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!