Monday
June 22, 2009: 4:34 PM
Fourth Exercise:
How likely is it that you will become good at
this particular task?
Doubtful
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
10 Almost Certain
Type your number here: 10
Briefly explain your rating: I already have many
hours of experience working camera controls, inventory management so I do not
have any concerns about failing this task.
How likely is it that the skills you are
learning in this task will be useful in your career?
Doubtful
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
10 Almost Certain
Type your number here: 8
Briefly explain your rating: This exercise teaches be to do learn the
foundations of doing things so that I can improve on those skills later. Therefore it should be useful in my career.
To what extent are you feeling frustrated doing
this particular task?
Not Frustrated
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
10 Extremely Frustrated
Type your number here: 1
Briefly explain your rating: I do not feel
frustrated. I am hoping that I can learn
something new during this exercise.
To what extent are you feeling irritated doing
this particular task?
Not Irritated
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
10 Extremely Irritated
Type your number here: 1
Briefly explain your rating: I do not feel irritated because I am not
frustrated. Typically when I feel
frustrated I then become irritated.
Virtual Ability Orientation ONE in Second Life - part 1 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAjG4Tv6LvU&fmt=22
I remember these tutorials from the first place I visited in
SL! Before watching the video I was
expecting this video to be a how to guide for using Virtual Ability. However, I was luckily surprised to notice
that this video includes a sort of behind the scenes of reasons behind certain
objects and areas. For example, the creators
of Virtual Ability created signage with a beige background because people with
visual impairments have a difficult time reading signs with a white
background. Also, the idea of maps for
our UH platform in the sky may be very beneficial if our area becomes
larger. I enjoy using maps and find that
many areas on SL have them.
Virtual Ability: Orientation TWO in Second Life: part 2 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntRpndqwO6E&fmt=22
This video was very basic for me. I feel as if I have an adequate understanding
of camera usage and I have even followed a few avatars by accident. One time when I was at Help Island I zoomed
in on an interesting looking avatar.
Then all of a sudden they took flight and were flying somewhere fast …
and I was FOLLOWING THEM! At first I
thought, “What’s happening?!” Then when
I pressed the forward button on my keyboard, the camera came back to where my
avatar was. That was an interesting
experience. I know there are exercises
ahead on observing the activities of other avatars and I kept wondering how
that would be possible without seeming intrusive. Now that I accidentally followed an avatar
with just my camera, I know that it is possible. One other thing I learned was that robots
(like Bob the monkey) have green text whereas avatars (or humans) have white
text. This is useful to be because at
least I’ll know what type of intelligence I’m talking to in the future. Some robots I have encountered are very convincing. One trick I’ve learned is to ask, “Who
created you?” and typically robots will answer the name of their creator.
Virtual Ability Orientation THREE in Second Life: Part 3 of
3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFE5G8gP5_g&fmt=22
This area covered how to open boxes, wear items, take back
trash. Although In the teleporting
tutorial area I noticed that the speaker said that the teleports deliberately
resemble the “teleport” device that is shown on Stargate. She further went on to say that this was done
on purpose because the creators of Virtual Ability wanted the teleports to be
familiar to those who use Virtual Ability.
I found this very funny because the audience of Virtual Ability
typically are people with disabilities.
Which further implies people with disabilities watch Stargate. This makes me wonder if many people with
disabilities indeed watch Stargate … and that makes me wonder if I’m weird
because I used to LOVE watching Stargate.
Anyway, their teleporting device is missing the big wave of water upon
activation, so it’s not a true Stargate portal … hahahaha.
I found the tree climbing interesting. I’ve never found a tree in SL that I could
climb. Although I haven’t tried to climb
very many tree.
Other YouTube Videos to watch:
This video didn’t’ work.
It is marked as private.
This video didn’t’ work.
It is marked as private.
This video explored different ways of using SL for
education. Many areas in SL can be
utilized in almost all areas of education such as business, art, theater,
history, science, and psychology (although psychology wasn’t mentioned in this
video). When the video showed an avatar
entering the Louvre, it was pointed out that a statue would follow you with his
eyes. This made me wonder what would
happen if multiple avatars stood around the statue at once. Would the eyes follow everyone on their own
screen or would the statue malfunction because there are too many people. If there is time then I will drag Yoko with
me and experiment with this statue.
After watching numerous videos during my membership with SL,
I’ve come to realize that a popular theme during videos is, “Discovery is only
limited by your own imagination.” I
agree that this is true however after hearing it many times it’s losing its
affect on me. One of the highlights of
this video for me is that there are full classes available and also one-hour
tutorials. Too bad there isn’t a link or
schedule posted for these classes because I would seriously consider attending.
The picture below gives me an idea for our platform in the
sky. A structured area for Prof. James
would be nice for him where he can instruct a class where students learn to
rezz items and open them. Also, this
would be useful because it would make it easy to see which students needed
help. For example, if Prof. James
instructs everyone to take their box back once it’s opened, the students who
haven’t taken their box back are easily identified. In fact, Prof. James could make a Psy409
teaching opportunity and have his teaching assistants help him with these sorts
of SL in-world lessons.