Bibliography

Night Sky Network | Outreach Resources. (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2015, from http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/download-list.cfm

This source provides information about activities that teachers can use with students. The topics mainly involve space related activities, which will be useful to me as it will provide me with a variety of educational activities that I will be able to use when I teach a class for my capstone. I plan on using one relating to comets since I will be teaching about it, which has a wide variety of comet-related activities that will help me engage with my students while also proving them with more knowledge about my topic. I found this source to be very helpful for my capstone.

Kepler Planet Candidate Data Explorer. (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2015, from http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/kepler

I found this source useful because it provides an interactive search tool that shows one of the several methods that is used to find exoplanets in our universe. I will be using this to let the students try out and engage more for my topic with exoplanets, which is one of the two main topics I will be teaching to my students. This source is extremely valuable to me as it will help improve the engagement of the students, which is important as they will learn much better if they can get a hands-on experience.

Exoplanet Orbit Database | Exoplanet Data Explorer. (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2015, from http://exoplanets.org/

I selected this source because it provides detailed information about exoplanets that have been discovered so far. It provides a wide variety of different detail of each exoplanet, which will allow me to give examples of one of the methods that is used to find planets. This source will also help me to improve my understanding of my topic, as I am always trying to improve my knowledge about my topics so that I can provide a better learning experience for my students.

Extrasolar Planets. (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2015, from http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/exoplanets/

I found this source useful because it provides topics that related to exoplanets, which will allow me to better my understanding of what I will be teaching. This source features a blog that updates with new information about exoplanets. I will mainly use this source for my own knowledge, as the more I know about my topic, the more I will be able to engage with the students without the problem of not knowing enough. The source overall is a excellent informational site that will be an important part of my capstone.

Astronomy For Kids - KidsAstronomy.com. (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2015, from http://www.kidsastronomy.com/

While this source is limited in the fact that it teaches about space related topics at a basic level, it provides me a general idea of what my topic is. This source will also help me to figure out how I want to explain my topics to my students, as using complex information may confused my students. I need to teach my students in a way that will be easy for them to understand, and keep them interested in my topic when I teach the students about comets, asteroids and exoplanets.

Rosetta. (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2015, from http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov

This source provides information about the Rosetta Mission, which was the first successful landing on a comet. There is a huge amount of information and data that I will be using for my topic on comets, which will be one of the main things that I will be discussing. The source also has plenty of detailed pictures that I will be showing to my students when I teach. Overall, this source will be a major part of my capstone that will not only help me gain a better understanding, but also my students.

Asteroids and Comets, Asteroids and Comets Information, Facts, News, Photos -- National Geographic. (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2015, from http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system/asteroids-comets-article/

I selected this source because it talks about asteroids and comets, both of which I will be teaching about to my students. There is a interactive part that I will be able to give to students for them to engage and learn from. I do find this source limited in the fact that there’s not much other in-depth information, but it’s simple enough for my students to understand, which is an important part for my teaching plan. Overall I find this source to be helpful for letting the students get a hands-on experience.

Lynch, D. (n.d.). Near-Earth Asteroids. Retrieved January 30, 2015, from http://geology.com/articles/near-earth-asteroids.shtml

This source provides detailed information about comets. While I do not believe that “.com” sites are useful sources, this source is very informational. This will help me get a good idea of the different subjects that I can talk about for my topic. Also this source helped me to widen my subjects since I had trouble with what exactly I want to talk about to my students. I find this overall to be helpful for my development of my learning plan while also improving my understanding.

Asteroid Introduction. (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2015, from http://solarviews.com/eng/asteroid.htm

I selected this source because it provides a very detailed and informational explanation on asteroids, which is one of my three main topics for my capstone. It also gives very in-depth detail on the many known comets that were discovered. I have found this source to be extremely valuable in my teaching for asteroids. While I am not focusing on this topic due to the limited I have to teach the students, it still provides me with enough information to give the general idea of asteroids.

Mentor (Derrick Pitts)

My name is Sadie Sprague-Lott and I am a senior at Science Leadership Academy. Every year we need to do a senior project, this is a time for us to reflect on our four years and have time to do things with what we are most passionate about. Through most of my high school career I have been analyzing and taking action against institutionalized violence even when I was not aware of it.

For my final project I decided to take a deeper look into violence in Philadelphia and how it was affecting people in my community. This took shape in a couple of different forms. For the first half of the year I joined a student organization called Philadelphia Student Union where we organized a city wide protest against the budget cuts which we saw as a form of institutionalized violence. During this process I was also helping to organize a die in at my school to honor Mike Brown. During these events that were going on nationwide I was also able to participate on a panel with other teachers, students, and police officers where we discussed these issues.

Abstract:For my capstone I created a tabletop rpg, named The People RPG. I chose to create this game, because throughout my time at SLA I saw many people who wanted to get into tabletop gaming, mostly though Dungeons and Dragons, but they were put off by the complexity of it.​ TPRPG embodies all of the core elements of tabletop gaming (storytelling, character creation, dice rolling), but cuts out many of the more tedious parts of the process.

The first incarnations of TPRPG was much more complex, as it was mostly a direct clone of Dungeons and Dragons, dumbed down for simplicities sake. This led to the game being patently unfun. After many playtest I found that the players had the most fun when they could tell the story they wanted to tell, with their own interesting and unique characters. This eventually led to rebuilding the system from the ground up, with a focus on being quick, easy to play, and entirely player driven. This version of the game led to a much more comfortable game, where players made it their own from the very beginning.

Pramas, Chris. Dragon Age RPG - Players Guide. N.p.: Green Ronin, 2012. Print.

The Dragon Age Tabletop RPG was the original inspiration for my capstone project. It is similar to many other tabletop rpgs, such as dungeons and dragons, but struck me as distinctly different due to its simple combat, low cost investment, and pre written stories. This book is the source of many of the mechanic that I plan to implement in my own game, including the verbal combat system, and the short, simple story arcs.

"Some Rules for Developing and Playtesting Tabletop RPGs."Danmaruschakcom. N.p., 05 July 2012. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This source details the necessity of playtesting, and how to have highly effective playtesting sessions. Some of the more important strategies mentioned include, recording your playtest, having natural play sessions, play the game it’s meant to be played, be willing to change mechanics, and make note of issues, but don’t dwell on them.  These tips assure that playtesting makes the game as a whole better, as opposed to being influenced by your own feelings, or those of individual players.

Pen and Paper Gaming in the 21st Century. Perf. Erik Mona. Paizo, 2009. Youtube.

In this talk Erik Mona speaks on the place of tabletop rpgs in the modern era. This source is important because it shows just how reluctant people are to participate in tabletop rpgs in this day and age. Tabletop rpgs have always been a niche topic, but in recent years they have fallen deeper and deeper into obscurity. It will take a truly encapsulating premise to assure that new people join.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1972. Print.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces details the common threads behind stories that have spanned the generations. He points out the importance of a hero that you can look up to and stand for, which I believe is doubly true in the case of an rpg. People want to see an epic story that has them as the lead, that saves the day, and when writing scenarios I must remember these points to create an engaging story.

Life With a Dice Bag. Dir. Mason Booker. Perf. Peter Adkinson. May Sun Productions, 2004. DVD.

Life WIth a Dice bag is a documentary about the people who play tabletop rpgs, as well as the evolution of tabletop gaming. This source is of great use to me because it talks in detail about the things that keep tabletop rpgers coming back, namely the unique stories, and endless customization options. This is extremely important to my project, which tries to encapsulate both long time tabletop fans, and those who have never experienced the genre.

"So You Want To: Write A Tabletop RPG." So You Want To/Write A Tabletop RPG. Tvtropes, n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

Tvtropes has a long standing history of being the wiki for quirks and tropes and fiction, but has expanded to be so much more. This crowd written article details many of the oft overlooked steps of creating a tabletop RPG, including all of the things you have to consider regarding demographic, complexity, difficulty, and genre. It points out that you have to make sure you are filling a niche market so as to get people to come to your game in particular.

Pathfinder Role Playing Game Dungeon Masters Guide. N.p.: Paizo, n.d. Print.

For many Dungeons and Dragons is the first RPG they will ever experience, and the Pathfinder RPG is the most popular version of D&D. This guide in particular is an expansion on the core rules of the game, and details many experiences that are less common, and not crucial to play. This source taught me that I have to keep in mind that players may do something no explicitly covered in the rules, and give them a way to resolve this within the bounds of the rules.

Tabletop. Perf. Wil Wheaton. Geek and Sundry, n.d.

This web series shows Wil Wheaton, along with other famous nerd icons, playing a wide variety of tabletop games from all different styles, genres, and systems. This series was very important to my research because it shows the difference between different games, and emphasizes the point that tabletop rpg is not a narrow enough topic, and that there are many tough decisions that must be made in regards to the tone and the style of the game, before I get too far into production.

​For my capstone, I worked with Penelope Deoliveira to create a video game using Unity. The game is about people wondering around in a village once they enter the 4th floor of SLA. The 4th floor is known to be off limits. For fun, we created a story where a SLA student walks into the 4th floor and enters into a different world. The SLA student then roams around the village to collect the 5 core values of SLA, Inquiry, Research, Collaboration, Presentation, and Reflection. After collecting the diamonds, representing the 5 core values, the student then fights the “Benchmark,” which is a monster voiced by a math teacher. To make it even better, we both went around the school looking for students and teachers to record their voices and put that into the game.

      We were inspired by this project because we both had prior knowledge in codings from our internship at Temple University. Our outside mentor is Michael Korostelev from Temple and he has been helping us with our video game project throughout the school year. We constantly get in contact with Michael through emails for help with our codings and to debug our codes.

     My role as Penelope’s partner is to research what tools we should use and where/what models to use for NPC and wrote some of the codes for the game. Penelope’s role is work on the environments and coding missions and scenes. We brainstormed a lot of ideas together and we were able to make an awesome game with the involvement of the SLA community.