Digital technology is changing how we do everything. More than ever, it is important to be a critical user and an educated producer of digital media. Digital media consists of computer-based, networked technologies that represent and imagine the world. It is the new standard for literacy in the 21st century.
As an undergraduate student at University of Rochester, I have created a bunch of digital projects. I firmly believe that those projects showcase my ability in both designing the virtual models and thinking about the real world problems.
Besides, I approach the digital game medium with a critical eye for game design. Through reading about, discussing, writing about and playing digital games, I become literate in meaningful play and gain understanding of important game design elements such as interactivity, challenge, games as systems (cybernetic, emergent, conflict), genre, and setting. Eventually we develop an own digital game using an engine called GameMaker Studio 2 (GMS2).
As an explorer, I also grow with the skills necessary to become active producers of digital media. For example, the following video was a demo of a virtual product we made up called “Isolator X”. This idea came out from another prompt: the Yes Man Fix the World. It presents a vision of the world or aspect of the world people would like to live in in a very absurd and humorous way. To draw attention to the need to come together as a community, we use a performative media dystopian hack like the Yes Men. We want to cause people to wake up and say “hey that’s messed up, I can’t believe this is happening. I never knew. I don’t want to live in a world like that. What can I do?”
Introducing the iSolator X
We also created a website here.
https://isolatorx.webflow.io/
In the senior year we completed a capstone project called protégé, which is a Web APP that allows students to connect with volunteering mentors that provide guidance in areas of adulting that students struggle the most with.
You can access the website via this link.
protege.digitalscholar.rochester.edu