Irene the Great

Second Life: Campus

2009-09-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

Other states in the US, like San Francisco and Texas, some professors bring Second Life to class or courses. The professors or students sometimes meet in chat room or gather students in Games for the web class. It is not unusual teachers and students meet in online but it results many advantages. Students experience virtual and different environments through Second Life classes and have more fun. Sometimes it is hard and difficult to understand new media or cyberculture, professors trying to show different side of the digital media and students become more interact with it.

These days, we can't say Seconnd Life or online game program is bad at all. Because this generation stuck with online and Internet become most common and important part of our lives, there should be more well developed or organized ways to use and enjoy Second Life in our other parts of lives.

Second Life: Teaches Life Lessons

2009-09-30T16:32:00.000-07:00

When we think about Second Life, we only think about online game and something like virtual world. But there are increasing number of people and organizations who employig the game in application that are useful for more than entertainment.
A British organization called ARCI is using second life to help abused children to working on socialization, collaboration, team building, computer skills and more. A woman who goes by the in-world name of Gwyneth Llewelyn said, "they easily get in touch with people that they don't personally know."Another project is called live2give was undertaken by nine adults with cerebral palsy share the personal interactions. Because many of the real world challenges are bypassed in second life, fewer people have problem haging out with them. Also along with many other massively multiplayer online games, known as MMOs, Second Life offers players the ability to start in-world businesses selling things. There are no limits to the ways players can interact. They can communicate and socialize through normal chatting or instant messaging.

Second Life, allow players to fly, drive fantastical vehicles, dress up in outlandish outfits and build anything they could imagine is not no longer existing only in online game that effect negatively. Now it is use to cure people and help people to develop their socialization. These kind of organizations would appear more and more and then there will be great answers for how can we help and educate people who have handicap to interct with people.

How Obama Did It

2009-09-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

The article, "How Obama Did It" talk about Obama's successful online campaign(MyBO) that leads him to White House and also talk about important roles about social netwoking through many campaigns. Many candidates create their web sites for campaigning and for fund raising. They not only present on TV or radio, They also post video of their speeches, photos, promises...etc. Unlike with other candidates, Obama campaign has dominated new media. Because the world has now caught up with the technology, Obama team trying to put such technologies (such as SMS, Phone tools..). At the end of June, the campaign had raised more than $200 million from more than a million online donors and Obama had raised $340million from all sources. MyBO and the main campaign site made it easy to give money. Visitors could use credit cards to make one-time donation or sign up for recurring monthly contributions. Sometimes the campaign posted the candidate's speeches and linked to multimedia materials generated by supporters. The music vedio or vedio for Obama's speech has been posted on YouTube and it have been viewed 10million times. many other candidates' internet directors credit Obama campaign with doing "great job".

The reason the other candidates, Clinton or McCain who fail make connections with people or fail to set up efficient campaign is generation differences and they didn't fully understand power of social networking. Because Obama knew what makes people to feel connections with him and what makes people to motivate to support him. Lastly, he understands these generation and he understands impact of internet and online communications.

PBS Presentation

2009-09-29T20:22:00.000-07:00

PBS Presentation discussed about how teens in US live their lives in Online
and how their parents, teachers or previous generation people feel differences and how they trying to understand and adapt to these Online world. These days, most of teens have their own computer in their room. Unlike with previous generation, computers become most important, useful, and common for teens. They are doing their homeworks and other interests from computer. Having E-mail, AOL, MSN, My Space, or Facebook is obvious thing between teens. They chatting through internet instead meet and eye contact. They share informations through online and it is really fast.

In this PBS program, we can see 5 teens-parents, Greg-his parents, Cam-his mother, Jessica-her parents and Sara-her parents who have conflicts each other and struggling to deal with their generation gap. and they talk about Ryan who took suicide due to cyberbullying. The similarities between those first 4 families are parents don't understand their son/daughter and teens don't understand their parents. So they become not having conversation and teens more and more trying to hiding things from parents. The reason why teens love online and addict to online is they can do whatever they want. They can express their feelings and personalities that they couldn't show or express. It creates another himself/herself that he or she wanted to be.(eg. Jessica Hunter) In other side, Parents fear about lot of bad stuff about online. There are many sexual predator things happen and students use same resources and words for their school works and most serious problem is many teens and even younger people attempt suicide or feel pain from cyberbullying.(eg. Ryan) These things made parents and previous generation people to worry.

I am also really love to use online and play with it. I can chatting with my friends even I can't see their faces and I can express more of myself that I can't do it in real world. My parents also don't like it when I seat in front of my laptop and doing long time things that not related to study or school. I know I shouldn't extremely immersed in online and I am also sometimes feel my generation become more selfish and self-centered. Online is not toally bad because computer and internet brought huge chages and advantages to the World. However we should be aware of control.

To watch the PBS program:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/#