Final Project

I wanted to provide links to my final project...

here is the screencast: Final Presentation

here is the wiki: wiki

Johnson part 2

I think my biggest take-away from Johnson's book is "don't be too quick to judgment" when it comes to relative usefulness of pop culture in education. As games, tv, and other media becomes more and more sophisticated there is the potential of learning important skills via these medium. Educators and librarians need to take a step back from quick criticism and really investigate what is out there. While I have some difficulty following the thread that video gaming has actually raised the collective IQ, I do truly believe that there is the potential of lots of learning "under the hood" of many seemingly entertainment based technology. As the digital world is so prevalent in society, writing it off as simply "pop culture" and of no use educationally is a big mistake. Embrace the changes and integrate the possibilities into the system...there are alot of great things to be learned.

Class structure

No, not another post about danah boyd’s thoughts on MySpace vs. Facebook…. a post about 598 and its structure!

In thinking back on the weeks and analyzing them as they unfolded, the only thing that I might think about changing is where Flickr fell in the order. To me Flickr would roll seamlessly after social bookmarking, which would enhance the project of getting to know your classmates (albeit only one week earlier…). I don’t think it is a huge change to flip–flop Flickr and wiki’s but it was really the only change I could think of! I think the class is a winner as is, providing TONS of information on new trends that are relevant to the library. Being guided through foreign territory was a huge benefit for me. It isn’t that I couldn’t have learned the things on my own but having a choreographed roll-out really helped develop the knowledge. The only other small thing I can think of is in the Delicious week… making a stronger statement on the use of descriptions to assist others in “why” a bookmark was selected to represent *you* would have helped me as a new user. I think I didn’t really *get* that until later, I was too focused on the technical aspect of what things to click and load and do.

Well there you have it. I feel confident that I understand enough about social software to “get” why it exists, how it plays out in the library world, and how to jump in if the need arises. I know that I only scratched the surface on some things but feel like I have the tools to now tackle new things as they come, which we all know they will! Thanks for providing a safe place to jump into the deep end of a potentially scary pool!

Minerva survived with her virtual virginity intact!

I found SL to be very frustrating and futile in my first few hours… I figured out how to move around easily enough but really saw no purpose for my movements! I had a hard time finding anyplace I wanted to go. I spent some time trying to change my appearance and was also not hugely successful. I did find some cool red shoes that someone gave me for free in the Cat’s Lair, but struggled with changing my appearance using the edit--> appearance function. I got pretty frustrated just trying to get some jeans and a t-shirt on, I finally gave up trying to change my hair color! I did add some nice freckles though….I do believe that if you are persistent enough or are willing to plonk down some Linden bucks you can get pretty creative about your “look.”

By about the 6^th hour of invested time I could quickly search for new places to try and teleport there but was still struggling with “why” I would want to. I visited Princeton, admired some paintings, rode a merry-go-round and swung at a park, went to a pub but still really found nothing compelling enough to want to do this for anything other than an assignment! I found my prevailing emotion was stress as I was wandering around so I spent some time in the immersive aquarium where I met another noob and we chatted a bit – kind of a cool place to relax for awhile. I did find my way to Info Island and stopped at the readers Advisory station in the library. I was lucky enough not to have to deal with any virtual propositioning... must have been those added freckles!

I guess bottom line is this… if I was looking for information on a college or book I would rather just go to a website and get the information. I am, apparently, just not that interested in socializing with other virtual people. While I “get” the appeal for some people I am just not one of them. Give me a real coffee house or pub and a ftf chat with some random stranger or a friend any day! I am actually kind of surprised that the virtual environment didn’t appeal to my rather nerdy qualities more than they did…. I thought for sure I would find this all extremely fascinating. So I end my SL a little disillusioned but at least I know what it looks like and could reemerge in some other place and time for a second chance at a second life.

Popular Culture and stupidity

The information in Johnson's book was very interesting and he had some valid points. I do agree that there are many things in today's popular culture that do provide great arenas for learning. His points about some of the knowledge gained from certain types of gaming is quite accurate. If you do spend time playing very complex, multi-layered games you can exercise your decision making skills, your ability to strategize, hypothesize, etc. The same can be said for high quality TV and film, there are things to be learned in every medium when the end product is well developed and written to appeal to higher order thinking. So, on the whole, I do not believe that videogames are evil and useless. Nor do I think that people would be better off only playing Zelda than reading a book or playing a sport. There is a place for all of it in a balanced life.

I do believe, however, that he bases most of his "electronic media is good" argument on a small percentage of the actual end product. While he puts forth an effort to say that the dreck of today is still better dreck than the past, really I cannot find that a compelling argument for it's worth.

I guess the bottom line is he believes that media shapes the culture rather than culture shaping the media... a bit like the chicken and the egg...which did come first? He has not convinced me that media drives the cultural and intellectual advances.

I am no gamer...

The challenge this week was to find a game that I could:
A) understand how to play AND
B) find an opponent to play with AND
C) screencast as I played

That proved to be like teaching an elephant to ride a tricycle! I finally gave up on grown-up games and found myself on Webkinz.com in my 6 year old daughter's account. So, to be fair, everytime I go to the library I see kids on the computers playing Webkinz... I decided that if you werent a parent you might never have seen how Webkinz works. With my limited gaming skills I found that ones designed for the under 10 set were just about my speed! So here is a screen cast of Webkinz bowling....

bowling

Best practices for screencasting

Here is an outline of my best practices and a screencast - not sure which you were looking for and was too lazy to ask!!

1. prepare your environment - turn off the stereo, open the programs you will need to show, close unneeded programs so as to minimize potential distractions
2. have a general outline of what you want to say and do, try it once so you have all required info at your fingertips
3. briefly explain any moves/mouseclicks you do if you are making a step-by-step instruction screencast

here is a screencast of "best practices"- after I did it I realized I must not play my music that loud as you can barely hear it in the background! So I guess I can keep my tunes on!

best practices

xboxes, playstations, and wii's - oh my!

You're in charge of getting a gaming system for your library or a local organization...

• How would you research?
• What would your criteria be?
• Which do you think you would get?

Okay - sounds like an easy enough question right? Boy was I wrong! I spent several hours reading reviews and trying to understand all the techno-gamer language to try and start forming an opinion. So here is my answer to the question...

Research --> first you need to decide who the gaming audience is - all library patrons or 18-24 year old boys - because the answer of which console to buy is heavily dependent on who is going to be playing. You can read reviews on any number of websites but I was actually able to follow most of the jargon on this site --> digital trends.

Once you have figured out your target audience then you can worry about building your criteria list on things like price, backwards compatibility, size of the unit, graphics quality, number and type of games available, type of screen it will be played on, etc.

My bottom line.... if I had to buy a console for a library first I would go home and cry....then I think I would settle on the Nintendo Wii, basing the decision on its relatively decent price ($300 to start vs. ps3 at $600), its appeal to users of all ages (vs. xbox 360 where most games seem to be for older teens), its compact size for storage (vs. the ps3), its backwards compatibility with GameCube games (both xbox and ps3 appear to have some backward compat. issues), and its generally more "fun" gameplay. Now having said this... I think that if your target audience is serious gamers who want the more mature games, then Wii isnt the answer. But if I ran a library and could only buy one I would try to appeal to the masses with the Wii.