So far, I've been making notes and NPCs for the game and plotting out the history of the land. I've been reading: The Player's Handbook, Volo's Guide to Monsters, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, The Dungeon Master's Guide, Guide to Ravncia, Eberron: Rising From The Last War, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, The Monster Manual, and some online sources for other things. it's a lot of things to consider and I'm still thinking of how everything is going to connect to each other and what the overall quest is going to be. But as of now, I've been building and thinking of the world and studying the monsters lore and abilities.

Blog Posts

• 2-3 blog posts on reading
• For blog post on free choice

Participation Tsasks

• Shape of a Story (could be blog post)
• Unselfie (could be considered free choice post)

Photo Challenges

Five of the Seven

• Day One: Door onto World
• Day Two: Eyes
• Day Three: Layers/Combine
• Day Five: Framing
• Day Six: Silhouette
• Day Seven: Photo that tell a story.

Website

• Lesson One
• Lesson Two
• Lesson Three
• Lesson Four
• Lesson Five

Everyone, at every age, uses social media to show their audience something they think they'd like. A lot of people post what they think will get the most likes. This can lead to a false online persona that doesn't quite line up with who the real person is. The teenager applying to the Ivy League posted what he felt he needed to keep up with his peers and to be a valid member of the group. A sense of belonging is something that Boyd points out is very important for young people. My Instagram has evolved with how I view others and what I think about what they think about me. I used to post things with the goal of getting likes so I would try to post the best pictures. Now, I don't really care who likes or sees it because I'm more confident and sure of myself as a person. I know that I have people around me that care about me no matter what. I've never posted anything that shouldn't be on the Internet because I was taught from the start that anything I post will be on there forever even if I delete it I never worried about what colleges/employers would see. 

I agree with Dewey in that learning should be more collaborative and experience based. I know in school, the class overall would learn better when the teacher put us all in a roleplay scenario because it would make the lesson more personal. Of course, there were some students who would prefer to learn from the book, but for the most part, students learned better the other way. Building a sense of community in the classroom by making students collaborate also makes for better life skills like communication and problem solving which are things that can't be learned from reading a book. You could know a lot about something, but if you're not able to communicate that or if you're difficult to get along with, your knowledge won't be as important to them. However, if you don't know everything at a job but are able to ask questions and get along with most people, the people around you will be more willing to work with you in the future because they know how you think and are able to have fun along the way. 

In the beginning of the reading it talks about how a young man applied to the college he wanted to go to. He wrote in his college admission essay that he wanted to get away from gang life in his community, and make something of himself. The admissions loved his essay and wanted to accept him until they went on to his social media page. They saw gang sybolism, crass language, and reference to gang activities. They decided after seeing his social media account and what was on it, to not accept him. When someone decided to look into why his essay and his social media account said two different things, they found something interesting.  He discovered that his social media count wasn't what it seemed. The boy thought he had to post these things to fit in his community. I think though you always need to watch what you post on social media. Even if you delete something or it disappears on snapchat after you send something to someone, it never permantly goes away. You are going to get judged by colleges or potential employers because they think your social media page is how your defined. If you say one thing they will take what you post on social media more seriously because that's how you are portraying yourself to everyone online. Pictures and other information from your youth still come up when you are adults even if you delete it. It can hinder who hires you, and who accpets you into their college.

https://jgregorymcverry.com/videos/LiteraryAnalysisPost.mp4

https://jgregorymcverry.com/videos/BloggingBasics.mp4

Those two videos will help but a basic post should be

• Around 250 Words
• More than One Paragraph
• Take a Position
• Use evidence from the readings to support your position

Technology isolates you from what is going on in the real world and it can have a major effect on your brain. With social media comes false entertainment and acceptance. People turn to the internet for validation from others, which can be very dangerous. The opinions of other people can be very harmful and can take a toll on you. Exposure to technology at such a young age is harmful for a teen brain because it’s just developing. If you want kids to grow up self-sufficient and capable of making real connections. We have become too heavily reliant on technology to keep us entertained that we have stopped connecting with people on deeper levels. These conversations that we are missing out on are truly necessary to maintain complex relationships with others and oneself because they teach you about fluidity, contingency, and personality. 

The TED Talk discusses how humans have evolved with technology overtime and how it is changing how we interact with one another. It gives us the ability to connect with hundreds of people within minutes all over the world. This quick and speedy access could always negatively affect us because we can become too heavily relient on quick splashes of entertainment. That can affect our attention spans and our relationships with one another and technology. However, the advances in technology also give us a new way to communicate and share our ideas.

The article is about keeping a track record of how you sleep. But the problem with it all is the woman we follow is more concerned what the statistics say about her rather than how she feels. So she cheats in a sort of way to get better statistics on her app. This alone tells a lot about this person that she's very self conscious about herself and doesn't like to see or hear bad things about herself. I can relate to this as when I recieve nasty emails or texts from people, I instead delete the messge without reading it as it would bother me greatly if I knew what the message said. But we all must learn it does not matter what anyone or anything says about us, but what we say we are. If we let small things like this rule over us, then we hold ourselves captive. How ironic that the jailor would confine themself in their cell when they hold all the keys.