Final Project

FYI, my final is posted here. It is also, as required, linked to from my student page.

Johnson reading, Part 2

Towards the end of the reading, Johnson made a comment that saved this entire book for me - "moderation in everything." Yes, video games and television are good for you - they encourage critical thinking and problem solving skills, but sitting in front of them for too long can lead to behavior problems and weight problems (I've seen it happen).

Anyway, what does this mean for libraries and schools? Integration of technology. I'm lucky to work in a school where technology is embraced - students are in the computer lab for at least a half hour each week, plus there are two mobile laptop labs, along with digital still and video cameras, and all kinds of educational software available for teacher and student use. Technology isn't seamlessly integrated yet - some teachers are using their SmartBoards solely as projection screens, not interactive learning tools - but integration will come with education. Teachers and librarians need to be educated in how to best harness educational technology to benefit their students and patrons.

If I ran the circus...

I really wouldn't change too much. This has been a really informative, entertaining, and practical class. I reviewed some things I already knew a lot about (blogs, social bookmarking), and tried some things I never thought I'd try (Facebook, Second Life). Overall, I learned a lot, and I'll certainly put it to practice, whether personally or professionally.

Now that the nice stuff's out of the way, there are a couple of things I'd change. First of all, I'd clarify the grading procedure and make sure to comment on posts. When I checked my grades in eCompanion, I always found one lone comment relative to one of my posts, when some weeks there were several required posts. If I ran the class, I'd make comments about each post, preferably directly on the students' blogs. I think that if students take the time to write the posts (or papers, or whatever), the professor should take the time to grade them and make individual comments (this goes into a larger argument on my distaste for profs who use TAs to grade everything - a prof chooses to teach a course, he should be able to handle the grading - but I digress).

Going along with the former point is I would make sure that each week's assignment included commenting on classmates blog posts. We only had to do this for a couple weeks, but it would have been nice to have done it every week.

Aside from that, I thought the course content was great and I enjoyed the class!

Second Life

Yeah, not so much.

My experience in Second Life was both fun and frustrating. Fun when I was with people, frustrating when I was alone. As soon as I logged in for the first time, Renee and Gabrielle were there to greet me, and took me to Svarga (?) Island, where we formed a band, Mad SCILz, and rocked it out on some percussion instruments. That was fun, because they weren't absolute novices like myself, and were able to help me. We voice-chatted for a while, and then went our separate ways, but not after taking a screenshot of our band (I'm the loser in the middle who hasn't figured out how to change her clothes):


Then, I went back in a couple days later, to try SL by myself. I found Info Island, poked around there, then teleported myself to Eduisland, where a man in a wheelchair rolled up next to me and knocked me over. Not cool. So, I teleported to the art museum on Info Island, and made several attempts at getting into a building. I wasn't able to get in - had I had friends around (or anyone at all, for that matter), I probably could have asked for help and figured it out. But instead, I figured out how to change my appearance, and called it a day:


Overall, SL really isn't a service for me. One, I'm not interested in immersive gaming, and two, my machine had a tough time with it - graphics took a long time to render, even logging on and off was tough. I can see the advantages for, say, hermits, but I'd rather go out and socialize with my real-life friends, not my Second Life friends.

Play a game

I played "Tower Blocks" on Facebook, via mindjolt.com. I played against my boyfriend, Mike. Well, I didn't exactly play against him, but we played concurrently, trying to beat each other's scores. Listen for guest appearances from my boyfriend and my parents.

Screencasting recap

Screencasting - great, except when it's not.

I normally use a Mac, and when I attempted to adjust my resolution to 800x600, the recommended size for screencasting, my screen got all pixelated and was difficult to navigate. Thankfully, I had borrowed a Dell laptop from my school library for another class project. I was able to install Jing and successfully screencast from there.

I also found it helpful to do a dry run of my screencast. I made sure I knew my script, the links worked (learned that one the hard way), and I wasn't near any ringing phones or loudmouth, whiny cats (again, learned the hard way). Part of the Jing screencasting experience is ensuring the screencast is shorter than 5 minutes, something that talkative me had trouble with at first. But after a few practice runs, I was able to get the hang of not being so verbose.

Does pop culture sophisticatedly deliver stupidity?

In response to the question about the Johnson reading: yes and no. I agree with what he says about television and film, as far as developing more complex storylines and making the reader mentally participate in the series, rather than a watching a self-contained episode (like most Law & Order and CSI shows). Johnson also makes a good argument for gaming, with the benefits of problem-solving and storytelling. But, most video games don't allow for true imaginative exploration (unless of course, you're the one developing the game). That's where reading truly wins - a reader has to develop the book's world in his mind's eye, whereas with video games, the player is presented with a pre-visualized world. This is why books are almost always better than the movies made from them: the reader has the "creative control" over how the book is presented.

Time for another personal anecdote: I was studying abroad in England when the first Harry Potter (and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone) movie was released. I had gotten about halfway through the book before I saw the movie, and I had envisioned a completely different world than what I saw on screen, and it ruined the book for me. It was a few months before I could pick up the book again to finish reading it. Since, I've become a huge Harry Potter book and movie fan, but I still have trouble correlating what I see in my mind's eye to what I see on the screen.