New Experience

For the past couple of weeks, I have been traveling in SL and playing on WoW. Never did I think I would ever play WoW, and now that I have started getting the hang of it, I am getting hooked! At first I had no idea what I was doing. I actually thought that I was only one lost, but when we met as a group for the 2nd time, I realized that many of the other class mates were confused as well. My biggest challenge has been actually the quests of killing the enemies. They seem to be very difficult to kill, but as I learned, I need better weapons to kill them faster. 

When reflecting on how WoW can be used in classrooms/teaching, I did not have a clue. That was until Jane had us brainstorm during our class meeting. It was very interesting to see what we all came up with as to how WoW can be used as a teaching tool. Its amazing that a game can actually have various learning objectives, rather than it being just used as a hobby.

This week I was able to take a tour of a Space Station, explore the Star Trek Science Museum, take a tour of Virtual Hallucination, and explore Machu Pichu. All of these places were interesting to explore because I learned so many new things. For example, in the tour of the Virtual Hallucination, I was able to experience voices, objects moving, and other things that a person suffering from schizophrenia would actually experience. Below are a couple of pictures of my adventures this week. 

This week's adventures

 So my first educational adventure was visiting a Holocaust Museum that represented the night of "Kristallnacht," which is also known as the "Night of Broken Glass" where German soldiers went out and destroyed many shops, synagogues, and homes of Jews.

In this picture I am reading some of the stories of some of the people. After reading the story of how and why it all started, I explored a representation on the town. As you can see in the second picture, the streets are full of broken glass and the windows are shattered everywhere. This was an interesting experience seeing this because it helped me get an idea of what many Jews went through.

On Thursday night, I had met with Cyrus from ISTE, who gave us a tour of New England. 

We first went to a town called Innsmouth, which was based on the author H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Shawdow Over Innsmouth". The town was very creepy and it was interesting to explore the town that was created with so many objects from years ago. Although I have never heard of this story, after visiting this place, I am very interested in reading it. During our tour, we were then taken to two more places. One of them is called Wondrous Place, where when you enter the island, there is a tree with a door in it.

The door leads you to a room with multiple doors. Each door then takes you to a new place. The picture below is a space ship that I explored through one of the small doors that I entered. The place was pretty cool because it lets you go to multiple places.

After the tour, I met up with Djangoguitar where we visited multiple art galleries at Healy. We were even able to do some Tai Chi and sit down to mediate a bit in order to release some stress. The paintings were amazing in the gallery and there were even options for people to donate money. Overall, this week was very busy!

 This week in SL, I was able to adjust my avatar Victoria's appearance. I chose a ballerina avatar but changed her body structure and hair. Every time I tried changing her outfit, her original outfit would always stay on. The first picture is of a closeup of Victoria after I changed her facial and body structure. The second one is of when I changed her hair and wardrobe, except you can see that she is wearing a black tank top on top of leotard. She looks very silly.

     

I got to travel to place in Spain and the below picture is of me doing a virtual dance at a night club. It was nice to go to a Spanish speaking place and hear familiar music. The picture to the left is of me and Diana in Brazil, as we were trying to find a place to get clothes for free. It was not successful. It was nice to bring her, Karmi, and Linda along to a place that I have already traveled to. I am hoping that this week though I can travel to an educational place with some other classmates.

So during the class meeting on Thursday we went to a place where we can get free clothes, but as I was trying to change Victoria's outfit and take off her original clothes, I was having problems. I decided to just get a new avatar to make it easier. I chose a hindi woman which I was able to change her clothes and not have her original clothes still be visible. Great week in SL this week.

As for Jokaydia, I was able to build a slide. I am thinking of maybe creating a playground little by little ( we shall see). Although my slide was built with the basic building blocks and looks very simple, I really wanted to make it look curved or swirl it around. I have not figured it out but I am going to see if someone can show me how to do it. I also want to learn how to include a script so when people click on it they can go up the ladder and slide down. If anyone knows please let me know!