Weeks 5 & 6

I'm glad I was finally able to join everyone in Second Life this time. Last week when I tried I think I had another glitch problem, which caused me to be late. I was in the middle of trying to look at a map to see where Kent State was and all of a sudden my vision went gray. No matter which way I looked I was looking at a gray wall. I was finally able to get my avatar to look up and I could see a couple people walking by, and I realized I was in some kind of box shaped hole. I tried to fly up to get out of the hole but it was like I was frozen. Well finally the glitch stopped and I was in a different place from where I was orignally standing (when I tried looking at my map). I don't know what happened but I hope that doesn't happen again. This is another issue with Second Life. I realized when I log on to SL, I'm back where I was when I logged off. Now when you play a video game you usually start where you last saved. This way if you experience a glitch you can push the reset button and start from your last save point. Now in SL, what if I couldn't get out of that weird glitch? I guess I would've been stuck in it forever. This wouldn't be good for students who might need to use SL for school. One might think, "Well, just create a new avatar and start over." Well, when I tried deleting a different SL avatar I had, it said something about having to wait a few months before I'd be allowed to create a new one (I think you can only have one avatar per email account). That would be a pain for students if they'd have to set up a new email account just to create a new SL avatar.

I think when it comes to online simulations in education, it would probably be better not to make it mandatory in case students run into technical problems (like the one I experienced). Also, something I noticed during our online discussion, my computer lagged from time to time, which made typing awkward. Also, the audio didn't seem to work very well. I had trouble understanding people sometimes when they spoke. I had my volume turned up all the way, but the quality of the sound wasn't very good. People sounded a bit muffled. Again, it could just be my computer.

Second Life could be useful in education, but it still has issues that need to be fixed.
Okay enough about Second Life for now.

WebQuests! I finally got to see what these are. I've heard of them before in other classes but I never understood what they were even after people would describe them to me. I find them interesting, but I'm not sure I'm crazy about them. I think they can be helpful in elementary and maybe middle school, when students are learning about researching on the Internet. In high school and older, however, I think students would be bored with them. At this point I think it would be better if students learned how to evaluate websites themselves for research purposes. Are students really learning anything if we just give them the sites they need? I don't know. Maybe it depends more on what the assignment is.

As for the WebQuest I made...I like the topic I used, but I'm not sure if I designed the WebQuest in the best way for it. I think I may have started to design it in the form of a lesson, even though WebQuests aren't supposed to be lessons...Well, I'm glad I had this experience because in the future I'll know what people are talking about when they mention WebQuests, and can help find/create them with teachers.

It's my turn to help lead the online discussions for the next two weeks, and I need to create my website design (due Saturday March 7).