Fare"whale"

Friday, October 17

IQP is officially over. What an experience this has been! Not only did we get the incredible opportunity to work at the New England Aquarium, but we got to deal what it is truly like being on a full time project team. The last week of the term was really a struggle. Between submitting the final report last Friday, preparing for Tuesday's presentation on Monday while fixing our deliverable, going into Boston on Tuesday for our presentation, and then pulling an all-nighter Wednesday to Thursday to address over 600 comments on our report, we are completely burnt out. I wish we had one more day of editing to really polish up the report, I was really itching to fix simple errors while looking over the report today. Looking at the overall report, the parts that really matter are the deliverables. Our framework and content tables will hopefully allow the NEAq to move forward to create this video game. I am hoping to keep in contact with the NEAq so I can play the right whale video game in the future.

Taking a step away from the project, I am amazed at how far our group came as an overall team. We got to really understand each other in terms of what we need to be able to function as a "well oiled machine." My group members knew that once I get stressed to just throw food at me or crack a joke so I can bounce back and focus on the task at hand. I look forward to hanging out together as a group even though IQP is over. Not only my IQP group members, but the people in the Boston IQP in general. We have all come to know each other, and bond over the IQP struggles we all have in common. If there is one thing I wish I could change about the IQP experience it would be to spend more time together as a whole group exploring Boston. I feel like we missed out on getting to see Boston and getting to really know the other groups. I would suggest to the Boston Project Center to reconsider having the students stay in Boston. After having the commuting experience, I would have gladly dished out the funds to stay in Bean Town. I think those 4 hours commuting could have been better spent exploring the city if we lived there.

To make sure we never forget all the amazing experiences we had, I want to include some pictures that captured us in the moment.

Lunch break at the WCPC

Late night shenanigans with the climate group!

Touring Boston!

Someone was a bit too tired for this train ride.

When we need a break, Alex draws whales...

After Presentations!

We were in Chinatown and Ray found this...

One last time seeing the Penguins!

Thank you for staying tuned!

 -Kady :)

Game over.

It's the final countdown. Our words breach and form a surface-active group on our screen like happy right whales. We are fully determined to refine our report.

With the help of our sponsors and advisers through their comments, we are able to connect the report to itself using consistent terminology and references to other sections of the report. We are also able to clearly state the relevance of each mentioned idea. But first, we must address the small gaps which are pointed out to us. Then our report will be complete.

I have brought together a poem to reflect on the many details of our project. Please forgive its rough, unrefined nature:

Untitled

By Alex Helderman 

Roses are red,

Violets are true 

 -ly difficult to engage for the conservation of North Atlantic Right Whales using an educational video game to be developed by WPI student game developers using the seven defined criteria to follow including the factual accuracy of the game to the real life environment of North Atlantic right whales, where lobster fishermen are faced with regulations but collaborate with researchers to pass regulations which can benefit everyone involved, while also addressing the various threats right whales face such as ship strikes, which were reduced by shipping lane changes and speed restrictions, and entanglements, which we are hoping to decrease with fishing gear modifications currently, which must be employed by lobster fishermen who may be supported in their efforts to help right whales by having brands of lobsters which are labeled whale-safe, which I hope an entrepreneur takes on as not only a great business venture but also as an act of benevolent entrepreneurship so that one day as consumers walk through the grocery store, they can make the decision to pick the whale-friendly lobster because their daughter or son once played a game at the New England Aquarium, which is really why we are doing this project.

Kudos to you if you read through that. The project has grown in complexity, and our job now is to clarify all of it in our report. It will be a difficult task, given that we spent much of the week preparing for the brown-bag presentation at the NEAq.

With regards to recent changes in our project, we have condensed the objectives of the methods chapter based on which has similar themes. We did this because two of our objectives were for the purposes of gathering information (audience, platform, location), so we grouped them together into one objective. Our last objective was to create a deliverable which did not actually address a research gap, so it was scrapped for that reason (and a few other reasons I do not recall). Two of our objective titles were revised to reflect on what they actually contributed for our deliverable (content detail tables and the storyline). For a more accurate description, see our report.

I plan to quickly add a lot of information to our methods about the way that we analyzed our information to obtain our deliverable, while my team members will work on other important aspects of our report before we are going to go over the report once more to correct for grammar and flow.

Since we are pressed for time, I will keep this short. We are all in high spirits, ready to clarify our report and submit it. 

This will likely be my last post, so thank you for reading. I have learned a great deal during this project, which we hope to show through our report or at least our deliverable for several members of the New England Aquarium, whom I thank for their support in this project.

Yours,

Alex Helderman

Last Friday of IQP

Its the last Friday of IQP. Wow how time has flew from ID 2050 to now. We have learned so much about our IQP project on our right whale video game project. Its amazing to see how much we have grown as a group and how much our close friendship has developed. This Friday we spent our day focused on our final IQP draft. We woke up super early and drank lots of coffee preparing for compiling all our sections into one complete draft for our sponsors and advisers to review to give us feedback. Thankfully we worked really well today and remained focus to submitting our draft before the deadline we set for ourselves.

After hours of working we submitted our draft today around 6 PM, we are all relived and are prepared to continue working hard until the end of the term. We are ready for any challenges we might need to face this upcoming week and are all nervous for our 45 minute presentation to our sponsors on Tuesday. We hope it goes smoothly as none of us have ever presented for such a long period of time but we will present on Tuesday the best we can! We are looking forward to meeting all the staff at the NEAq and to getting their insight about our project. We are also anticipating on going to see the Imax theater movie Journey to the South Pacific in 3D at the NEAq. We have seen the trailer and it looks like such an enjoyable movie! We can't wait for our last Imax movie this term and to learn more about underwater life! Stay tune for hearing about our last week of IQP and our adventures!

-Whales

Team Whales! Ready for anything!

A Sigh of Relief

Friday, October 10

The post-presentation feeling is one of the best feelings a student can have. Leading up to our final presentation we fluctuated between being nervous to being quite silly about the whole thing. We would begin practicing using our "roller-coaster" voices because we really wanted the audience to feel as excited as we are about our project. I personally felt stressed that morning because of how much we changed our presentation and how little time we had to practice before Thursday, but I fully believe we did an amazing job. I felt we had a solid, confident presentation, and I know we can carry that over to Tuesday's presentation at the NEAq. I am very impressed at the other group presentations as well. Everyone was able to present their ideas and answer any question thrown at them. If anyone at the project center is looking for a major sign of overall improvement, just look and compare our ID2050 presentations with our final IQP presentations.  

Us After Presentations!

When listening to our presentation it really dawned on me how much we have learned the past six weeks. I cannot believe we are already at the point where we are wrapping up our paper. I'm very surprised at how fast the weeks flew by and how much we have accomplished. My main fear is not being able to express our knowledge in our report. We have been working around the clock to edit, add information, and to update old information (yes, our report becomes outdated within a day of submitting a section). The amount of times we have switched our terminology has definitely caused a lot of editing headaches. I hope between the four of us, two advisors, and three sponsors we can fix all the bugs and get the paper ready to go.

I think it is important to not only reflect on how much we learned about right whales, the NEAq, video games, and social implications of technology, but also think of how we have grown as group members. We have spend an enormous amount of time together and really know the ins and outs of our group dynamics. We no longer shy away from second guessing a group member, but jump in immediately and talk through things. As far as receiving feedback, we have gotten used to the 100+ comments and really know how to take in the main messages and rework our paper (hopefully we are actually doing this correctly). Our advisors have been great at encouraging us and keeping us on track. It is a little daunting at times to review so many drafts, but in the end we are better writers and better at using written criticism to our advantage.
-Kady

IQP experience winding down

Wow what a week its been! Between rewriting drafts to going on a toxic tour of Boston to watching Island of Lemurs: Madagascar at the New England Aquarium Imax Theater in 3D .This weeks been very busy but also fun at the same time.

This week we began rewriting our methods chapter to include in detail what we did for each objective. We began working on our deliverable's for the NEAq. We created our content details for the video game which was exhausting but once completed we all felt accomplished. We compiled specific right whale stories from the NEAq catalog, ocean vessels present in the North Atlantic Ocean, marine animals and plants present in the right whales habitat, and many other important details necessary for the video game to include. We based all our information off of the most reliable resources to reflect in the video game to make it as accurate as possible.

We took a break this week from work to relax. We went to the Imax theater and watched Lemurs in 3D. It was a very cool experience. Some of us have never been to a 3D cinema and it was a great experience to learn about lemurs and the threats they face in 3D. I felt as if I were in the movie which made the experience even more amazing. The nice thing was that we did not have to pay to see the movie which is always a plus for us broke college students! After the movie we all headed over to toxic tours and that was interesting experience to be part of. It was nice to see all the other students in IQP Boston. It was nice to catch up with others and to see how everyone's IQP is going. The tour guide of toxic tours was great. It was fascinating to see how other communities in Boston have grown and how their communities have been built. A history lesson that I'm sure we all won't forget. We also explored the NEAq main visitor building and explored the exhibits at the aquarium! Here are some pictures from the week below! Stay tune for more about our Boston adventures to come soon!

-Elior

Toxic Tours! All smiles! :)

On our way home from a great day!

Boston skyscrappers!

Lunch by the harbor!

Elior at the blue action center learning about penguins!

Weekly Team Reflections 10/4

The end of the week has come! What a relief, the weekend is finally here. This week our team began writing the results and recommendations chapters of our IQP report. It was very stressful at first because we had to reflect back on our methods chapter which was out dated and we had to revise this methods chapter first to be able to begin the results and recommendations chapters. We had to back track to what we did and how we got each result. Thankfully after sitting down and rethinking everything we did from the beginning of the term to now we were able to come up with a list of results and a list of recommendations for the future MQP group that will take over our project and the NEAq.

We also began working on our deliverable's for the NEAq. We compiled a list of criteria that is necessary for the development of a video game on right whales. Throughout the week we each wrote a narrative on right whales and integrated all the stories together to create one storyline. Our creative minds made the storyline unique and interesting to read. We presented our draft of our deliverable's to our sponsors at the NEAq who really enjoyed our storyline. Although this week has been very busy we are ready for the challenges we will need to overcome in the weeks to come. As a group we feel as though we can face anything that gets in our way. We feel very accomplished and can't wait for more adventures!

-Whales

The Whales!

Final Official IQP Meeting

October 1, 2014

Our last IQP meeting of the term brought more revelations. In summary, we discussed the matrix we created, but the real focus was on funneling all of our findings and background information into justifiable recommendations.

Life is an enigma. 

This project is for the New England Aquarium, and we need to make sure that we can gain the approval of their research department while giving the MQP team the tools they need to ensure the game is factually accurate, engaging, enlightening about our connection to right whales.

Here is my colorful justification of how the game will address our goal:

1. The game is a communication tool.  That's all--conveying our central message. But what message is that? And how do we convey it?
2. Our central message: the public should know how they affect the ocean--this is the overarching theme of the NEAq's messages. In other words, this is the seed to all other messages we will convey. So, how do we convey that?
3. To convey the message: we will illustrate the problem in an engaging way. The audience can figure out the message themselves. Or we can state it explicitly. But how do we illustrate the problem engagingly?
4. To illustrate the problem engagingly, we will illustrate the life of the right whale and their human threats. The first priority in our illustration is factual accuracy. The other priorities (or "criteria") are fun, engaging-ness, motivation-for-action, and others we have not decided yet. Ideally, the audience will complete the game feeling hopeful and wanting to help.

There are a few general questions about the project that may be good for me to answer:

"What an interesting perspective on the project. How are you going to do it?"

Engaging the audience requires two teams. Our team has spent the past month trying to come up with the materials and recommendations needed by the NEAq and the MQP. The MQP team will convert our recommendations into an engaging game that conveys our message.

"What materials and recommendations?"

Our materials consist of a matrix and a content table, so far.

First, we have a matrix to allow the NEAq to come to a decision on platform for the MQP group. However, this matrix contains so much detail that it is difficult to communicate its meaning, among other problems with it.

Secondly, we have a content table that is currently a work-in-progress which features the appearances, roles in the environment and to right whales, and behaviors of right whales, various other sea creatures, human role-players, and their various vessels and equipment. Ideally, this table will be the only resource the MQP group will need for factual information.

These two charts are supplemented with recommendations targeted at the NEAq and MQP groups. We have findings and background research which we use to justify various decisions about what platform, audience, genre, tone (maybe), storyline, and content should make it into the game.

"Wow, are the recommendations really so important? What does it matter if they are not properly supported by your findings, and are ignored?"

Our recommendations are a communication tool between us and the NEAq/MQP groups, so they can understand the rock-solid research we conducted over the course of at least three months. 

So, our goal is to help the NEAq and the MQP group reach their goals. If we fail to support our recommendations, our project will simply become hollow credit-hours. None of us want that--we want to see the game reach its goal.

Our smiles here indicate our willingness to address the inherent complexities of our project, and to cross this street.

 As our team will be repeating many times, the end of the road is in sight.

Yours,
Alex