BasketballAnalyst

For fans of basketball, the tools we have to analyse the game we love online, is somewhat limited. Until now, with our brand BasketballAnalyst. What people currently use when trying to analyse certain aspects of basketball, specifically the NBA (National Basketball Association), they have to go to multiple places online, such as the NBA app to watch games and check on live scores, Basketball Reference to look at stats for players, as well as social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube for storylines, rumours, and other people’s opinions on what is going on around the NBA. But now, with BasketballAnalyst, you can do pretty much all of that and then some, on one singular app (or website)!

BasketballAnalyst is going to be a platform for NBA fans to analyse, critique and discuss everything to do with the NBA and basketball in general, as, with our partnership with the website Basketball Reference we are going to have all the statistics, records, history of NBA teams and players both past and present available on our program. As well as this information, we are also going to be having all sorts of advanced statistics (also known as basketball analytics) available for people to view. With this information (and then some) fans of the NBA are going to be able to analyse different aspects on the NBA, whether it is comparing two legends of the game, like Michael Jordan and LeBron James to see how well each players stats look compared to each other, or how well a player is doing during the current season, to see if they’ve been underperforming or overperforming compared to the last season. Whatever the case may be, there are unlimited possibilities with what you can do in our app!

I haven’t even gotten to one of the best aspects of BasketballAnalysis, which is the ratings system that we have come up with. This ratings system is for fans to rate how well players are playing or how well teams are performing. Whether you want to say that through the season so far, an all-star player has been underperforming, so you can give them a 2.5 out of 5 rating, or use our other way of rating, which is giving them an overall score out of 100. If unsure with how that would work, just think of the ratings system for the NBA 2K games.

Not only can you analyse to yourself with how players and teams are performing in the league, but there is going to be an online community to interact with, where you can talk to people across the globe about everything to do with the NBA, but in a way that isn’t considered toxic, as there will be admins and moderators to keep things (somewhat) civil. But that doesn’t mean you can’t say what you want to say, this just means that if you or someone else says something that is out of line and is not basketball related and can be considered as offensive, then it is getting deleted, as simple as that, but this doesn’t mean some people still can’t say some of their god-awful NBA opinions or ‘hot takes’.

One other aspect of BasketballAnalyst that I haven’t mentioned yet, is all the content that is going to be available in the form of videos, articles, and blogs on our site, which will be made by basketball fans, for basketball fans. Just by clicking onto a player’s profile where his statistics and such would be, there will also be a section that includes certain videos or articles that are related to this player, same goes for different teams, as there will be videos and articles about how well a team is performing so far into the season, or how unhappy a player is in their certain situation with their teammates. Again, BasketballAnalyst is going to cover ALL things basketball.

The last section we will be talking about is our gaming section, where we will have arcade type basketball games, as well as NBA trivia and quizzes that have anything to do with the NBA and basketball in general. This will include the ability to create your own quizzes too!

Our brand and its app and website are going to need your help though, as being a crowdfunded project we will need donations from you, our fans, and supporters of our program, to create unlimited possibilities of what you can do on BasketballAnalyst. With any luck, this could lead into other sports as well, like FootyAnalyst, SoccerAnalyst, WrestlingAnalyst and so on!

So, if you’re a fan of the NBA or basketball, get ready for BasketballAnalyst. For the fans that think they are experts, time to see if they really know what they’re talking about.

References
– Basketball Reference, accessed 8 August, 2022 https://www.basketball-reference.com/
– White – Unminus, Soundcloud, accessed 9 August, 2022, https://soundcloud.com/unminus/white

Gamification in Education

Gamification in education is happening more and more for children in schools, and even before they’re at the age of going to school. It seems to be very efficient, and dare I say, gamification may work more on children than adults, especially as gamification can be used in kids’ education and learning. When I think about my own experiences of gamification at school, I noticed it’s been used a lot with me, especially in younger years, like primary school. Examples I have of this, include having peer competition, using points-based systems, as well as teamwork. The classes that would use the forms of gamification, range from maths to sport class (P.E.).

Just purely thinking about my own experiences of gamification in my life in terms of education and learning, I find that it is helpful and useful. It’s useful in ways of getting kids or students to participate, try harder in subjects, and even help them learn things easier. When I really think about it, gamification is used A LOT at school, without students, or possibly even teachers realising it. Actually, having a friend who is currently studying education, as she wants to be a teacher, she told me how it is now part of one of her units that they talk and learn about gamification in education, although this is only in the form of technology. It seems as though gamification is becoming more and more known, especially in teaching.

So gamification in education is definitely there, even if you don’t realise it, and it most certainly does work, even though I don’t have any research to show.

Gamification in Businesses

Hey guys, thanks for checking out my blog, which I will be talking about the gamification that goes on with businesses, as well as work. When I say businesses, I mean gamification that is coming from businesses, that is used towards customers and the businesses intended target audience. When I say work, I mean gamification that is used from employers onto employees. Gamification is used in different ways for these two forms, but I would say that for both business and employers, it has been used in a fairly successful way up to this point in history.

With gamification, there are different elements to it, some of the elements I have mentioned in my infographic below.

By Blake Wilkinson, infographic

For gamification in businesses and work, the elements above are used a lot. A couple of examples of points being used in businesses In Australia, include companies that are owned by the Coles Group, as they have fly buys, and companies owned by the Woolworths Group, as they use everyday rewards for customers. Fly buys and Everyday Rewards are what are called loyalty programs, not only used just for the two supermarkets, but as well as other companies that are a part of the two groups. For Coles Group, other companies and retail outlets that are a part of the group include Kmart and Liquorland, while some companies that are a part of the Woolworths Group include Big W and BWS. Both businesses use gamification in the way of a points-based system, by the more customers buy items at their stores, the more points they are awarded, which they can use to get special deals, or money off their next shop etc.

“DSC32385, Mirage Resort and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA” by jimg944 (CC BY 2.0)

From what it looks like, it seems as though this form of gamification for businesses is working, as for both fly buys and everyday rewards, there over 10 million card owners for each. But another thought is whether or not this uses gamification in a good way, or if it is using the customer or consumer in a negative way. The business is using gamification and a points system in a way that can be addicting to consumers. But there is also the idea that it could possibly be the businesses that are addicted to wanting the consumers to be addicted to their loyalty program, or even another way of gamification (Cochoy & Hagberg, p 83 2016). There are many ways to think of this and this is just one of them, while I wouldn’t say I 100% agree with this, it is an interesting way of thinking about gamification with businesses.

Now I shall get to gamification in work, or in other words, gamification from employers to employees. there are a few reasons why businesses would use gamification on their employees, whether it is to boost their morale, or get them to work harder and more efficiently. From what I’ve read, it seems as though gamification also helps create motivation in working environments (Vesa pp 65-66 2021).

In my video that I created above, I talk more in depth of example of gamification at businesses in terms of employers to employees.

“addiction” by Alan Cleaver  (CC BY 2.0)

I feel as though gamification is very useful for businesses, especially in this day and age with all of the technology that is around us and is at businesses and companies’ disposal. It can be used in a smart and effective way to get employees to work harder and gain more motivation for their job and is also a great way to make money and gain popularity with the use of point-based systems on fly buys and everyday rewards and other elements of gamification for businesses from their consumers and customers. But it can also be used negatively, using consumers addictions in an ill manner.

References:

ALM101DC – Assessment 3

References:

For my podcast, I chose the topic question “How has the rise of social media impacted contemporary politics?”, as I thought it would be the most interesting to research and answer. When I first looked at the topic question, I thought of Donald Trump and how he has used social media, which I knew I could talk about in my podcast. Although while researching, I realised that there weren’t many books at all that I could access, that had anything to do with Trump becoming president of the United States of America, as well as his presence on social media. But what I mainly talk about through-out my podcast, is how politicians methodically use social media in different ways. For my podcast, I decided to record myself on my phone, and then edit the audio on iMovie, and then use Soundcloud to download a song, and ad it onto the end and start of my video.

With my research, because I couldn’t find much research about Donald Trump and him on social media, that I could actually access as a Deakin College student, I decided to research both books on social media, and books on politics, which I feel as though did me well. For the book “Politics: Why it Matters”, by Andrew Gamble, I used it in my podcast, for when I used the definition of politics, because I thought that would be the smartest thing to do, if I am going to be talking about politics. Then for Tim Highfields book, “Social Media and Everyday Politics” I used it when referring to what social media is. I also used Highfields’ book when talking about how television networks use social media during elections.

The creation of my content was fairly simple, as I just used the iOS app ‘Voice Memos’ to record myself, as well as edit recordings. The way I went about recording myself, was I would record myself speaking one paragraph or a couple sentences at a time, then at the end put them all together. I then used iMovie to finish editing, then put it all together as well as add music in the intro to my podcast, as well as in the outro to my podcast. The music that I used, I found by searching SoundCloud, while making sure that I was only looking at music that I would be allowed to use and modify commercially. It probably took 2 songs for me to find the song that I chose, and the reason I chose it, was simply because it sounded fine enough for me. I also made sure I got the creative commons license for it, which was easy to find. The music I used was the only time that I used Creative Commons licensed source material in my podcast.

The only problem I could think of in the pre-production phase, was that I couldn’t access a scholarly article on Donald Trump as president and his use of social media. But there were a couple of problems that I had while in the production stage of my podcast, the problems mainly stemming from not being able to talk without forgetting or messing up a line or words or anything. This is why I didn’t go through with the idea of saying the whole podcast in one recording, which I wasn’t really expecting to at all, but I thought it would be worth a try. I simply fixed this by recording in paragraphs and sentences, and then putting it all together in post-production. Another problem I had with my podcast, was during post-production, I tried to use audacity to edit my podcast, but for some reason I couldn’t add my recordings as they were the wrong file type or something like that. To fix this, I decided to use iMovie, which was a lot better as I was comfortable with using it and everything worked.

I was pretty content with my podcast, overall.

References:

ALM102DC – Assessment 3

For the unit ‘Making Video’, for the third and last assessment, I decided to pick the first topic I could choose from, which was ‘A balanced perspective is the key to understanding the contemporary surveillance society in which we live’. I chose this topic as it resembled my opinion the most, which I do say in my YouTube video, as I had read somewhere that it is best that I include as to why I picked the topic that I had chosen.

I didn’t know exactly what I would talk about in my video, but the one clear cut thing I thought I should include, is both the pros and cons to surveillance in society, as if you want to have a balanced perspective on something, you need to know there are both pros and cons to things. Once I realised this, I just went to the Deakin library and looked books that had either bad things to say about surveillance, good things to say about surveillance, or both. With my research, it seemed to be a lot easier to find books and websites that had bad things to say about surveillance in society, compared to books and websites that had good things to say about surveillance. So when I was finding positives of surveillance, I used my brain more than I thought I would and thought about how surveillance would be helpful and good for society, as I wasn’t going to be able to go very far with just using books that had good things to say about surveillance.

Unlike the positives of surveillance, negatives or cons of surveillance were a lot easier to find online, as there is a fairly big community that are into the idea that surveillance isn’t good, and it is taking away people’s privacy. This made it incredibly easy to find negatives to say about surveillance, but the key was to keep it even between the positives and the negatives, otherwise my perspective on the topic would be skewed, which isn’t what I want the audience to see, as my aim is for the audience to realise that there are both positives and negatives to surveillance, and they should have a balanced perspective on it, obviously.

Knowing that I had to reference different websites and YouTube videos, I knew one video that I would definitely reference, would be ‘China: “the world’s biggest camera surveillance network”, as I thought it worked perfectly for my video, as I could use the video as a pro, but I could go back to talking about China when talking about the negatives of surveillance too. Other websites I used, I used as ideas and inspiration for what I would talk about, like the article ‘Top 8 Pros and Cons of Surveillance Cameras in Public Places’, as well as the reddit forum ‘Never forget mass surveillance has nothing to do with security’, which I obviously exclusively used for negatives of surveillance.

With filming myself for my video, I decided to use my phone for it, and positioned myself, by trying to stand behind a line while I videoed myself, which I’ll admit, didn’t work out the greatest as when clips change during my video, it looks as though I had moved around a few times. But with videoing I decided to a few methods, as for some clips, I would say a sentence, then end the video, then start again and then end the video, as well as I would try to say a fair amount, but I would mess up, but I would keep the video going, and then keep trying to get it right, which in post-production I would just edit it out and clean it up.

For the post-production, I used iMovie to edit video clips. The reason I chose iMovie, was because I used it for my last assessment, so I was familiar with the application and I knew what I was doing. With editing, I was just making sure the video was cleaned up, so when there were any longish pauses, I would cut them out, as well as adding overlays of images that had to do what I was talking about.

Using music, it was easy as I used the exact same method as I did with the previous assessment, which is that I used Soundcloud, made sure the I was allowed to use the music and then just used it during the intro of my video, as well as the outro.

This time around, I felt that the post-production was a lot quicker and easier compared to my last assessment, but the pre-production and actual production took just as long, but overall, I am pretty happy with the outcome, even though it may not be perfect.

References:

  • Landa, R 2016, Advertising by Design : Generating and Designing Creative Ideas Across Media, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, Somerset. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [22 September 2019].
  • Bennett, CJ 2015, ‘Trends in Voter Surveillance in Western Societies: Privacy Intrusions and Democratic Implications,’ Surveillance & Society, vol. 13, no. 3/4, pp. 370-84.
  • BBC News, ‘China: “the world’s biggest camera surveillance network” – BBC News, Retrieved 22nd September 2019  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNf4-d6fDoY&feature=youtu.be>

ALM101DC – Assessment 2

Identity in the online world can be very interesting, like how people act and construct their identity on different social media platforms, what using images can do for your online identity and how often people use social media, compared to how often they actually post on social media. there is also the fact that some people can have a very different online identity, compared to their personal or social identity, in person.

Firstly, what exactly is identity? Well according to Tony Chalkley, identity is “the construction of one’s sense of self.” (2017, p. 68)

For my online identity, it can be very different depending on what social media site, or which account I’m using. For example, I have two twitter accounts, one that I have for personal use, that I don’t share with anyone that I know, and the other is the one that I created at the start of the trimester, and they certainly do not have the same identity, or are very similar. On my more personal account, I don’t believe I have ever posted an actual tweet on it, because I use it more to stay in the loop with things, and follow a bunch of celebrities and sports stars and other accounts that I have interest in. I am very much lurking in the shadows with that account. For my newer one, I have more tweets than people I follow, surprisingly, although that’s not very hard when all that I’m following is the ALM101DC on twitter.

Something that I have a stronger identity on, is my personal Instagram account. I believe this is natural though as including images into social media, can make your account a lot more personal. Meanwhile, the only image I have on my twitter account, is my profile picture.

Photograph by Blake Wilkinson 15 August 2019

I find myself building or constructing various identities on social media constantly, where on some I can be very quiet, and on others I can post a normal amount, although I definitely don’t spam on any social media platform. Specifically talking about Instagram though, I have tried to construct my online identity as to one that isn’t very serious, but just light hearted. For example, here is one post where I am simply quoting ‘The Simpsons’ while wearing a Simpsons referenced t-shirt and eating a Simpsons referenced food:

Photograph by Blake Wilkinson 13 April 2018

There is also the social media website ‘Facebook’, which I use, but the only time I ever post on it, is when I am changing my profile picture, which isn’t very often at all. But although I don’t post on Facebook very often, it doesn’t mean I’m not on it. In fact, I am online almost all of the time that I am awake, same goes for Twitter and Instagram. It has become second nature to me, to check all of my social media accounts when I wake up, just like putting on my glasses when I wake up (yes, I wear glasses all the time). It can be a really interesting aspect of social media, since you don’t necessarily have to participate to get sucked in.

Going along with how some people don’t really post on social media, people and their identities in person, could be very different to what their identities are online. Personally, I feel like my identity on Twitter and Facebook is very different to what my identity is in person, although this is mostly due to the fact that I don’t really have much of an identity on these platforms, especially Twitter. To me, my personal and social identity seems to be that I am a quiet guy, who likes to be sarcastic and make jokes, but on Facebook, I haven’t posted a single joke, and on my personal Twitter, I haven’t even posted anything! The online identity I have that resembles the most, is my identity on Instagram, and even that isn’t the same, since I, like most, try to make posts as appealing as possible, so they can get the most ‘likes’ or ‘heart reacts’ as possible. Even conversing with other people, they have expressed the same feeling that their online identities don’t resemble their personal identities at all.

So, this is why identity can be very interesting, how different identities are constructed on different platforms, how using images can help strongly change your identity, and that how people use social media all the time, without even posting. It’s also interesting with how people conduct themselves in person, compared to on social media, with how different their online identity is compared to their personal identity.

References:
– Cinque, TC., Hobbs, MC., Brown, AB., Chalkley, TC., Warren, BW. 2017, Media and Society, Digital Media and Everyday Life, 2nd end, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, p. 68
– Personal Twitter Profile/profile picture <https://twitter.com/BlakeWi74925242 accessed 26 August, 2019
– Personal Instagram profile <https://www.instagram.com/stevie_phase_5/> accessed 26 August, 2019

ALM102 Assessment 2

For my video, I chose to talk about the Digital Divide, although I talked more about techno-dependence which can be related to the digital divide. I actually found it fairly hard to decide on something to talk about for my video, but I decided to go to the online Deakin library and look up books on the digital divide, and one book that I looked up, which is the one I chose, “The Digital Divide: Issues, Recommendations and Research”, had some interesting subjects in it, especially that has to do with techno-dependence. What I actually wanted to talk about in my video wasn’t much, just thought I’d bring up a few pros and cons to techno-dependence, and I thought including the five different addictions to the internet would be pretty interesting.

Preparing for my video, I thought the first thing I should do, is do my research and look into a few different books to help me find something that I would want to talk about. After this I would start planning my script and because I knew I wanted to do a medium close up/close up shot size for my video, I thought it would be a lot more efficient if I would just do a script and not a storyboard, as the storyboard would just be a lot of the same stuff. After recording my video, I decided to use the application “iMovie” to edit my video. This was the first time using this application and after a little while, I gradually started to know what I was doing. During my video I used overlays of pages from the book that I was referencing multiple times, which I think worked pretty swell. I kind of made sure I used the fact that I was editing the video to my advantage while recording, as I said a couple lines each time, then would stop, then I would do another couple of lines. This is because I knew I could cut clips while editing and it’d still work out, which it did, I think. I knew I needed to include some sort of music or sound, so I thought the time to use it would obviously be in the intro and outro. It wasn’t for long, but I do think it made the video a tinier bit better if anything. I got my music by using Soundcloud, making sure I could use that song and everything, which I could.

There definitely were some problems I encountered through the process, most of them during and post production. While I was filming my video, the main problem I had was getting the words out of my mouth, without looking at the script. This is where cutting clips in post-production helped so much. In Post production, I found myself getting annoyed quite often, but I think this is mostly due to it being my first time using “iMovie”. I had to learn how to cut clips so they wouldn’t have any awkward silences or anything in them, which took a lot longer than I thought it would. Once it came to the music, I also had a fair amount of trouble dealing with it, as the songs that I found that I liked, I tried to download but for some reason I couldn’t, or the application “iMovie” said it wasn’t playable media, so after going through a few songs, I finally found one that worked, which was a huge sigh of relief.
I’m just glad that I ended up getting this done to be honest

References:


ALM102 Assessment 1

#ALM102DC

In my ALM102 Assessment 1, I chose to do a very simple video introducing myself. Honestly, there weren’t many messages that I wanted to convey in my video, only really that I am a fairly average 18 year old, that enjoys the same things that other people do. I didn’t want to go into too much detail about anything really, since it was only going to be a 1 minute introduction video. The only interesting thing I could say about myself is that I am allergic to chicken, because that is an abnormal fact about me. I also wasn’t sure what to say about where I think I will be in the future, because I genuinely do not know.

In terms of what my strategies were for planning, framing and positioning in my video, they were all pretty simple. For planning, all that I was doing, was writing up a script for what I was planning to say in my introduction. But when I first wrote my script, it wasn’t long enough, so then I did dot points on what to say during my video. This helped me just reach the time limit that the video was allowed to be, which was 1 minute. I wanted to make sure I was positioned of frame in my video since, obviously, I am supposed to be the centre of attention in my video. I also tried to find a place in my house where there was fairly solid lighting, and I used both natural lighting, and lighting from light bulbs for this. I don’t think I really did too much at all with my video in terms of trying to engage the audience, since I knew I didn’t have to edit my video or anything like that, so I left it unedited. I figured the smartest place to record myself was in my house, and a big reason because of that, is because I knew there wouldn’t be any audio distractions going on, as in no other sounds disrupting the audio in my video.

During this process, there were a couple of problems I faced, one of them which was probably the most annoying, was that I was sick when recording. I had a blocked nose and having head spins, which I felt like inhibited myself from doing as good as I wanted, and because I decided to start videoing fairly close to the due date, I knew I just had to deal with it. So, if it seems as if it is hard to understand what I am saying, that could be a good reason why. Another problem I faced, was, like I said before, not really knowing what to say. I really struggled with finding out what I wanted to say about myself in my video, because I wasn’t sure how private I wanted to get about myself, and that when describing myself, I didn’t really find much substance that I could say about myself. Another problem I faced was with the lighting. I wanted fairly decent lighting, so I decided to stand near the light, but then I had the problem of my chandelier shining into the camera. I simply fixed this problem by positioning my head in front of the chandelier, to hide the very bright lighting from the camera.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

  • Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
  • Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

  • Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
  • What topics do you think you’ll write about?
  • Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
  • If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started