I Couldn’t Pick up the Damn Coffin or Get out of the Damn Closet!

First of all, the other environments that we have studied thus far have not had the synchronous presence of other individuals in virtual space. This week working with MUDs & MOOs has been an incredible experience because it was so different. Most of the interaction we have experienced for this course has been asynchronous. Nevertheless, we have still engaged each other and strangers in our dialog. Having strangers respond to my posts has been very surprising.

However, having people respond to me the minute I entered a virtual room was shocking! To start, I’ll talk about my experience in LambdaMOO. When I signed in there were 83 people in the game. As you know, you start out in a closet filled with people. I was stunned that I was engaging with others as I was trying to fumble my way out of the closet. I found this interaction to be very uncomfortable. While the people that I met were kind and tried to help me understand what to do, I was doing so much wrong that they had to constantly coach me. When I told them that I was new to this, they said that they could tell. It all seemed so incredibly surreal, and I felt so vulnerable. Then I remembered Bartle’s paper on social interaction in MUDs and wondered what category I would be labeled as. I all of a sudden envisioned that those who were speaking to me in the closet could be “killers” who knew that I was at best a “socialite” and vulnerable to attack. I worked harder to get out of the closet, while those who watched kept telling me that I couldn’t complete the actions that I was trying to perform. In addition, I kept putting emote signs before every comment, which was irritating to others. This is an example of how the use of speech modalities are important and need to be adhered to for the novice MUDder/MOOer. I had to laugh, this was a hilarious experience. I logged out and tried again a couple of hours later. This time I remembered the directions better and immediately left the closet and was able to go from room to room. While there were others in the rooms, I tried to focus on what I was trying to do rather than socialize with others. I have to say that I was not able to create any artifacts. I tried everything that I could think of, but was not successful. I found it frustrating that I could not see what I was typing and did not have a log of things I have tried before. Anyway, I will try it again later, but for now, I did not create artificacts, but did watch an exchange between “assman” and “cookatu” regarding an ancient suit of armor. They ignored me and were having a debate on racism. I am not sure if the artifact brought on their interaction, but they were well engaged with what they were doing.

My experience with Zork was different from LamdaMOO because I was free to investigate the terrain and figure out the game without the presence of any other players. Also, I had a guide sheet to help me figure out my objectives from room to room. I still got lost and wasn’t able to always complete the task that was scripted, like pick up the coffin. But, I still had fun trying to figure things out. It was interesting again, that the rules for speech modalities are important and that your success will be limited unless you comply. I had to laugh because I continued to try to pick up the solid-gold coffin until the program told me that it was obvious that I was not having success, and that unless I knew something that it didn’t, I should discontinue with my methods. It was very funny and I felt like I was interacting with an actual person. Maybe I was, I did not see that presence of any others in Zork but myself.

In summary, I loved this experience and found myself laughing at Bartle’s article regarding the categories of characters in MUDs and MOOs (killer, explorer, socialite and achiever) and realized that these categories exist in real life and that each has a synergistic relationship. It would be nice if we had a moderator in real life that kept the balance of societal interactions at optimum. Hmmmm

Trust in Electronic Trade

When I first thought about my own experience with on-line purchases, I could only think of eBay, however, after some consideration I realized that I have purchased a lot of things on-line and have dealt with a variety of scenarios. I have not only purchased from eBay, but also from Amazon.com, Jewelry suppliers, Best Buy, Palm Pilot, eReader and a “groups” sales list. On all of these purchases, I was wary of my first transaction on eBay, after which I haven’t worried since. After reading our assigned articles, I asked myself why I haven’t been more concerned about purchasing on-line.

Kollock, Resnick and Zeckhauser brought up some convincing comments regarding trustworthiness of sellers on-line. So, with some obvious concerns why haven’t I taken heed as a consumer and proceeded more cautiously with on-line transactions. The reason, because I did not feel vulnerable in completing these transactions, I did have a sense of trust that I would be protected.

In retrospect, there were several reasons that I felt this trust. One, companies that have name recognition like Amazon.com, Best Buy and Palm Pilot offer a link on their websites that explain their payment protection policies. Most of these companies have some group they list that offers encryption and failsafe support that protects the use of a credit card for payment. Even though I am not familiar with the group that is offering this protection, I believe that its existence is so and that I will be protected. In addition, I’m sure that I trust Amazon.com and the other companies listed because they are well known and reputable, which relates to the ways that trust is built in brick-n-mortar commerce.

On the other hand, my experience with eBay involved the use of a third-party-payer system, PayPal. I have to admit that I didn’t even think twice about the safety of PayPal, nor did I ever check into one of the seller’s approval rating. I have made purchases from Pokemon cards to digital cameras. In all cases, I have had a positive outcome of my transaction and feel lucky that I was not taken advantage of by one of the “bad apples” that dwell in these venues.
Last, I purchased products from members of a list group that I was on and wholesale jewelry items from unknown vendors and didn’t even question their trustworthiness at the time. I think that, at times, computer mediated communication can provide a sense of intimacy thru interactions that one feels like they know their interlocutors as well as they would had they had face-to-face interactions. During one interaction where I was purchasing gem stones, I misunderstood the price and in doing so sent the wrong amount of money to the seller. I am grateful that she communicated my error to me by calling me on the phone instead of flaming me on the Internet. It is so easy to make mistakes and have misunderstandings like this, but with the distrust that we have in electronic transactions, misunderstandings can escalate out of control.

I think that it is interesting that Kollock, Resnick and Zeckhauser compared on-line commerce with traditional brick-n-mortar commerce because I don’t necessarily see them as radically different. In addition, I think that we should include mail order companies. At any time, with any group, a consumer could feel duped. Because the Internet is new, there has not been sufficient time to establish name and brand recognition like that experienced by brick-n-mortar companies. In the future, there will be better ways to ferret out the “bad apples” so that trade can be made more reliable and satisfactory for the consumer.

Let Me Start Over…Now Really…Hello World!

Now that I know that the “world” (perhaps that’s extreme, maybe a select few) are really reading my blog, I am writing this post with the humblest of hearts. I have just realized that the individuals whose Blogs I viewed during the assignment, Blogs part I, took the opportunity to view my response on my blog. As it turns out, my comments were less than flattering and reflects my insensitivity and inexperience more than it truly reflects the content and purpose of their blogs. I am afraid that I have offended those individuals whose blogs I viewed and would like to ask, no BEG for their forgiveness. I behaved as an egocentric smuck!

There are a couple of things that I have learned since then: 1) that the comments that I put on my blog truly are sent out to the world, others will read them, 2) it is hubristic to state comments such as I did without considering the feelings of others and without acknowledging my limited understanding of the blogging culture, and 3) while blogging supports spontaneity and informality, a blogger must be responsible.

Another comment that I wanted to make is that I have been getting quite a response to the story that I posted to FanFiction. Again, I have to say that I found this to be unexpected. I can’t believe that people are reading my post and actually care enough to make comments and critique my work; one person has even asked me to continue. Yikes! I kind of feel bad that I posted my story as a class assignment and that there are individuals out there giving of their time and opinions who spent time on my story. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I almost felt like this blog posting was an exercise, simulation if you will, I didn’t even imagine that I would be involving strangers in the material that I produced. I feel like my actions have been so insalubrious! Quick! Someone, quell my anxiety, I want to feel better about myself, even if it is only transitory.

Fan of Fiction

Wow! What a trip down fiction lane! I was surprised by the quality of the stories that were posted. In addition, it was interesting to see the many different directions that one person can take the story line of an established set of characters. My first thought was that reading fanfiction was fun, but how in the world do people have the time to participate in this pastime? I mean, the movie Star Wars has 9,764 fictional stories posted and the book Harry Potter has 158,287. These numbers are phenomenal. In any case, I can see why Dave has asked, “what makes fan fiction so popular?”

My thoughts are that fan fiction offers people, or would-be-writers, an opportunity for anonymity, an honest critique and an outlet for “legitimized” creativity. On several of the stories that I read, the author stated that they wanted honest feedback from the reader and that they had not let anyone close to them read their writing because it was too personal. They would state that it was easier for a stranger to read their document than someone that they knew. I think that this is human nature to protect oneself until one is confident enough for exposure. The great thing about being exposed in fan fiction is that the readers there seem to really stick close to their code of netiquette in respecting the author and providing positive constructive feedback in their reviews. The peer review process is one of the critical building blocks that make this culture a success. People, who know your genre, know your paradigms are the same one’s evaluating your work. How often does that happen? This type of honest critique is an incredible resource for anyone who is writing. Last, fan fiction provides an outlet for creativity and it legitimizes the effort of the ingénue. I know that if I had access to something like this when I was a teenager, I would have posted to it often. It would have made me feel like I truly had more to offer because it was out there being viewed by others, and yet there was no risk to me. I think that I will engage my son with this culture of writing so that he can practice his skills for writing when he is old enough to post.

I read the stories written by the following authors who can be found at:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2088407/1/
“The Artificial McCoy” by Gadrin

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2093458/1/
“It’s Not the Absence Fear” by daydreamer4

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1768737/1/
“The Ties that Bond” by Magus101

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2099714/1/
This is where my story can be found

At Last Something Substantive

This week was spent viewing blogs that contained educational content for instructional technology. I found this to be a lot more enjoyable then viewing the ones that I perused last week. However, with that being said, I am glad that I spent time familiarizing myself with the blogs of the average Joe. Between Blogs Part I and Part II, I developed a much broader range of exposure as to how blogs can be and are used.

The thing that struck me most about visiting the Edublogs this week was that doing so made me feel like a real insider with an elite cadre of instructional technologists. Could I ever imagine myself to be on the same level as Dave Wiley (no, I’m not trying to be obsequious), Brian Lamb or Stephen Downes? Well, participating in reading and commenting on these blogs made me feel like I could contribute to a higher collective cognition within my profession than I ever knew possible. And, I must say that the aggregator makes a world of difference. I find that I can’t wait every day to go into SharpReader so that I can see “what’s new.” The following were some of the things that I found exciting on some of the blogs that I visited.

http://scottadams.blogs.com/handheld_instructional_te/
It was exciting to read in Scott Adam’s blog on handheld technology that “Podcasting” with iPods could actually make subscribing and listening to RSS feeds easier and more convenient because you could download the information and listen to it when you have time. I am going to look into this more. In fact, I will be doing a research project on mobile learning and was looking into PDAs as the handheld device and will now make sure to consider iPods before I make a decision.

http://wiley.ed.usu.edu/
Dave Wiley doesn’t just post content on his site, but also poses compelling questions that he really wants a response to. This is fun as a reader because you feel as though your opinion will be respected. On Dave’s blog he broaches relevant topics such as collaborative book publications, the future of intellectual properties and the impact of technology in schools. I was especially interested in the link to Lulu for on-line publishing. I didn’t realize that it would be so easy to put out a publication. Also, I choose to get an advanced degree in instructional technology because I believe the future is technology and that the impact on education will be great. Therefore, as an educator I want to follow the trends of the next several decades so that education in a formal setting can continue to remain relevant, even if it looks different from what we know today.

http://www.reusability.org/blogs/trey/
One of the things that really caught my eye on Martindale’s blog was that he posted a daily summary of the instructional technology conference at Utah State University. I don’t know anything about T Martindale, perhaps he is local, however, it was fun for me as a graduate student to see others validate the quality of the IT program at USU. Also, unfortunately, I was not able to attend the conference so his summative review and comments on the participating parties was educational for me. It is on this blog that I followed links that informed me on what a “wiki” was. I didn’t really understand the difference between a wiki and a blog until now.

http://www.downes.ca/
One of the things that I enjoyed most about S Downes’ blog was the portfolio of beautiful and interesting pictures that he posted on Australia. Second, I was surprised by how intelligent and yet down to earth Downes seems to be. As far as the content of his blog, Downes is a big player in IT and has a wealth of information and links on his blog. Most recently, I read his article on learning networks and was especially interested in the concept of “leaving language.” I had never heard the verbiage “digital immigrant” or “digital native” and found it interesting to conceive of a paradigm that would be radically different than what we presently know. Downes also is the only one that I found who could define the acronym RSS (Rich Site Summary) for me.

http://carieo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/brian
It is off Lamb’s blog that I learned about redlightgreen as a resource for research on the Internet and gained a greater understanding of metatags. However, while I enjoyed B Lamb’s blog I really liked his wiki: http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/wiki?GoGoGo
Ha ha, that sounds so...salacious, who knew I would ever put a sentence together that would sound so foreign. On Lamb’s wiki, I found myself following every link because they were all interesting and relevant for some of the topics that I hope to research in the near future. I felt like a kid in a candy store, I just couldn’t absorb it all at once.

Time Spent this Week
10 hours: I spent about 2 hours a day for 5 days surfing blogs.

My Week as a Blogophile!

Before I sat down to write up my summary of this week’s voyeuristic exploits I read my latest e-mail from Dave Wiley. As recommended, I followed the link provided to read Russkoff’s comments on blogging. While I was reading, I realized that the blogs that I have followed this past week were greatly inferior to blogs such as Russkoff’s. Then I went on bloglines to read the posts of my fellow classmates to see the links to the blogs that others were reading. My horrors were confirmed. Somehow others, well…Murat, found blogs to view that were interesting and worthy of time spent. Yikes, wait ‘til you see where I’ve been.

The blogs that I read this week were created by amateurs; these are the links:
OfficeSmileMan
Meatball Fabulous
Diary of a Stay at Home Mum
Dr Finnerty
Carlos’ Realm

Similarities of Blogs:
Links, links and more links
Almost each blog has links that are both personal and political
Most of the blogs stated political viewpoints after the presidential debates
All of the blogs except one had pictures of a personal nature
Four of the five blogs posted emoticons daily
Three blogs had a writing style reminiscent of conversing with a family member while the other two were writing to the world

Differences of Blogs:
OfficeSmileMan – changed his template mid-way, has a category for each area of his life (work, home, play and photo album), photos are totally random and silly
Meatball Fabulous – host of blog comes across as very juvenile, however, person is old enough to have a 12 year old son, had pictures of tattoos, I found that I could change the design of the “skins” on her blog, once I changed the skin I found her site much more tolerable to view and much less juvenile
Diary of a Stay at Home Mum – daily picture of the weather where she lives, very personal and intimate, interesting link to a blog on Taxi Vignettes
Dr Finnerty - Not as interesting as I thought it would be, I thought would be the best of the five, but it was the most pretentious and boring, no profile information
Carlos’ Realm - Travels all over Europe, leaves pictorial journals, his Mom is currently visiting him and we get to see her on her vacation

My Reflections:
I think that Russkoff’s comments (below) are hardly applicable to blogs that are as informal as the ones that I visited.
“I believe that the most dangerous thing about blogs to the status quo is that so many of them exist for reasons other than to make money. A thriving community of people who are engaged for free, to me, have a certain authority that people doing things for money don't.”
When I viewed some of the blogs that Murat linked to, I could understand better the context of Russkoff’s post. I tend to relate his viewpoint to the recent Dan Rather “memo” issue, where it was the bloggers that identified the hoax of the memo. I think that it is a good thing that there are individuals out there who are intelligent and willing to post their viewpoints to the world with no monetary gain. However, at least in my experience, the majority of blogs are simple journals of everyday people with inane content that will most likely, not affect the status quo."

I found that blogs provide an avenue for anyone to post anything to the Internet, that blogging can be addicting, cathartic and informative, that bloggers feel the need to share information and are not afraid to incite a negative reaction and response. I was stunned at the amount of personal information and pictures that are posted and that people don’t flame the bloggers in their comments. However, I can see that with a good blog, like Stephen Downe’s, blogging and viewing blogs can be an engaging and worthy endeavor.

Time Spent this Week:
Forever…really, I searched and searched for worthy blogs. I need to find a better way to find good blogs. I would like Murat to post his blogging reconnaissance strategies.
10 Hours spent (at least)!