Activity #9: Virtual Worlds

I honestly don't know what to think or say about Second Life.  Prior to this course, I had heard about this opportunity (if that's what you call it) to have a second life and really felt uncomfortable with this concept.  It reminded me of the movie that I saw called 'Surrogates' starring Bruce Willis; great movie, but the whole idea of creating a world where you essentially choose your ideal body, job, lifestyle, and let that body live through your control on the computer really didn't appeal to me.  I mean, what is wrong with your God given body in the 'real world'?  In contrast, I found the site 'Get A First Life' to be hilarious (although at times inappropriate).  It was a great piece of comedic relief after having watched several clips on Second Life and exploring the site.  Personally, I think I would struggle to use this as a teaching tool.

'Exit Reality', again, the name itself says it all.  I signed up to this site to try and view some websites in 3D.  I thought it was a great concept and really quite a shift in your mindset particularly because we are accustomed to viewing websites as 2D.  I didn't know what site to try first, so I tried Facebook.  I found that it took a while to load, but it was fun to navigate through and see all the different ways that the usual 2D information was presented in 3D.  Once again, not sure that I would use this as a teaching tool, but I will continue to think about possible ways of including it in the curriculum because it was quite fun and engaging.