Masculinities

Take Sherry Turkle’s quote: “by enabling people to experience what it feels like to be the opposite gender or to have no gender at all, the practice encourages reflection on the way ideas about gender shape our expectations” (77).

Though the creation of my avatar was short-lived since I couldn’t even log onto the space, I was able to briefly complete the basic construction of her appearance. The thought never occurred to me to choose a male avatar, but like we talked about in class for some users of Second Life the option to choose an avatar that is the opposite gender of the user is alluring.

Turkle’s quote raises questions about how the ways we see gender mold our expectations about the way someone will act.  For instance, we think that women are more compassionate and talkative about their feelings and have the role as the caregiver while we see men as more closed off from sharing their feelings and in the role as the provider.  Do these roles and behaviors apply to avatars in Second Life?

If a man chooses a female avatar are her features over exaggerated or are her clothes overtly sexy? If a woman chooses a male avatar does he have well defined muscles and look like George Clooney?

What is an avatar?

What it is, part one

As an English major I like Meadows’ comparison of an avatar to the protagonist in an “interactive narrative.” I agree that there’s a scale with the three types of avatars mentioned in reference to customization and control. Mario can’t be customized, but the video game user has most of the control over his actions. On the other hand, the Simms are extremely customizable right down to their emotions, but users cannot control the characters directly.

What it is, part two

I agree with the first statement mentioned in this section: “An avatar is a social creature dancing on the border between fact and fiction.” This statement completely summarizes this section. With sites like YouTube allowing anyone to create and post videos of themselves the line between fact and fiction can be blurred. Though the person may be real are they representing their true self? In the case of “the three white girls from YouTube,” I don’t agree that the girls should have led the public to believe that they were genuine.

What it is, part three

I understand the concept of a 3-D avatar sharing all three levels of perspective. Also, I agree with Meadows’ claim that chess has several avatars (“the perspective of the player” and “the individual piece.”) This observation helped me to understand what Meadows was trying to say in this section.

What it is, part four

I agree with Meadows’ claims that an avatar (whether 2-D or 3-D) is involved in character development. What avatars do within their environment is determined by “the metaphor” chosen for the game/website. That metaphor may be building a family in the Simms or rescuing a princess in Super Mario Brothers.

The Virtual Classroom

Last summer, I took an abnormal psych class online. The material was interesting, but the class structure was boring. The teacher e-mailed assignments and posted questions to a discussion board where students had to write their responses and then respond to at least one other classmate’s observations about readings, etc. There wasn’t a lot of interaction between the professor and her students or even just among students. Once students posted their comments on a discussion board most of them never returned to follow up. Of the few students who did return to the discussion board some thought-provoking conversation was taking place that all of the students in the class would have benefited from.

The abnormal psych class online would be a great candidate to become a class that incorporates the virtual world. All the students in the class could create avatars in the virtual world. Each student would be assigned a type of abnormal psych disorder (Bipolar, depression, schizophrenia , etc.) and would create an avatar that acts out the symptoms (if possible) of the particular disorder. The multiple users would interact with one another in the virtual world at given times. However, if students wish perhaps another assignment would be to interact with other people in the virtual world who are not a part of the class and to record their reactions to the avatar’s disorder. Another feature could be a discussion board where students discuss the symptoms of each avatar to come to a conclusive diagnosis.

Web 2.0

“How can social bookmarking play a role in higher education?” asks Bryan Alexander in his article about Web 2.0. The two sites that follow Mr. Alexander’s question include the Penntags project at UPenn and Harvard’s H2O. These social bookmarking sites share the common
goal of linking communities together to promote educational collaboration. The sites use “tags” or “playlists” to create links to books, journal articles, websites, and other educational materials that can be grouped by interests/ideas/projects.

UPenn’s Penntags project is for members of the UPenn community. The project allows its users to “collect and maintain URLs, links to journal articles, records in Franklin (library), our online catalog, and VCat (online video catalog)…” Users assign tags to these resources or can group them into projects for easier organization. Penntags encourages these tags to be used collaboratively to promote “social discovery.” Using Penntags as a “discovery tool” leads users to find other people in the UPenn community with common interests/goals. Most importantly, Penntags is a great resource for research. Below is the Penntags Project:

Harvard’s H2O from The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law promotes the concept of a “global community” beyond the Harvard campus. H2O’s goal is to connect classrooms whether those classrooms are down the hall from one another or across an ocean. H2O users create playlists which provide “a series of links to books, articles, and other materials that explore an idea or set the stage for a course, discussion, or current event.” Some of H2O’s prominent uses listed on the website include: transforming syllabi into world-wide learning tools, sharing reading lists with global scholars, organizations, and cultural leaders, and to promote the transfer of ideas and expertise between students, professors, and researchers. Below is Harvard’s H2O:

Of the two, the most useful website is Harvard’s H2O. Being that the site is not limited to just the Harvard community allows more people to connect with one another and share a greater wealth of knowledge. The idea that you can connect with a classroom halfway around the world is a concept that is modern. Also, the website is easier to use and navigate than Penntags because of its thoughtful organization.