Monday, February 18, 2013
Intro to Second Life
The program "Second Life" is aptly named. It is a virtual world where you get the opportunity to live a different life through your chosen avatar. In the program, you choose worlds to visit and experience. You choose the people/other avatars that you interact with, the events you participate in, all the way down to the clothing you wear. Many of the choices are free, but there are available choices for Linden money that is an actual cost, although a voluntary one, to increase the variability of the world you create. It is almost like you are a game player and a video game designer at the same time. This program would appeal to both types of gamers.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Jane McGonigal's TED Talks presentation
In Jane McGonigal’s presentation, she gave a self-described “exuberant”
view of the future of gamers. She
hypothesized that if given the opportunity, gamers could begin solving
real-world problems if they were in a video game construct. She was optimistic about this because of the
four facets of successful game creation:
Urgent Optimism, Social Fabric,
Blissful Productivity, and Epic Meaning.
Each of these is critical to a gamer’s continued play. Gamers are surrounded by collaborating players
who believe in them; they believe that an “epic win” is always possible if they
keep trying; and they are happy to be working hard to achieve various levels of
play. If these facets could be
incorporated into learning situations, the current generation of students would
be actively involved in their own education and would likely be more amenable
to volunteering for solving real-world problems themselves.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
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