Group items tagged

Today's online gaming is increasingly realistic and technologically advanced. It is said that social networking has even made its way into the video game industry with online gaming. The article, "The influences of interaction during online gaming on sociability, and aggression in real life" by, Yoshidia Fujio, evokes the numerous ways online gaming interacts with ones social life based on a study done in Japan. The results supported the hypotheses and suggested that online gaming resulted in positive outcomes for those who are socially, but negative outcomes for those who are not.

In the chapter "Civic Identities, Online Technologies: From Designing Civics Curriculum to Supporting Civic Experiences" from Marina Umaschi Bers book, Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth, the author claims that online games, such as Zora, help our youth engage in community and civics. Zora allows it's players to create their own individual avatar, with physical, mental, and emotional traits that the players choose. Bers argues that Zora is a great way for children to think about their identity and civic life by making choices that will show them how to acquire certain sills and attitudes to become good citizens. Like many other researchers, Bers agrees that it is easiest to learn by doing, and games like Zora are helping to improve the youths social awareness. This chapter describes engagement in society not only by voting and being political, but by forming communities and volunteering.

In "Civic Identities, Online Technologies: From Designing Civics Curriculum to Supporting Civic Experiences" by Marina Umaschi Bers, Bers discusses a scenario that is being used all across the country. Zora is a three dimensional multiuser environment that students use to think about identity and civic life. Students make avatars and are in charge of everything going on in the city or summer camp. This came to life after identity construction environments (ICEs) were found that creative things to do on the computer make children learn better. The students work mostly with different civic identities like police, Jewish people, etc. along with real life, controversial community related issues which the students try to solve. Many of the tools used in Zora can then beused in real life and the moral values can be used both on the computer and in real life. Zora is different than traditional learning because "Children are put in the role of producers, instead of consumers, of information, knowledge, and habits of mind."

Jane McGonigal is talking about how we can connect real life to games.

in this video, Jane McGonigal describes that gaming is used everyday and online gaming is becoming more and more important. She also says how online gamers spend about 8 billion hours weekly just playing online games. Also how she is trying to change it from just having fun but to solve real life problems.

Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.

In the article; "Digital Literacies" a 12th grade project about digital literacy is described. Elizabeth Boeser decided to develop an online role-play scenario for her students. The role-play was centered on the sites that were blocked by the school. Students made online avatars and discussed the pros and cons of blocking certain sites from students. Posts were being discussed after and before school and showed that the use of Ning (the website) showed students a positive way to use the Internet for school. It allowed for instant sharing of ideas. The author then goes into the importance of online identity where students can work with students by replicating, adding, and engaging in information. The four important digital literacy's are also mentioned; multimodality, connectivity, hyper linking, and collaboration.

In about the 30 second mark it shows that unknown people gaming online can come together on Call of Duty Black Ops and mess around as a group while having fun. All it takes is one person to instigate a behavior, to start a chain reaction of communication online. It just goes to show that even when you are gaming by yourself at home, that you can have a conversation with someone that you might not have even known. An Example of this behavior of talking to person online during gaming takes place during the two minute and five second mark. I am going to use this video to show that even when you think you are networking, that you could be. In today's world the ways of communication have opened up significantly. It has opened to the point where I can be in California and game with family in Texas.

This video clip is about how people practice religious belief through the net. Which basically means their body is not presented in a church.

Clay Shirky NYU professor, expert on social media, discusses the benefits of social media engagement through: online communities, blogs, networks, and groups etc. He encourages people to participate in online interactions and communities in the sense that people who share common interests can interact online to form new ideas to better their specific interest and culture.

I am a fond user of the online market places, so to speak. I love amazon, Ebay, etc., simply because it makes time so much easier to manage.

In this video, Jane McGonigal talks about how individuals (online gamers) can make a better world. She mentioned that individuals play online games because it makes them happier and give them a feeling of working hard. Gamers do not give up when they fail and they tend to have a more strong social relationship than in real life. McGonigal said that gamers are human resource that we can use to do real world work. Instead of playing games and trying to save the virtual world, she had created online games intended to help gamers play and think critically about how to survive

It talks how an individual could use gaming as a source to improve daily life. Improving daily life as in improving hunger, poverty, and obesity.

This music video expresses how people go online and act like someone that they are not, so that they can seem more popular in a way.

That is quite true for most people.

In this article, the author, Kumi Ishii discusses about how online users manage relationships using different conflict-management styles. Which is interesting because it has to do with group communication. It includes the studies of how people deal with situations to maintain and form relationships online.

A funny and entertaining talk show gives some good websites to shop online at and also some tips on how to be a good online shopper.

In the article, "Why Schools Should Learn To Use Online Services Like Facebook & YouTube Rather Than Banning Them," Mike Masnick argues that incorporating Facebook and other social networking sites, would be beneficial to both students and teachers. He says that by trying to fuse these social media sites with the teacher's curriculum, it will make education and school work more relevant to the students lives.

The article How Does Maintaining an Online Identity Affect Adolescent Identity Formation? By Lesley Cowie is all about social networking and the impact and influence it has on a person's identity. It discusses an identity transfer starting in the adolescent years because that is when kids are allowed to sign up for these social networks.

In an article co-authored by Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff, distance learning is viewed as a revolution in education where if you do not adapt, you will become extinct. Universities nationwide must substitute "face-to-face interaction and teacher-centered pedagogy" with "hybrid courses using student-centered pedagogy"(2) Emphasizing the fact that a good percentage of students prefer distance learning, the authors call for new and innovative developments for the online course systems offered today. Hiltz and Turoff end with a very appropriate quote from Charles Darwin about the importance of flexibility and ability to adjust to changing times, ""It's not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

Digital identity, like that presented on Facebook, thrives because it is temporal. You can change your identity, you can become a liberal or conservative change your interests and hobbies at the push of a button. The point is, you're always presenting the identity you want to present you never have to worry about the identity you used to present. Students disclose lots of real information, but they also disclose lots of false information. The reality is, is that you can always change the fake information. Facebook is no longer just a current method of identity presentation; it is an archive of our digital identity. People love exploring each other, but we don't want to leave traces behind. We don't want people to be able to see if we've viewed the profiles of others. We don't want people to know if we decline their friend requests. Facebook, like it or not, has brought to bear a very real issue in online identity.

In the article "Why Youth Love Social Networking Sites", Danah Boyd writes about Social network sites like MySpace and Facebook create a bridge for your social life and online life. Her article examines how these students use Social Networking websites to interact with their peers. She also addresses the issue of privacy and how it can be altered with in a social networking setting.

This article the author talks about how the different social networking sites have brought students together. A place where they can communicate with their peers and meet others. She addresses that fact that it allows the public to gather.

In the article Why Youth Love Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life by Danah Boyd is all about the way social networking sites work and how that connects to a person's real-life identity. Or in other words, how a person can form his or her own identity through social networking.

This article starts with talking about how students want to think outside of class. It states that they are scared sometimes of being judged on what they say or how they say it. Chat rooms or Backchannels is what they call them can help these students. In the article it shows some graphs about how the students used these chat rooms that were set up and how often they used them. according to the graphs as school seemed to continue, the students seemed to go in less. This article was great to understand the difference between in a classroom learning, and the way the web can teach the students and they can open up more and feel more safe in it. They don't want to learn between four walls all the time is stated in the article, and i think this is a great way to look at learning. broaden their horizons, because they all ready are and want to know that it is ok.

This entire article was about online chat rooms and how we can incorporate chat channels into schooling for collaboration, explanations, and discussion about topics in class. It talked about many of the good things and the bad things about chatting online and how we should be able to use chatting in school. The word backchannel is used for anything going on in the background while a teacher is lecturing or presenting. This idea of backchannel is talked about throughout the article. It explains what backchannel is, how we need to change schooling to work with it, what problems it creates, what things it works well with, why kids are using it so much, and how it could be used positively for classrooms.

In this article they have studies found that individuals tended to engage in role-play games and anit normative behaviors in the online world. They have studies that have examined identity performance in less anonymous online settings such as internet dating sites and reported different findings. The newest study investigates identity construction on facebook.

Article discusses bullies online and how there are starting so young, middle school students. Already getting caught up in feel what it feels like to not feel safe, even when they are online.