Angelabaldwin’s Blog

Horsley: ‘’It could be argued that simple binary gender gender-switching actually further entrenches traditionally held ideas, by suggesting that conventional roles are so firmly established that a person must simply pick one or the other, based on the package of qualities it comes with, and how appropriate these are for the situation at hand” (77).

While I was in Second Life, I created a female avatar, being female myself. I found that traditionally held ideas about how females should look and what makes them attractive stay pretty much the same in Second Life. For example, I, without thinking, created a much thinner avatar than what I am in real life. I believe this is because being skinny is so prized and admired in the real world. If I create a thin avatar, then people would probably talk to me more. This seems to be seen when I explore around, females tend to be thin, even though they might not be in real life. This was even true with me, people always stopped to talk to me, probably based on the fact that I was portraying my avatar as a thin one. The fact that there is even an option to change bust size on a female avatar gives people the opportunity to make them bigger, possibly in line with the belief that the bigger is more attractive in females. I changed my facial features to include bigger eyes and fuller lips, again probably unconciously going along with society’s view of an attractive female.

Meadows discusses various aspects on what an avatar exactly is and all its characteristics in four short articles. From my experience in creating avatars in Sims 2 and playing various other games, I agree with most of his claims.

In the first article, Meadows describes an avatar as being “an interactive, social representation of a user.”  I agree with this because

I firmly believe what Robins-Bell believes in that genuine student participation in a classroom setting is a major key to embracing the new technologies. It also greatly helps the student learn;instead of rote memorization, the student is engaged with the material, so it will stay longer with the student. In general, all my literature courses would have done really well in using virtual worlds. I might have been able to converse with other students around the nation and even the world about a certain book being read in my literature course. This way I could learn new culturally based views on the situations in the book and maybe even look at certain parts of the book differently and with a more open mind as a result.

More specifically however, I believe that the one class that might do well in using the virtual world technologies is my Personality Psychology class. First of all, the teacher could have the students play with creating avatars in Second Life and see how avatar creations represent an individual’s personality. Each day, the professor might have the student change his/her avatar based on the kind of avatar  a person who is outgoing, or kind, or serious might make. The student could actually meet and talk with people around the world and then the professor could have the students create personality profiles of who they met and talked with. The student could learn first hand how culture affects personality by immersing oneself with avatars from another country or culture, or simply by talking with a foreign avatar. The student could even change her own avatar to be from a certain culture or even the opposite gender to sort of see what it is like to experience something as a certain culture or gender. With the rise of these virtual world , the student can experience how likely people’s way of interacting with each other can affect their personality. Would shier students, for example, be a whole lot more outgoing since they are not actually face to face with those they interact with? This would be a fun research question for the Personality class to investigate for a term paper or something. The research would be more fun and engaging and the students would have some measure of control. This is better than always forcing them to read static, boring books and articles on a subject that they cannot investigate for themselves.

The persistance of Second Life and other virtual worlds could allow the students to experience the class through the world at any time they choose. Instead of always meeting at a certain time, the students can learn when they want to. Students could converse with others from other countries to learn about personality and culture at any time since there is always bound to be people online, that is why Second Life is a persistent space. The teacher and students could even hold virtual classes during class time, where the teacher lectures and the students learn from the comfort of their own computer and dorm room. This is  great for convienience of being at home and the integration of virtual world technologies in the classroom. I can just imagine my professor holding a lecture in Personality Psychology over Second Life while I’m relaxing in my dorm in lounge clothes!

This IceRocket, pretty straightforward, huh?

This is Technorati, a little more complex than IceRocket.

The two websites that really caught my eye were Technorati (http://technorati.com/) and IceRocket (http://icerocket.com/). These are two large websites that allow a user to search through blogs. Both have a simple search bar where one can merely type in a word and blogs will pop up containing that word. They also have website URL s provided with the search results. This shows that the goal of these sites is for one to find all the available and recent blogs on a specific subject in one easy search. The URLs provided allow the user to go to that website and see if there is any other blogs by that one blogger. Both sites have the option of sorting the results to show blogs in languages other than English. In addition, both allow the user to track his or her favorite blogs and keep them in one spot. This is in line with the goal of making it easy to navigate the site, instead of trying to find that one post you liked, you can make it a favorite and return to it later. Both contain materials that are not necessarily blogs. Both have videos and images one can search through and look at, bringing a more versatile function to the sites. In addition, both have news feed where one can search for news stories. This can allow a user to still read up on what is going on in the world and then maybe read blog posts about that particular news story! J This again makes these two sites more versatile than just simply being blog search engines; it makes the sites more appealing to me.

One thing that Technorati has is that IceRocket doesn’t is a blog directory. Technorati’s directory is a list of categories, such as art and music, in which one can click on and all the recent posts within that category pop up. This is the site’s goal in making the search for blogs even easier for one who wants to read about a specific subject. One thing that IceRocket has is a list of top tags searched right on the front page, allowing users to access the most popular blogs at the moment. Though Technorati has a similar concept with its “Rising Blog Posts by Attention,” again allowing users to see which posts are hot at the time.

Between the two, Technorati seems to be more useful because it has that extra directory. This would allow me to narrow down the field of what I was looking for greatly. It would also allow me to look at all the posts I can about a certain topic like soccer, if I was passionate about it. Other than that point both seem to be equally useful in what they try to accomplish. They both are useful in making it as easy as possible to find the blogs you are looking for.