MindMeister Update #1

Ever since computers and many others forms of technology were introduced to education learning has been irrevocably changed.  Students more and more turn to search engines like Google or Bing for homework help instead of going to their teachers, asking other students, or even more unlikely opening up a book.  Since this trend is an unstoppable force of nature, schools incorporated this technology into learning and revolutionized the way classes are held.  No longer are students solely researching topics from books, or taking notes off of the board.  Students in today's society have a multitude of niches to find this information.

By using tools such as MindMeister teachers are able to conduct lectures in a manner in which students will more likely be interested because a computer is involved.  MindMeister at its core is a fancy online note-taking assistant which allows ideas, thoughts, and concepts to be laid out in a neat and organized fashion.  With this organization no longer will mindless doodles occupy the same space as the hard hitting concepts of Physics, or Computer Science.  If professors utilized this tool and made students map out chapters of their textbooks these classes would have multiple maps containing the very tools to success.

Dungeon Blitz

1. The topic that was discussed in class this week was the concept of social gaming in the online context.  This focused around the theory of narratology which is concerned with the affect that narratives have on our perception of the culture as well as the world around us.  Dungeon Blitz is an online MMO game where you can pick different classes of warriors in order to begin your questing.  During the game the character you have chosen begins to get wrapped up in various different quests with stories that are based on saving someone, or achieving some goal.  These quests are narratives that help to better explain the world of Dungeon Blitz and why you are questing.
2. This tool allows its many users to escape the grind of everyday life and be transported to a world where you can be a warrior and fight off trolls, and save damsels in distress.  This is a quest based game which means that the users must embark on an adventure with a goal in mind set by the game.  For example you may have to fight through hordes of enemies in order to save the helpless NPC character created by the game. This game also allows you to invite your friends from Facebook to come along with you to chat or to quest together.
3. Me being a gamer mostly on XBOX found the game play very different from what I had grown accustomed to.  Instead of a controller I was now using the keyboard to play a game.  The difference I soon found out added to the intrigue of the game, and because I was not accustomed to this kind of play style I found myself more challenged, thereby having more fun than I ever would have otherwise.
4. The more I began questing the more I found out how difficult it was to overcome the hordes of enemies.  At first I did not realize that you could upgrade your equipment to better your stats.  As a result I was going up against stronger, and stronger opponents without growing any stronger myself.  I learned a little how to better my character but in the end I found that I had to really alter my fighting style to combat the harder opponents.
5. I found that I much preferred the lone wolf approach when it came to questing, I enjoyed going through the game in a single player style. Since I had this approach in the game the only time I ever talked to the other users from in between quests.  During this time I would ask some of the more highly leveled users what they thought of the game.  Some simply made flippant responses as I expected, but more than not I actually got genuine responses about their critique of the game.  Most said that they enjoyed the questing in the game and it was a great way to waste a lot of time without even realizing it.  Dungeon Blitz is a great and fun environment to communicate with your friends from Facebook and even a good place to initiate new relationships.
6. On a whole I really enjoyed playing Dungeon Blitz.  My enjoyment stemmed more from the actual game-play and questing than it did from the communication in-game.  Since I was immersed in the game-play I did not actively seek out communication.  I believe that the only reason that I communicated with other users was so that I could accurately answer the questions on my blog for this class.

Second Life

1.  This week the idea of Virtual Communities was discussed and if defined as support groups formed by emotional bonds and experiences similar to those forged by geographically local communities.  In Second life the users get the opportunity to travel to different worlds (server locations) in order to chat and move around with other users who may share the same interests.  Second life has taken the idea of virtual communities and made so many specific niche areas for certain users to go and enjoy themselves.  Second life is a conduit to find a personalized virtual community that each individual user will enjoy being a part of.
2. Second life allows users to chat with each other in a free, and open manner.  The personal information that is shared here is sometimes surprising.  People will not be shy at all to share, what gender, ethnicity, age that they are along with, personal interests and perhaps even physical appearance.  Second life like Facebook allows people from all over the world to converse and function together in an open format.  The difference being that in Second life users can completely change their avatar to something far different than a fake picture.
3. For me I thought it was interesting to be able to change the avatar into so many different categories of life, from animals, people, to cars, and vampires.  The variety of avatars combined with the different ways other users clothed them always made it interesting to see who was about to walk around the corner.  Additionally I thought it was pretty interesting that users were able to fly around the map regardless of what avatar they selected, so to see cars flying around was quite fascinating.
4. In Second life much like Omegle I found it difficult to carry an intellectual conversation, many users I tried to talk to either weren't interested or decided to write ignorant things.  The amount of times I actually found an intellectual conversation are far outweighed by number attempts at this type of conversation.
5. Second life is very useful when users wish to find a specific world or virtual community that fits their own style, because of this ease of access sometimes the users in the world users teleport to will share similar interests.  I think of Second life as a database full of virtual communities for users to find and enjoy, in this aspect I believe that Second life succeeds in communication.  On the other-hand  because many users disguise their identity behind avatars it is still impossible to have a 100% genuine conversation with other users a problem that is much more difficult to have in person.
6. When I went into certain worlds that were highly populated I found that the game began to lag and cause improper functioning.  For me I found this highly annoying and immediately teleported to another world to escape the jumpy, slow connection.  I found that this issue along with the disguising of avatars really turned me off from ever willingly going back to second life.  On an overall basis, Second life succeeds more than it fails at conversations when thinking in terms of virtual communities.