Reflective Post for Week of 3/26

On Wednesday of this week’s class, we looked at some websites that allow you to create avatars, I believe they’re called. Before this class, I really wasn’t familiar with any of these websites, so it was something different. It was really cool to see how into it people get, and how many different websites like that are out there. It was also interesting to see how many generalizations the class came up with about the true identities of the characters that were all in that room together. We can make guesses about the real identities of the people who created them, but we might be entirely wrong in the end—the question that it comes down to is whether or not people try to match their true personalities to the avatars they create. This goes back to concepts such as online identities, multiple identities, and other ideas we’ve been talking about in class. Some people might be trying to show true aspects of their identity, thereby matching their avatar closely to who they really are. Other people might be using such a website as an escape, creating a completely different type of person than they are in real life. This would be a form of identity play. Whatever type of person you create, though, each one has symbolic markers associated with them, and other online gamers are bound to make judgments about the type of person you are based on the features of the avatar you create. All in all, I’d say that it is impossible to know for sure just who you’re dealing with when it comes to things like avatars, but it’s interesting to see the types of identities that come out through the characters.

Even though I’ve never had any personal experience dealing with these kinds of websites, I can relate a little bit, because I’ve been around people who play the Sims computer game. Although I think the idea of controlling somebody’s life is entirely stupid and pointless, my roommate plays this game a lot, as well as the twin girls I’ve baby-sat for the past two summers. There are a lot of different options for making your “Sim character” stand out from others. You can pick out different outfits, hairstyles, etc. I don’t understand the attraction of such games, but I guess for a lot of people the idea of escaping reality and living someone else’s life has a certain appeal to it. Personally, though, I’m happy enough with my own life that I don’t feel the need to create a new identity through any kind of virtual game. :-)

Reflective Post for Week of 3/19

This week in class we read about online identity and online community. To some extent, we’ve already discussed online identity when we talked about anonymity. More than just the ability to be anonymous, however, the internet also provides the ability to completely change your identity—the book gave an example of a man pretending to be a woman or vice-versa. This seems kind of silly and manipulative, but the reality is that people do it all the time. Reading about identity play, however, made me think back to the ethics chapter, and something wasn’t matching up in my mind. I might be overlooking something, but isn’t pretending to be someone else, even if for a harmless purpose, a violation of online ethics? A less extreme example of online identity that we also discussed was not necessarily pretending to be somebody else, but changing qualities about yourself—like, for instance, telling somebody you’re neat when you’re actually messy, in order to make a better impression. Also, I think somebody brought this up in class, but an example that springs to my mind is with social networking sites like Facebook. There is a space in the profile section to write “About Me,” and sometimes people will write about the way they’d like to be or the way they’d like to be perceived rather than the way they actually are. I guess this isn’t as bad as outright lying, because in the long run it could help you achieve goals or change things about yourself that you’ve been meaning to for awhile, but it is still a form of identity play.

The chapter about online community discussed the effects of CMC on both online and offline communities. I found a lot of the material interesting, because as long as the internet has been around, these have been important questions for consideration, but until now, I’ve never really thought about how CMC affects communities. I guess in a way, I’m part of online communities through things like Facebook, IM, and this blog, but I’ve never thought about it like that. As far as CMC hindering offline communities, however, I don’t think that is true. For instance, my best friend from high school goes to Duquesne, and the only way we can talk while we’re both at school is by using cell phones, IM, Facebook, etc. Lately we’ve been so busy that we’ve actually been texting each other to set up a time to talk on the phone! It sounds really pathetic, but without CMC I would not be able to keep in touch with her at all while away at school. So in my opinion, while CMC can definitely hurt the notion of community if used improperly, it can also foster friendships and communities in many instances.

Reflective Post for Week of 3/12

For today’s class we read a chapter from the book on online ethics, and our activity in class was about dealing with different ethical situations that may come up in a world so involved with CMC. It’s kind of strange at first to think that ethics must come into play in a situation where people aren’t even communicating face-to-face, but when you think about it, ethics are especially crucial in such a situation. So many news cases these days involve people being bullied or harassed over the internet because people abuse the privileges that the internet has to offer, such as privacy, safety, and security. The way I see it, the internet itself is a privilege that we are lucky just to have access to, and we as users of CMC need to make responsible decisions when using the internet.

The book listed some facts about technology around the world that were quite shocking to me. As citizens of a country that has such widespread internet access, we are part of a very slim minority in comparison to most of the world, which cannot even imagine a society with such technological advancements. Every day, I use the internet without even thinking about the fact that it is truly a privilege that so few people worldwide actually can enjoy. As our society advances further along in technological developments, many third-world countries are being left in the dust, with slim hopes of ever getting to the point where CMC is widely accessible. In more ways than one, this course is really helping me to appreciate all that I have as far as CMC is concerned.

One of the questions that popped into my mind as I was reading all of these shocking statistics was “Do people without such forms of CMC as we have know what they are missing?” To us, the idea of living without something like the internet seems appalling, but because they have never had it, and because nobody around them does, I have a feeling they don’t miss it the way we would if it were suddenly taken away. Surprisingly, though, I’ve found that giving up facebook and IM for Lent is not as hard as I originally thought it would be. This may seem contradictory, since prior to Lent, I was using these things daily, and all of my friends still do, but I think that acknowledging what a privilege they truly are is helping me to realize that I CAN actually live without them…and because of their addictive nature, the fact that I know I can’t use them helps me to get other, more productive things done, and I find that I don’t even really miss them!

Reflective Post for Week of 2/26

Now that our online week is coming to a close, it's a good time to look back and reflect on this experience. All in all, I think it was a really good way to learn about electronic communication. Everything we've been doing in class up until this point, like using the message boards and blogs, have been very beneficial to our understanding of electronic communication, but actually having class online for an entire week is really a good way to experience many different things that we've been talking about by putting them into practice.

When we did our research about different online universities, I had trouble comprehending how you could actually take an entire class online, but after experiencing a week of it, I understand much more. While it might seem like less work, there is actually more you need to do online, because since there is no teacher-student interaction other than online, you kind of have to teach yourself. For instance, Mr. Corso could have explained in class what wikis are in about 2 minutes, but due to the online format this week, we had to read about them on our own, which took considerably longer. I didn't know anything about them before this week, but thanks to the research we had to do, I now know what they are and what they can be used for.

Probably the most difficult part of the week's assignments were the group discussions we had to have. I think most people were a little nervous about starting the discussion, because they didn't want to seem like they were dominating, so it took us awhile to get started, but after that, we were good. In class, group work is much simpler, because no one is really afraid to start the conversation since we're all right there. However, I think online group work is a good thing, since it's harder to get distracted.

Also, the final reason that the online week was such a good experience for me was because yesterday, I flew down to New Orleans to visit with relatives for spring break. I was going to miss the last class before break, but because my relatives have internet access, I can still participate in the week's activities without having to go to other students and get notes and all that hassle. I just think it's kind of cool that even though I'm 1200 miles away, I'm not misisng anything as far as this class is concerned :-)