Reflection - Second Life Elearning Activity PolyU

1.    At the end of your virtual meeting on Second Life, summarise your experience in a paragraph in response to the following questions:

i) What do you like best about this virtual experience which you cannot get in real-life?

I guess being able to read multiple conversations from different people. It is unlike real life, usually one can only listen to at most 2 different kinds of conversations. In the virtual life, you cannot really tell how the user is feeling or thinking because you cannot see the avatar's expression. Whatever you say is an impression or a picture of what others think you are. If you are lying, it is difficult to tell whether it is for real or not. Thumbs Up! (Y)

ii) Do you have to observe special mannerisms/behaviours/ethics when meeting your new friend on Second Life?

Well, I guess that's for sure. Mannerism in the way that person speaks/types during a conversation. Behaviors would be how the person plays in Second Life, what does he/she does in the game, may it be going around flying, jumping like a retard or just abiding rules, walking around exploring, whatever. Ethics would be difficult to understand during the first few chats with that person. Usually I will get to know if I ask.

2.    Describe the experience you had virtually meeting and sharing about yourself and your research experiences with your new friend from Hong Kong.

     It was horribly messy in Second Life with my friends. We did not manage to get the things we

              needed. There were so many people talking at the same time and the Kong Kong people did not really help us that much. I think out of the many, only one or two asked us questions and helped to answer our question. There were just too few Hong Kong students.

Before logging in, I have typed in the location I wanted to go. "HKPolyU Campus", which is the place that we had to be in from 2130 to 2230.

When I first entered the place, Chaaarbeeehooon was in front of me and we were both under the water. 

We flew up and onto what we call, "LAND". Guess what. Chaaarbeeehooon said that "F" word. Fortunately enough, Second Life doesn't ban users scolding vulgarities, unlike in World Of Warcraft. Hahahahahaha.

Then Easy Yazimoto begin to scold the "F" word for 3 times. Testing out the restrictions of Second Life. Nothing happened to him anyway.

On this screenshot, Shek Blogger asked, "what is the best food in town?" He asked so randomly and we do not even know if he is a Singaporean or from Hong Kong. 

So I went around searching for people from Hong Kong. I wonder why there isn't any. Was my avatar too scary? Haha.

In this image, everyone was crapping...

Then I asked everyone to sit down together. Hahahaha. It was getting fun anyway. So yeah, Nat Rasa(Singaporean) being asking the questions. I was hoping for answers so that I can just screenshot it. Unfortunately, none replied her.

There were some crapping, others giving instructions that Hong Kong students should sit down over there then MyNameis Caramel said his friend is stuck in a burning house... LOL

In this image, Chaaarbeeehooon seemed annoyed, he actually copied and pasted the question for so many times and if you look closely, there is a whole chunk of words in the conversation column.

Everyone was talking and talking...

Still talking and talking. Things were getting boring...

Ok! Then here it is, Asmond Gant(Singaporean), introduced himself  stating that he is taking Moving Images and his hobbies. Then Trainz Firelight answered him, that he is taking Master of Software Technology. It doesn't sound convincing actually. LOL

Asmond continued asking, "how do you protect yourself from the bad effects of the undesirable aspects of using Second Life"? Trainz answered, "Human Computer Interaction is one of those". So did he understand the question or just trying to be professional in his answer?

So I crapped in when there was no more questions. "I wanna pee sia!" Hahahahahaha.

PEACE YO!

Then everyone started to crowd around here and trying out how to sit down. Some were sitting on some person's lap. Damn funny. Some sitting on the table and even standing on it.

Then it got more and more crowded...

Look closely, you will notice one part of Yunxi's avatar's head has a missing patch of hair! LOL!

Then crowding together, someone mentioned somebody stole his clothes. LOL

Finally, peace and quiet inside the building... Yunxi and me...

3.    What have you gained from this e-learning experience?

I think I have learned to add friends, talk to friends privately. Everyone is very open unlike talking in real life where there's usually a kind of conservation on what we say or do in front or with that friend. So I have discovered that everyone is almost crazy talking to people whom we do not know in the first place and felt close after crapping with one another for a while. It is an experience that is difficult to achieve in real life.

4.    What is the one most challenging experience you had?

I guess it concerns almost everyone who were in Second Life as well. It was to actually organize the avatars and keeping everyone quiet so as to complete our work. It was really difficult to ask serious questions. Everyone including me were talking so freely and chats after chats kept adding into the conversation column. 

Group Work - Second Life

Second Life Features

The second time or the next time the user logs in, the username and password are usually there already. Other than that, Second Life allows user to choose whether to go to “home” or “last location”. Usually, “last location is the place where you visited and from there, the user logged out. Second Life takes some time to load the avatar.

(Meet People)

In the game, you might even meet people from other countries.

(Explore the World of Second Life)

Once the user is in Second Life, it is possible to choose to go other places using the “World Map” Just type in the name of the place, then, a list of those places with the common word will appear. Just double click it and your avatar will be teleported automatically to that place. It is pretty fast and effective travelling around Second Life, unlike travelling around physically in real life, which is the difference.

(Profile and Inventory)

On Second Life, the user can update the avatar and user’s own profile. On the top left corner of the screenshot, the human figure above is the Second Life’s character. On the second row is the user’s actually profile. So you can upload your own image, talk about yourself and stuffs like that. Other users in Second Life will be able to see by clicking on your avatar and read more about you. It is good to be mindful of what you show the others.

The column on the right is the avatar’s inventory. It includes, Animations (Videos), Body Parts (Face, Arm, Legs, Eyes, Lips, Ears, Etc), Calling cards, Clothing (Top, Pants, Shoes, Etc), Current Outfit, Favourites (Places in Second Life and such), Gestures (Bow, Laugh, Etc), Landmarks, Lost and Found, My Outfits, Note cards, Objects, Photo Album, Scripts, Sounds, Textures, Trash, and many. On the “Recent” tab, it will show the most recent selection the user had done, which helps to trace the past easily.

(Home and People)

The column on the left is featuring “Home” of Second Life. It allows users to invite friends, provide the latest places available in Second Life, provides a faster link to find people in the World Map, a quicker way to edit avatar’s appearance, getting to avatar’s own private place, Manage accounts and real estates, provides a quick start guide for users and also teaching users about Second Life. Second Life has a very resourceful guide and information for users.

The column on the right talks about the People in Second Life. The first tab, “Nearby”, will display a list of people that are currently at the same place as you are. The second tab, “My Friends”, will show a list of people who are your friends, whether they are online or not. Thirdly, “My Group”, will show the list of group members that are online, etc. Lastly, “Recent” tab will display people whom you have talked to, may it be your friends or strangers.

(Places, About Land and Region/State)

Places, which is on the left side of the screenshot, talks about, My Landmarks and Teleport History. My Landmarks is basically the places that the user select as “favourite” and other than that, there is this “library” which I believe all the users have it. They are the places which all avatars will visit when they first entered Second Life. The places are, Orientation Island Public, Help Island Public and Welcome Area on Mainland.

About Land, the column in the center, talks about the full name of the place, description of the place, Type of place, Rating, Owner, Group, whether the land is for sale, when it was claimed, size of the place in square meter, traffic of the number of visitors. Other than that, there are also other tabs which are Covenant, Objects, Options, Media, Sound and Access.

The column on the right talks about the Region/Estate. There is the name of the location, type of Second Life version, Debug, Ground Textures which is the materials that were used to create the environment and Terrain.

 (Incomplete Creation)

So once in a while, when you visit places randomly, you might just end up in locations where the place is not fully developed, sometimes, abandoned. What you see above is one of an example. My avatar fell into this place where there was nothing much to do, the entire area was in red. So one of the feature that I used in Second Life was the “Mini-Map”. It is different from “World Map” which is larger, the “Mini-Map” only shows you the place that your avatar is located.

(Mini-Map)

About this Mini-Map, it was useful for me as I can find other avatars that are found at the same place as I am. Look closely and you will see small green dots. The green dots are the avatars on the map similar to mine. By moving the cursor over the small green dots, the name of the avatar would appear. It will be useful if you want to find your friends, especially when the map is pretty big. By doing so, it saves time and hassle to walk around the entire place searching for friends. With this Mini-Map, just locate them and walk towards them accordingly.

  

(Stripping the Avatar!)

Sadly, it still wears the under shirt and underpants. Anyway, that was not the main point. In Second Life, it is very easy to take off all the clothes from the avatar at the same time. Unlike real-life, we need to actually take off step-by-step. So since the avatar can take off all at a go so easily, it is also less time consuming putting clothes on it.

(Change Shape Part 1)

This was super fun. I seriously felt like a sadist doing this. So by right-clicking the avatar, select “change shape”, a column of face, eyes, ears, torsos, legs, etc, will appear. So just play with it like how I did. I made a super fat and short avatar. It was really fun! Once you are done with the editing of the avatar’s shape, just “save as”, located at the bottom of the column, the shape will be saved in your library. If you just click the “save” at the top of the column, you will not be able to find the shape you did if you changed it another time.

  

 (Change Shape Part 2)

So I guess you can tell that I did something like E.T.? The boobs look rather big but I cannot change the size of it, so bear with it.

(Changing Face)

Rather than changing the shape of the body, Second Life also allows changing the appearance of the face. For instance, the size of the head, length of chin, size of eyes, nose, ears and lip, the intensity of the make-up, eye colour and many more.

  

(My Inventory)

Moving on to Inventory, notice that I do not have any hair or bangles at all. So go to the inventory, search for the items. Select it and then select “wear” which is on the bottom right corner of the screen.

The avatar will then be wearing what you have chosen. Look closely and you will see the black hair and 4 bangles.

Wiki Collaboration

The process of editing was slow. It has to change to suit the format and I cannot edit using Google Chrome. Therefore, I used Internet Explorer to do so. So this is the page where I am supposed to edit, give value to my topic, "Discuss the effects of volcano eruption on society".

My first contribution...

Second contribution...

Third contribution...

 

History of my profile or this topic. I am not sure actually...

EIR Games Reflection

Ethics - My score was 30%! I fail!

Crossword. It stated, "Correct! Well done". But my score was only 18%

Another crossword that I attempted doing. At least better than the previous, I scored 41%. However, I still fail...

Evaluation - Matching exercise! Guess what! I've got 90%! Yeah!

Practical 6 Quiz, my score was 100%! Well, I guess its because there's only 5 questions and multiple choice?

Practical 8 Quiz. Score was 80%. Well, good enough...

Practical 9 Quiz. Yeah man! Got 100% for this.

Well, to conclude everything, I find these games fun to play with. I actually attempted playing a few days before the first class test starts. No doubt explains why I scored so badly in the beginning. I was browsing through the Course Document and came upon the games. It did not take up a lot of my time. Simple and short questions. However, you do see some progress in the later quiz that I have done. I guess I did learn something from my mistakes and was able to do correctly for the next few questions.

- Peace -

Blog Reflection - Practical 8&9 (Activity 3&4)

Palm COve - Queensland

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-reef-tours.php

http://www.palmcove.net/images/fullsize/p-gen-beach-07.jpg

http://www.palmcove.net/images/fullsize/p-gen-beach-12.jpg

http://www.palmcove.net/images/fullsize/p-gen-beach-south-02.jpg

http://www.palmcove.net/images/fullsize/p-gen-jetty-03.jpg

http://www.roamfree.com/SharedImages/ACCOM_PROVIDERS/146237/Novotel%20Sunset%20Pool_web_L.jpg

b.    Which evaluation criteria did you used to evaluate the multimedia websites for your dream holiday? Why?

Currency – How frequent do they update the tours, prices for accommodation

Presentation and Arrangement – How they place their tours, accommodation, purchasing, etc on the page, so that everything is well presented, clear and concise.

Accessibility – Though this is a beach at Queensland, it can be accessed by me who is in Singapore.

Usability – A very friend and easy to navigate website. All the things that one wants to know is located on the left column. On the right is the images and text. At the top of each page, there is always their main “Palm Cove” picture.

c.     Why did you choose to go to your Dream Holiday destination?

I love the sun, the beach, the sea and I love to be close to nature that is why I chose to go to beaches for my holiday. Away from the hectic city and environment, to a place where there is nice scenery and sea breeze to enjoy and relax.

http://www.google.com.sg/search?hl=en&expIds=17259,18167,27404,27601&xhr=t&q=Palm+Cove+And+Beaches&cp=21&um=1&biw=1278&bih=739&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iw

Palm Cove Homepage

http://www.palmcove.net/index.php

On this official website for Palm Cove, Queensland, it gives me a very nice impression. Attractive images with short and sweet headings that talk about the activities which Palm Cove has. On the homepage, there are some features such as their contact, Google translation, Palm Cove Accommodation, Tours, Weddings, Region Guide, most importantly, the introduction of Palm Cove which covers almost half of the webpage.

Contact Us

http://www.palmcove.net/contact-us.php

I will now talk about each of the features which Palm Cove website provides. As mentioned above, I will start off with “Contact Us”. In “Contact Us”, we have to provide our own information such as preference of being contacted by phone or email, Name, Email address, Phone number, State, Country and lastly, there is a comments or special requirements box at the bottom.

Google Translation

Moving on to Google Translation, this is way too awesome! It really helps people from all languages to understand what this website is about. Less talk, more evidence.

Italian

Indonesian

Chinese

Palm Cove Accommodation

Under accommodation there are 4 sub categories, Palm Cove Accommodation, Palm Cove Resorts, Palm Cove Apartments and Palm Cove Holiday Homes.

Palm Cove Accommodation

Cairns Accommodation in Palm Cove ranges from 5-star resorts and a 5-star private island retreat to condominiums and holiday villas. The choice is yours to stay in a fully self contained apartment, in one of Palm Cove 's resorts, with facilities ranging from a golf course, fully equipped gymnasium, restaurants etc, or in your own private holiday villa with all facilities. All mainland Palm Cove accommodation is directly on the beautiful beach or just a short stroll away.

The image below shows a list of different costs of each itinerary base on the day of the week. There is also ratings by public and if the ticket is sold, it will be stated in bold red. What I like about this is that they are very frank with the pricing and once tickets were sold out, they will update the page and notify the public. By updating, it shows a certain consistency and currency.

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-accommodation.php

Palm Cove Resorts

The unspoiled tropical beaches of Cairns form part of the beautiful northern coastline of Australia.

Cairns itself has no beach but fortunately, just to the north there are several but none is so precious, so pretty, so casual yet sophisticated as Palm Cove, a magical destination offering a unique mix of casual ambiance and world-class facilities.

If you are looking for gymnasium, restaurants in front of your accommodation, child facilities, one of the high class Palm Cove resorts might be your choice. All resorts and accommodation places in Palm Cove have their own tour desk where you can book your trip to the Cairns Great Barrier Reef, Rainforest, Cairns Highlands or any of the many attractions nearby Palm Cove.

What I like about this is that public can choose what kind of resorts they want to stay in, all the resorts provided have different surroundings. It is special each resort architecture is different from the rest.

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-resorts.php

Other than that, once you have chosen the one you would like, you can select More Info or Check Availability, which I realised both are the same. Anyway, once clicking on it, you will be posted to a page where there is a list of rooms which you can choose from. May it be 1 bedroom apartment, 1 Bedroom Rooftop, Studio Spa Room, Etc. There are prices stated for each room and different days have different pricing.

http://www.roamfree.com/book/sea-temple-resort-spa-palm-cove-115327/27499/

Palm Cove Apartments

Palm Cove has a wide range of styles of self contained holiday apartments suited to all types of holiday travellers. From the luxurious high end apartment within a five star resort where you can choose to self cater or opt in for some 24 hour room service or just relax in the in-house restaurants, to the mid range three and a half star apartment complexes which may not supply room service but offer well positioned comfortable apartments with scenic views across lush green landscaping or the Palm Cove beachfront.

The budget conscious holiday maker looking to self cater whilst enjoying the beautiful surrounds of the Palm Cove beachfront esplanade and all it has to offer is also well looked after in Palm Cove with self contained apartments tucked in behind the beachfront esplanade offering all the comforts of home without the big resort prices.

Some of the apartment style resorts in Palm Cove offer in-house gymnasiums, tennis courts, a selection of swimming pools, babysitting services, in-house restaurants, and luxurious spa facilities.

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-apartments.php

Palm Cove Holiiday

The unspoiled tropical beaches of Cairns form part of the beautiful northern coastline of Australia.

Cairns itself has no beach but fortunately, just to the north there are several but none is so precious, so pretty, so casual yet sophisticated as Palm Cove, a magical destination offering a unique mix of casual ambiance and world-class facilities.

Imagine that instead of staying in a cramped Hotel or Resort room you could stay in a spacious luxuriously furnished holiday house or villa offering you the ultimate in privacy and facilities.

Most of the holiday houses and villas below have their own private swimming pool, BBQ facilities, kitchen and private tropical backyard. If you are looking for secluded privacy, this might be your choice.

Do as much or as little as you like and if you want to be under the crowd, enjoy your dinner or drinks in the afternoon and evening in one of the Palm Cove restaurants and bars which are only a few foot steps away from your accommodation.

All of the vacation houses and villas below are perfectly designed to celebrate your wedding in Palm Cove, or if you had your wedding ceremony already, your honeymoon will be unforgettable.

Why not bring your family and guests along and stay all under one roof (of course only if your mother in law is nice to you).

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-holiday-homes.php

Palm Cove Tours

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-tours.php

Palm Cove Tour

There is a wide range of Cairns Tours and activities waiting for you in Palm Cove and the surrounding area.

A few examples are diving, snorkelling, skydiving, rafting, bushwalking, horse riding, and scenic flights with a helicopter, sailing, fishing, jet skiing, bungee jumping or go on a safari to check out the area.

A trip on Skyrail Rainforest Cableway is something you will never forget.

Palm Cove Reef Tour

For all the different attractions, it will talk about it, state the price and show an image or video. I find it very useful as it really attracts me.

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-reef-tours.php

Palm Cove Rainforest Tours

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-rainforest-tours.php

 Palm Cove Adrenaline Tours

For these tours, it does require people that are strong hearted, as there are activities like Bungee Jump, Skydive and Sitting in Hot Air Balloon.

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-adrenaline-tours.php

Kuranda Tours

These are very relaxing and peaceful tours.

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-kuranda-tours.php

Half Day Tours

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-half-day-tours.php

Cairns Diving Tours

Suddenly, by clicking on this link, it brings you to almost a new webpage, which I was shocked when this appeared.

http://cairnsdiveadventures.com/

Palm Cove Weddings

On this page, it is very helpful for couples who are getting married. They provide wedding links and their contacts, which can facilitate couples in photo shoot, sightseeing, etc. I think I would want my wedding photo shoot to be at this place. I really love the beach!

http://www.palmcove.net/palm-cove-weddings.php