the setting.

That said, regardless of your views on yuri’s default setting, here’s the Top 10 Yuri Manga with a fresh change of scenery!

10. Gouhou Yuri Fuufu Hon

On some days, we just don’t have it in us for serious, literary stuff. I want this list to include cute and relaxing sugary stuff too, and Gouhou Yuuri Fuufu Hon fits right in.

I might have a soft spot for moe art, but Hachishiro makes the sickest covers, I’m not even kidding.

Set in a sort-of-fantasy world where same-sex marriage is accepted and animals ears are a thing, Haru is a shy, younger girl who is married off to Sensei, a novelist oblivious to Haru’s uncertainties on how to be Sensei’s wife. Yes the dynamic is a little stock. You might realize the part on arranged marriage is kinda problematic, but this is a not-serious moe manga that doesn’t go there. It’s nothing mindblowing, and it’s not got much of a plot, but it’s a fluffy and enjoyable slice-of-life piece on marriage and domestic stuff.

The art is cute af, and works very well to convey changes in their emotions.

9. Sweet Guilty Love Bites

Sweet Guilty Love Bites is about four cabaret hostesses who work at Club Rose. It’s separated into “Sweet Guilty” and “Guilty Love”. In “Sweet Guilty”, Kirie returns from a bad night of hostessing, to discover Myata, a young woman sleeping in the streets near her house. In “Guilty Love”, Niina, a hostess and a single mother, has a one-night stand with Mayu, only to discover the next day that Mayu is the preschool teacher of her daughter.

Despite the seriousness of what I just summarized, this is a light and fluffy manga with funny moments, and everything ends happily for our dear characters.Though sometimes, the manga struggles to shift from this lighthearted tone when addressing serious life issues that its characters face.

The art is nothing stunning, but it’s decent and carries the plot just fine.

8. Rock it, GiRL!!

Rock it, GiRL!! is about a street guitarist and vocalist, Kaname, who is approached by a talent agency to be part of a band. But Kaname is not an ambitous person and thinks little of her talents. Nevertheless, she decides to give a band a shot. She discovers, however, that a) the talent agency love her as a guitarist, but thinks lowly of her vocal ability, and b) the girl who will sing the songs in her place, is an arrogant tsundere, much in contrast to Kaname’s mopey, sappy self. Animosity develops between them, but they must rise above this personal drama as the show must go on.

I have to say, the characters aren’t exactly sympathetic, but they’ve got real issues, they are offbeat, and are basically a fresh breath of air, away from the standard “sweet, nice, moe girls in a girl band” cliche. Plus the plot is wild, given the seemingly predictable premise.

The art itself is simple, but in a weirdly cute and silly way.

7. Murcielago

I would like to defend Murcielago’s presence on this list by saying that yes it is trash, HOWEVER, it is the kind of trash that nobody expects from the yuri genre.

Specifically, Murcielago is guilty-pleasure gore trash. It’s what we’ve seen played out again and again with a certain Western genre, but always with a male character depicted: violent movies centered on a loose-cannon anti-villain protagonist, who is tasked with being a criminal detective but who really does kill more people than the police are comfortable with. In the backdrop, some sort of vast conspiracy is brewing, where all the crimes that the detective solves, are actually linked together, and this whole conspiracy is somehow, quite self-aggrandizingly, all about this detective protagonist (we just don’t know how yet).

Yes, that was weirdly specific, but we all know that’s an entire genre.

In that sense, Murcielago is predictable, but it’s also very fun action-packed reading. Plus the gender and lesbian of its protagonist, is something quite unexpected, considering the “cute nice fluffiness” that characterizes most manga lesbians, and the male protags who dominate violent action comics for both manga and Western comics.

You know she’s gonna be able to solve the crime, you know the Villain of the Week is gonna die, but there’s still a perverse excitement in finding out how she does it, and what ridiculous over-the-top crime features in the latest issue.

Read beneath that surface, and Murcielago can be a little deeper than that. Our dear psycho-lesbian detective does spare people, and she justifies it by outwardly saying she spares “cute girls”, but that shallow explanation doesn’t hold water. She’s perfectly ok with mutilating and killing incompetent and immoral “cute girls”, which she has made no comment about. She’s specifically sparing a) completely moral “cute girls”, and hiring b) dangerously competent, morally shadier “cute girls” as her proteges. In fact, when she meets a bomb prodigy, she has no qualms morally corrupting her from a) to b), because she really needs a demolitions expert. She’s secretly building a ruthless army, and we don’t yet know why.

6. Lonely Wolf, Lonely Sheep

Lonely Wolf, Lonely Sheep involves the coincidential meeting of two girls who are coincidentially both named Imari, when their names are called in the hospital waiting room. Even more coincidentially, they are both there for left hand injuries. They declare their meeting one of Fate and the stars.

The dynamic is a little stock- we have the tall tomboyish landscaper “Big Imari”, contrasted with the petite girly artist “Little Imari”. But this short comic serves up more than just a plotless dose of sugary cute, the arc does turn serious. “Little Imari”’s injuries hide a dark secret, and the past is coming to claim her.

5. Octave

Miyashita Yukino is a burnt-out pop idol- the industry is not what she thought it was, and she has no idea where to go with life from thereon. The people of her hometown do not welcome her, and believe she must have had to be a slut to get ahead as an idol. What really cuts deep in this manga, is the portrayal and young age of Yukino- the reality of the pop industry and the sacrifices she had make for her dream, such as dropping out of school, has aged her beyond her years.

She then tries to make a living as a talent manager in Tokyo, but her life still seems devoid of purpose, she is drifting and still yearns for fame. During a regular trip to the nearby laundromat, she meets Setsuko, who is the sister of the laundromat’s owner. She finds some comfort in Setsuko’s company, but her problems do not disappear, and in fact the landromat is facing financial difficulties.

My main problems with Octave is that the characterization can be unsympathetic. Yukino is jaded, and certainly mature in some ways, but she is also emotionally childish- she can be exceedingly mopey, sometimes blames her problems on others, seeks external validation to an unhealthy extent, and generally creates unnecessary drama and conflict with Setsuko, who is emotionally flawed as well. Don’t get me wrong, characters should have flaws, but too much of it, and it rubs me up the wrong way and I kinda want to slap them. The plot also starts to slow rather than speed up as the manga progresses, which is just not to my taste.

However, I would simply chalk those flaws up to the inconsistent quality of Octave, where the quality is high, the manga is amazing, the emotions, the issues and ennui from the characters and the atmosphere, can be quite intensely felt.

4. Gunjo

If you asked me what the manga embodiment of misery is, I might just point you to Gunjo. Gunjo tears your heart out, and then puts it back in for a split second, just so it can tear it out again.

“It begins in the moments after a horrible crime has been committed. A woman has asked someone to kill her husband for her. She has asked someone she knows she can use – another woman, a lesbian, who has been in love with her since high school. The woman who requested the death is abusive, derisive. The woman who committed the crime is passive, almost apathetic. She flinches in the face of the other’s harsh words, but doesn’t fight back.” -(Okazu)

They then go on the run, but how far can they go before they’re caught? Does it make a difference that the cunning, abusive woman who has plotted the murder of her husband, was she herself horrifically abused by this man? Can something resembling love ever develop between two people so violent and broken?

Gunjo is amazing in its fan disservice. The murder succeeds because the killer seduces the man, and kills him while naked. But even in this scene, the violence and her disgust completely detracts from any sexual appeal of her nudity. Even in a kiss between the two main characters, their pain permeates.

My problem with Gunjo however, is specifically that the darkness never lets up. Perhaps it is my own sensitivity, but I found it very hard to complete it.

3. Pulse

It’s a full-color! I love full colors. Anyway, moving on,

Pulse tells the story of Mei, a renowned heart surgeon who is also a cold-hearted playgirl. Lynn is a college student who needs a heart transplant, but she refuses to get one (the risks are high). When they meet, Mei feels a strange kind of pull towards Lynn, almost like she’s truly attracted for once in her life. As they grow closer, Lynn strikes a deal- if she can make Mei fall in love with her, she will get the surgery, but Mei has to be the one to do the surgery. Lynn trusts her.

The premise can create all sorts of problems, but that is surprisingly averted. Mei doesn’t pressure Lynn into sex, nor does she fake romantic attraction. Lynn doesn’t sacrifice for Mei. Basically, Mei is no asshole, she’s just uninterested in people, and Lynn is no pushover. Also, the art is mighty fine.

2. Philosophia

Philosophia is about a college romance wherein the two anti-social, apathetic main characters, Ai and Tomo, bond over smokes and coffee. But these little things are not enough to exorcise their inner demons. As Ai starts to feel for Tomo, she becomes torn up over these emotions- her existing familial relationships are far from ideal, and that has fostered her inability to really understand love. Tomo is strange and disinterested, and it doesn’t seem likely that she will return Ai’s feelings. Furthermore, Tomo wants to leave the country, and the means by which she gets the money she needs, is best kept a secret.

Philosophia has both realistic yet unique characters (they do not fall too far into “always mopey” or “always sweet and excitable”, a common problem even in this list), and also incorporates a series of sobering twists and turns.

1. Collectors

Nito Shinobu and Kanzaki Takako both love shopping. Shinobu collects books and Takako collects clothes. But as they move together, let’s just say there are spaaaaaace constraints.

Collector is nothing grand or wild- this is the Happily Ever After, but Collector is important specifically for showing how life goes on, that it is comedic and fun and relatable.

Yuri tends to face the opposite problem to Western LGBT material of the past. Older Western material is melodramatic and tragic, the gay identity of the couple is frequently mentioned and becomes a source of tragedy as they face persecution, which ultimately results in their suicide or murder. In yuri, the world is often isolated down to the couple- they have feelings for each other, but other characters rarely exist and if they do, these characters do not acknowledge the romance. “Lesbian” is never said, and talks of marriage are only meant as comedy.

There has been a lot of praise for Yuri On Ice (which actually involves a male homosexual couple despite the title) for how the other characters are fleshed out too, for how they recognize and acknowledge the relationship between Viktor and Yuuri. There is a similar kind of realism going on in Collectors. There is a feeling of the world actually existing.

Collectors gives attention to the tender moments, the little things, that make a relationship, instead of it all being grand kisses in front of everyone or a emotionally charged graduation speech. There is no feeling of such performance. Even the fights in Collectors are realistic, not the kind formed from wacky misunderstandings, and in fact the kind with a proper resolution and not where they leave, and then kiss and make up but the problem still exists.

#yuri #lgbt #yuri manga #collectors manga #philosophia #pulse manga #gunjo #octave #murcielago #lonely wolf lonely sheep #rock it girl!!#sweet guilty love bites #gouhou yuri fuufu hon

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corpasa · 5 years ago

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Websites for Hour of Code by Grade

This December will again host the Hour of Code, a one-hour introduction to programming designed to demystify the subject and show that anyone can be a maker, a creator, and an innovator. Last year, almost 300,000 students (age 4-104) participated from over 180 countries and wrote almost 20 billion lines of code. The 200,000+ teachers involved came away believing that, of all their education tools, coding was the best at teaching children to think. It’s easy to see why when you look at fundamental programming concepts:

abstraction and symbolism – variables are common in math, but also in education. Tools, toolbars, icons, images all represent something bigger

creativity – think outside the box

if-then thinking – actions have consequences

debugging – write-edit-rewrite; try, fail, try again. When you make a mistake, don’t give up or call an expert. Look at what happened and fix where it went wrong.

logic – go through a problem from A to Z

sequencing – know what happens when

If you’re planning to participate in Hour of Code, here are a series of activities — broken down by grade — that will kickstart your effort. They can be done individually or in small groups.

Introduce each of these activities by watching “I Like Programming“, a video that discusses why the great programmers of our time fell in love with this activity.

**Grade-levels below are guidelines. Feel free to use whichever project fits your students.

Kindergarten — Human Robot

Start young programmers by teaching sequencing. Show images of stages in, say, their morning preparations. Ask them to organize the list in the order completed as they get ready for school. Call it “sequencing” and expect them to use this domain-specific word.

Next, pick an activity from the sequence — say, walking into the classroom and sitting down. Use yourself as a model of how to perform that activity and ask students for specific directions on how you would complete this task. For example:

Move right foot, then left, 4 times.

Turn right; walk 4 steps.

Turn around (left and left again).

Drop backpack to floor (or place under chair).

Sit

Only do what they tell you. For example, if they say “walk to the chair”, look confused. They haven’t provided enough direction. They must “debug” the “script” and try again.

First Grade — Follow one of the free online Hour of Code activities

Using activities offered on websites like Code.org, Kodable, or Tynker is the easiest way to get involved as the site does the planning for you. Before starting, review the digital citizenship associated with visiting an online site (such as privacy, staying on the assigned website, and not talking to strangers).

Instead of following a pre-planned activity, try one of these sites that introduce age-appropriate programming:

Scratch Jr.

Tinkercad

If you use iPads, here are some great options:

Cargo-Bot

Daisy the Dinosaur

For more suggestions, here’s a list of coding websites. Scroll to the section for first grade.

Second Grade — Animation

Use a free program like Pivot Stick Figure Animator or Stickman to program a stick figure. Both are simple to use, but offer different options. Preview them first to pick the one best suited to your student group.

Pivot Stick Figure is a download. Students program a stick figure to do pretty much anything they want by adjusting the “joints” in his body

Draw a Stickman is a web-based tool or app that turns a simple drawing into a story by asking questions of the creator. Students draw an image; the site animates it and then asks questions as the figure moves, requiring students to add detail to the Stickman’s adventure. They can pick from several story themes in creating their finished story.

If you use iPads, try Stick Nodes or Stickman.

Third Grade — Pixel Art

Pixel Art is the blocky drawing that is most famous for appearing in Minecraft. For this project, students will use a spreadsheet program.

Open the spreadsheet program you use in your school (Google Sheets, Excel, or another). Show students how to turn the cells into squares rather than rectangles by doing the following (or watch this video):

Select all cells by grabbing the box that sits at the intersection of the rows and columns

Drag a column header’s edge to resize the column width to match the row height.

Students now write directions for which color is poured into what squares to create their drawing. For example:

Blue: A1, B1, C1, D1, G1, H1, I1, J1, A2, B2, I2, J2, A3, J3, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9, A10,

When done, students have a neighbor test the directions to see if they can create the intended drawing.

Fourth Grade — Shortkeys

By fourth grade, students appreciate technology for how it can speed up their classwork and will seek out ways to use it for that purpose. Creating a shortkey is a quick and easy way to complete repetitive activities and will become a favorite with students. If necessary, adapt the following Windows/iPad directions to the device used in your school:

Go to Start

Right click on the desired program (either a program or a tool is fine)

Select “properties”

Click in “shortcut”

Push key combination you want to use, say, Ctrl+Alt+S

Save

On iPads, these are called “hotkeys”:

Go to Settings > General Settings > Keyboard Settings.

Scroll down and click “add new shortcut.”

Popular shortkeys are to open programs, activate tools, and take screenshots using the digital device’s native tool.

Fifth Grade — Macros

Creating macros gives students an easy way to add a standards-based heading or any other repetitive task required for their schoolwork without having to retype it each time. Adapt these MS Word directions to your digital device:

Click View – Macros– Record Macros.

Specify a name for the macro.

Choose whether it should be a keyboard shortcut or a button.

Once you click OK, notice your mouse looks like a cassette tape, indicating that anything you click will be part of the macro. Click all elements you would like to be part of your macro.

Stop recording by clicking View – Stop Recording.

Click for a video on how to create macros.

Sixth-Seventh Grade — Code a Widget

Widgets are free, personalized mini-apps that do almost anything the user can program, from calculating the calories in a recipe to solving complex problems. Students can browse Wolfram/Alpha’s gallery for a widget that fits their need and embed the code into their personal website, or build their own widget from scratch using Wolfram Alpha’s Builder tool. The level of difficulty will determine how long it takes.

Click to view slideshow.

Eighth Grade — Alice

Alice is a free downloadable programming tool for 8th grade and above that shows students how to create interactive stories, animations, and games. Besides Math Standards, Alice supports these Common Core writing skills:

8.3a Engage and orient the Alice world viewer by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.

8.3b Use narrative techniques in the Alice World, such as dialogue, pacing, description, and reflection, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.

8.3c In Alice world dialogue and action, use a variety of transitions to convey sequence, signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another, and show relationships among experiences and events.

8.3d Use precision and appropriate tools throughout to convey events.

8.3e Provide a conclusion to the Alice world story that follows events.

Divide the class into groups. Have each group pick one of the following resources, preview it, and be prepared to share their thoughts and take questions from classmates:

basic Alice programming instructions

overview of Alice by Middle School students

Duke University’s Alice “Getting Started” videos are here

Next, groups open Alice and go through the tutorial by clicking “Start Tutorial” in the Welcome to Alice dialogue box. When done, create an animated avatar as follows:

Choose “room” template, then “Setup Scene.”

Choose “class Biped,” “class Person,” then child, female, light and avatar that is shown.

Push OK until avatar appears in the room.

Using circle at avatar’s feet, turn him/her until s/he faces right, and then press “edit code.”

In tab that says “this child/person,” click on heavy black arrow facing down. Then click arrow facing right to reach individual body parts. Choose a body part and give it direction. Run program to see results. Debug program if it doesn’t work.

If students get stuck, they can go through Alice online documentation, Help files, or ask for assistance from classmates. Remind them not to give up. Keep making changes. It will work.

If you have time: In groups, students watch movie trailer of Despicable Me (or similar). Analyze how avatars move their limbs, mouths, and how they walk. Compare this to humans. For example, which leg moves first? How do joints move? How do arms and legs move in relation to each other? Does body bob up-down or side-to-side as avatar moves? List the movements and then construct a walking avatar in Alice world.

Click to view slideshow.

***

Here’s a collection that goes across grade levels:

It’s designed to show that anyone can learn the basics to be a maker, a creator, and an innovator. Here are unusual projects (each, about one hour in length) you can use in your classroom to participate in this wildly popular event:

Alt Codes

IFTTT

QR codes

Wolfram Alpha widgets

Alt Codes

Grade level: 4-12

Alt codes are those symbols that are created by holding down the Alt key and pushing a series of numbers, like these for copyright and the Spanish question mark:

Alt + 0169 = ©

Alt+0191 = ¿

There are hundreds of them for PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks. Click the link for your digital device.

Tip: Press the ALT key. While it is pressed, put in the numbers from your NUMBER PAD. It doesn’t work using the numbers at the top of the keyboard. Make sure the NUM LOCK is on.

Wolfram/Alpha Widget

Grade level: 7-12

Widgets are free personalized mini-apps that can do almost anything the user can program, from calculating the calories in a recipe to solving complex problems. You can either browse Wolfram/Alpha’s gallery for a widget that fits your need and embed the code into your personal website, or you can build your own widget from scratch using their Builder tool. The level of difficulty will determine how long it takes so start simple during Hour of Code.

IFTTT

Grade level: 9-12

IFTTT allows users to create ‘recipes’ to automate functions, such as being notified when the weather changes or the arrival of an event. It uses a simple statement—IF THIS THEN THAT. Users create a recipe by choosing a trigger channel from IFTTT’s library, then a trigger, and finally an action channel. For example:

IF they post a photo on Instagram THEN share it on Twitter

IF it’s going to rain tomorrow THEN send me a text message

IF my children are near home THEN turn on the lights

Click for more on IFTTT.

QR Codes

This is so simple, you’re going to love it:

Open the QR Code reader on your phone or mobile device.

Center the QR Code within the provided frame.

Once the code is read (which happens within seconds), it will automatically activate the data.

QR Codes can include data for almost anything. The tool you select will offer a list. You’ll check what you want to do and get started. Here are some of the options:

Website URL: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to open the website.

Telephone Number: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to call the number.

Plain Text: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to search the web using your default search provider in Safari.

SMS Message: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to compose the specified message to the specified number.

Email Address: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to compose an email to the specified email address.

Calendar Event: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to add the specified event to your calendar.

Location of event: Provide a large QR Code at the entrance to the school or event location with a map and directions to the room where it is located. Attendees merely scan the QR Code and follow the line that leads to the event.

There are dozens of ways to incorporate QR Codes into your classroom. Here are a few, starting with introducing it during Hour of Code:

Introduce QR Codes during Hour of Code to show students the basics of building a code and then using it.

Record voice instructions for a project; save it as an MP3 and turn it into a QR code.

Have new students follow a QR Code scavenger hunt to find all the important places in the school (with their parents if you do it for Back to School Night). That makes all of that information available on their phones for later use.

Add QR codes to homework sheets that link to help. For example, if the student forgets how to solve a math problem, the QR code will take them to help.

Embed concert programs, directions for station activities, and parent contact information as QR Codes instead of printing

For high school students: Create their resume with a QR Code. They can easily share it with everyone, include it on a business card, or send it in an email. The recipient will automatically have it on their mobile device–no worries about losing it.

For a school art display: Include all data on the student artist in a QR Code. It is small and doesn’t distract from the glorious artwork being presented.

Record students reading a short story and embed it into a QR Code. Post these on a gallery in your classroom where students can stop and visit anytime for a quick story read by their classmates.

Have students draw a picture of themselves with a QR code over their belly. On the QR Code, they’ll type about themselves with at least one fascinating fact most classmates wouldn’t know. Let students scan these with their iPads or another digital device to find out more about their new classmates.

***

What are you doing for Hour of Code? Share your projects in the comments.

More on Hour of Code:

Lesson plan bundle for Hour of Code

Hour of Code: Scratch Jr.

Hour of Code–Why Not

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Websites for Hour of Code by Grade published first on https://medium.com/@DLBusinessNow

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evnoweb · 5 years ago