Final Project Wrap-up

I just completed the final project and submitted it to Dr. West. This was probably one of the most fun projects that I have been involved with in graduate school. I wish there were more professors like Dr. West that just gives you some guidelines and lets you create your own project. This would definitely make graduate school a lot more enjoyable and less stressful! I definitely learned a lot about how to write a lesson plan and found out that I need to be very specific in my step by step instructions. I ended up picking four graduate students for my foursquare project. They are pretty active people, so I know they would be capable of checking in twice a day over a four day span. The results from my four learners and where they checked in were about what I expected. I found that over a four day period that fell during a weekend that they mostly checked in at places that served food or alcohol. As a graduate student these are sometimes places that I am at during the weekend to relax and watch some athletic event. The thing that I was surprised was a couple of them did check in at a recreational facility during the weekend. This came as a surprise because that is not always on someones mind during the weekend. I know when I showed some of them the results of their check ins they were surprised and forgot that they were there. I think in the future this would be a great idea to take even farther over a longer period of time. You could definitely keep track of places you go and try to limit them like fast food restaurants and bars or see how many days of the month you can go to a recreational facility. The best part I did find about foursquare was you can compete with your friends and see who can score the most points in a week by checking into places. I had a great time being in this class and learned a lot more about web 2.0 technologies then I ever new existed. I wish everyone goodluck on finishing up your final project as well as any other finals that you may have.

-Travis

Week 4 Final Project

Today was the big day that I provided my four subjects with my lesson plan and how to sign up and use four square. I wanted to get it to them as soon as possible because the weekend is coming up and would be interested to see where they check in during the weekend. I had to put certain stipulations that they needed to check in at least twice a day and kept it that they needed to check in from Friday Nov 29 to Monday Dec 3rd. I felt this was a good range to look at of places they will check in at and it will also give me enough time to finish my results and hand them in by the due date. I am excited to see what the results are because I felt like I picked a pretty diverse group of people. Hope you all have a great last couple weeks of the semester!!

-Travis

Final Project

I have found the learners that I think will be perfect to test my project on. They all have limited and  no prior knowledge of four square. I have started to put my lession together on how to sign up for four square and how many times that they need to check in and how to use four square. Things are starting to come together. Hopefully by next week I should be able to give them my lession plan and they should be able to start using four square. I ma excited to take the next step in this project!

-Travis

Final Project

I have decided that I wanted my project to do something with four square. The reason that I chose this because it is something that I have recently become familiar with and think it is a great way to see where everyone goes as well as a fun competition to compete with friends on earning points by signing into the different places that you go.

Being a Graduate Student here at Western Illinois I was always intrigued on where everyone goes in Macomb. If some of you have never been here there is not much around here for people to do. I want to train and implement the use of Four Square to track places that Graduate Students frequent. I hope to at least get 4 subjects that are in Graduate School currently at Western Illinois and find out where they go. I hope to maybe find a hidden gem in Macomb that I have never been to before. I will track the places that they go and categorize it into food, clothing and grocery stores. This should be a great start for me and I am excited to start the search for learners and begin writing my tutorial on how to use four square. I would be interested to hear everyone else’s experiences with four square? Likes? Dislikes?

Proposal

I have always found four square interesting on how people check in and places they have been. Recently I have spent a lot of time on four square trying to learn all the different functions that it offers. I want to propose a project where I send a facebook message out to a select few of friends that are around the same age as me that do not have four square with a rundown on how to sign up for four square and the basics how to use it. I will explain the amount of times that they need to check in a day for the remainder of the semester. I will then follow them on four square monitoring the places that they check in daily. I am interested to see the places that they go to and what ones do they go to more often, whether it is a certain food place or a certain hang out. It would definitely be fun to find out where the prime places of people my age hang out at. After I finish my research I hope to find patterns where each person frequents and write why that may be. It will also be interesting to find out their reaction when I tell them how many times they checked in at certain places.

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