LITERAL
(a) I, Hannah Seyffert, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.
(b) Since I did extra mentorship for this component, my mentor Nina Withrington helped me complete my independent component.
(c) See Working Bibliography
(d) I completed more mentorship hours at the Blue Marble Game Co. for my first independent component. I game tested, sat in on meetings, data checked, and basically shadowed my mentor throughout this component. I'm pretty much an intern. I help them do actual work that needs to be done.
INTERPRETIVE
My senior project is on Elderly Care, but focused on the Fall Prevention aspect of that care. By doing extra mentorship, I got to see the way things are run in a company that create games to help prevent falls. Data checking,game testing, writing up bugs, having meetings about the games, looking at all of the exercises; these are the things that helped me create my first answer for my Essential Question. It is a process, but if it reduces fall risk and the overall death rate among the elderly, it's worth it.
This photo is an example of some game testing. As you may have noticed in the upper right portion of the screen, some words are being covered by the title of the game. This is called a bug. This is not supposed to happen. The words are telling us that there was an issue with the network connection so it wasn't able to log in to the server. With it being covered like that, the player will be less likely to notice it, or even, be able to read it clearly. In fact, I did not notice it until Jake said something when he took a look at it.
This is another example of a bug in the game. As you can see, on the results page for the exercises, it mentions the "Chair Stand Test" twice. It should only be mentioned once, since I only completed the task once.
APPLIED
Doing more mentorship helped me see why fall prevention is so important. I also learned through the process why certain exercises were chosen for the game. Some are better than others at decreasing your fall risk, and it is important to know which ones in order to create the most efficient and effective way to prevent a fall. Sitting in on meetings and discussions helped me see the professionals' thought processes and how they come to their conclusions about the game. I also got to see an elder play the game and how they interacted with the game. The exercises can be difficult for them even though they're not difficult for a young teen like me. So seeing that and how their muscles improve through that also helps me answer my Essential Question.