Friday, November 18, 2011

SecondLife Activity!

Earlier this week, I was introduced to an activity on Second Life! What exactly is that? Second Life is a free 3D virtual world where users can socialize, connect and create using free voice and text chat. Our task was to interview students from Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In return, we were supposed to respond to their questions as well. As for our dream destination, our group members agreed upon Maldives after encountering problems initially for Australia.

We logged on at 7.45pm to prepare and gather at Temasek Polytechnic Island. As it was rather messy and filled with other people within the same area, it was not easy to find our HK partners!

Soon after, we found three of them and immediately moved on to carry out what was needed. Unfortunately, one of them could not rejoin us after experiencing technical difficulties while we were at Australia. :(

Several screenshots of the activity would be included in this post to indicate their personal opinion to our questions.

Names in Second Life activity
Hong Kong friends: malun, tinlokcheung
Group members: Rensque, JustinNextal, XiangyiKim, hyeyeonveronica

Now, let the pictures do the talking! (Click on the pictures for a clearer view)


The beginning of the interview, where all of us were introducing our name and getting along with each other :D


Next, we gave them emails! This was also required for one of our tasks, to stay in contact after the activity.


After that was done, our group member began the interview on the question about their dream destinations.


One of them had been to Paris when he was younger. In return, they asked for our real first name.


Our group then proceed to question on the issue of using social media for harmful effects. Both of them shared the same reply, subsequently they told us about their opinions on this issue. Despite the severity of this ongoing issue in their country, as metioned by malun, it was difficult to monitor and control the situation.


Next, our group asked about how they could use social media in a more responsible manner. tinlokcheung suggested that real names should only be used for registration of accounts.


In addition, malun felt that education is priority.


Our year of birth~


Our HK friends gave us their emails in return! :D


We told them our religion, coincidentally all my group members had the same religion!


After which, they also told us about their actual age :)


In response to "How do you protect yourself from the bad effects of using social media", malun felt that we should not take it too seriously and avoid giving out too much information in social media.


tinlokcheung also explained why they would love to visit London as he would love to watch a football match there.


The excitement came about when I knew that our HK friends were fans of Manchester United as well! XD


Still talking about Man Utd! Haha, we got carried away somehow by our same interests.


We also told them about places we would like to visit or places we have already visited~


Sadly, they need to leave soon after we answered their question :(


To stay in contact, we added each other on Facebook!


Ending the activity off with a Man Utd cheer!

Individual Activity

1. The best experience that I can get from virtual life is that I can literally travel anywhere I want through SecondLife. In virtual experiences, I believe that each one can interact with one another more freely, especially when in a bigger group, an individual can just chat with somebody to start off a conversation. In SecondLife, this virtual activity also allows users to chat with people from overseas.

2.Frankly, mannerisms are very hard to detect in virtual life, needless to mention SecondLife. Behaviours and mannerisms in my opinion can only be observed when there is a face-to-face consersation, to put it simply, seldom will you see any special behaviours of sorts coming out from the character in SecondLife. Too add on, in the virtual world, I believe that although it is easy to make friends, one may also experience not so pleasant encounters in general.

3.I feel good, definitely. Sharing my dream destination with my newly made friends makes me excited as I am eager to tell them what I wish to experience in that dream destination. In return, they may also have the same interest as me, and it did happened in SecondLife as seen on the pictures posted above about the chat on our favourite football clubs.

4.In the discussion, we are analysing the issue of ethics of Social media. After the discussion, I came to know about that cyber bullying has become a serious issue in Hong Kong. This is rather unexpected as I usually believe that it is one's responsibility to ensure that they treat others with respect, even in the virtual world. Besides that, the methods of minimising and control measures are discussed as well.

5.I came to know more about their demographics: Age, gender and religion. Earlier, I mentioned that the problem of internet abuse in Hong Kong is getting more serious. In this e-learning experience, I feel that there is alot more that I can learn about. Starting from internet ethics, I can research on what are the side effects of cyber bullying among youths, for example. Apart from knowledge, I believe that I gained new friends as well :)

6.Well, in any virtual activity, it is hard to co-ordinate the movements around places for the entire group. Therefore, the group needs to discuss and also agree upon beforehand where to meet and when to meet. As such, frequent conversations are done over the MSN to clarify any doubts faced in SecondLife to ensure that the whole process is smooth.

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