Finally Final

With the peer review process, I would say that I learned a few key tidbits that I wanted to change.  Unfortunately until I reviewed them again for this blog post, I overlooked the one comment on word choice, which means the wrong word is in our final.  However, the good feedback came in the form of the tempo and manual manueverability of the slides.  The suggestion to slow the pace really helped once we added new slides with a lot more information to read.  The other really valuable suggestion was the addition of an information about Genesis slide.  It seems we had overlooked that which is something that was our original intent to inform.  As far as the rest of the projects go, I think we are all very similar.  Some seem to have a little more interactivity than ours, but we kind of had an advertisement in mind for ours.  All in all though I feel solid about the work and grateful for the suggestions to help us polish the slides.

A Reflected Final Project

I'm not too sure how the final project is shaping up for us.  I think it mostly meets my expectations.  I have done PowerPoints in the past, and they are almost always a bare bones experience since I am technologically challenged most days.  So in that respect Allyson did a good job making it do things other than "next slide"  which is my forte.  As far as the content goes, I think it works for our purpose.  I was hoping we'd get an "Aha!  This is awesome!" reaction from our audience in regards to submitting, but I don't know if that will happen or not.  I think if it just gets people thinking about Genesis once then we did our job to help promote it.

A Voice Emerging

Well, I guess for me a digital voice or personality is not something I had spent a lot of time on in the past.  I know that my academic voice is distinct, and I would never be able to pass off other work as my own.  However, my E-voice still feels a little bland to me.  I consider myself a clever person, but I have troubles bringing that into my E-voice.  Even my SL avatar was a straight to the point experience where a lot of me could not come through.  I have been trying with the blogs to dial down the formality, but it doesn't work as well.  I'm not really sure how to fix this other than keep blogging and keep trying.  The blogging has been my favorite section of the use of voice, and I think the one thing I would be most likely to continue with.

My Group Voice

I actually think that my voice is well represented in our project.  I was able to craft and submit my own original work as part of my student involvement section.  Then I was able to use a lot of whatever tiny little nugget of creativity I have in me as I editied and compiled both the draft and the final portion of our presentation.  I think that for the most part our group was all able to insert a bit of their personality into the project.  Each of us either created original thoughts to contibute or helped design the slides to their own liking. 

Interactive Gameplay

I am well versed with games that change based on the decisions you use.  I can think of Mass Effect, Oblivion, and the Final Fantasy series to name a few of the better ones.  These have so many different choices, like the type of character you use, what sorts of skills you develop, and my favorite choice, if you're good or evil.  I tend to almost always gravitate to good for some reason, must be the Army streak in me.  The best of all of those is Mass Effect though.  They were able to create a unique situation where you can develop your character and take him with you through all three games they released over the years.  This has been revolutionary for the industry, and I'm sure will start to be the standard soon.  Even the MLB game that Playstation has is adopting this for their franchise player mode, where you will be able to use him on both the Playstation and their portable gaming system.

Secretly Shopped

Recently we found out the company we work for was starting to employ secret shoppers to grade our performances.  How did we find out you ask?  I got shopped that's how. Of course it was during our busiest time, the lobster fest we had for Lent, and I assume I was fairly busy.  I know that I was because I did not do our patented steak tray presentation, or offer to joint the platinum club.  However, despite my fails on that part, I was graded highly for my service and pleasant demeanor.  I was actually worried about missing those two points, but I was given some high praise by the management team during our server meeting on Saturday, so I will take that as a win!

Communicating Groupily

Group communication has been rough for us, as I was afraid it would be.  For our group, we are all commuter students who are busy outside of class as well.  The original idea I had was to go ahead and have a face to face meeting.  What we discovered was that we were all way too busy for that.  This also impeded the idea of having a live chat.  So like many 21st century scholars we resorted to Facebook.  This worked as our best tool since they all go to our phones and usually it's set up as a homepage for a lot of people.  It worked much better than the sporadic communication we had with Oncourse.  We were even able to share the PowerPoint on Facebook, when Oncourse had trouble uploading it.

Project Two Team Three

What I liked in the case of our group was the offset the other two members have to my complete lack of creativity.  I tend to lack in both artistic creation, and web based creation or manipulation.  It seems that Allyson will be able to handle some web based design and creation while Carrington will be able to bring some artistic creativity.   This will be nice since my main strengths will be research and maybe some witty writing on occasion.  It looks like we are basically a well rounded team here.  I especially was worried about the creating a multimedia part since I can't do it.  I think the weaknesses we had together will not be an issue now that our group is filled out.

Peer Review

I have in the past used peer review for other papers and other classes.  What I like about this form of editing is the feedback you gain from people who very well could be the audience you are writing for. The challenge this tool faces is the tendency people have to be nice and not say too much negative feedback.  While negativity is not always constructive, the feedback pinpointing your weaknesses in a paper can be.  With our process we had some good leading questions to follow when reviewing others works.  this helped me realize that I had forgotten to post about my name, and needed to explain why people may choose to use Second Life even though I do not.  If there was one other way the exercise could have benefited us, perhaps it would have been by asking each person where they see their Second Life this time next year.  This would lead to an interesting dialogue, and give us some good insight as to why or why not people might choose to experience this world.  When reading the work of my peers it was nice to see why other people may enjoy it.  Since I did not, I liked seeing the views of those who did.

Media Writing

I have had a limited amount of writing for media in my life.  Most experience I had was in high school when I took a web page designing class.  Those sites were all very basic and were never really accessible on the internet for public viewing.  Some of my other experience comes from writing for classes which is mostly limited to things like power points for speeches or other informative projects.  What my strengths do for me as a writer of any media is an ability to relate to and write for my audience.  I can see that this ability will help me no matter what I am writing.  The big challenge my strength will face is my tendency to be wordy.  If I were writing captions or short script this could be a tough issue for me to overcome.  All in all I know that I will more than usual have to consider my audience when writing.  This will dictate my voice and at times the length of my prose.

Infinitely Writing

I find Riordan's quote very interesting when you think about it as a writer.  I personally have hardly any talent for writing web script, but I do admire the people that make my favorite sites go.  With that being said, I am sure this quote speaks to their everyday struggle to relate to people like me that need simpler interactions to use a website.  If they could write a site for just creators, I am sure that I would be hopelessly lost.  This need to consider and relate to your audience is the core to every successful writers toolbox.  If you are writing for high school students, yet only use words you learned in grad school, then you run the risk of losing your directed audience.  The flip side to that coin is to not dumb yourself down too far so that you pander to your audience and they don't feel like it's worth the time to read.  Which is another problem we see as writers now.  Time is getting more and more precious due to the number of options people have to dominate their intelligence.  It's easy to lose someone to an iPhone if you can't properly engage your reader.  Even though we have an infinite choice does not mean people are infinitely listening.  Engage your reader with the choices you make and write for their attention.

Second Life

What is there to say about my Second Life experience?  I was at first hesitant to try it because I never wanted to get involved in an experience like this one.  I am already busy enough, and I don't really want a virtual life keeping me from experiencing things in my own life.  That being said, I did my best to dive in and find out what it was all about.  My first thought was how poorly the world operated on my computer.  I have a laptop, and I think a desktop with some power would be needed to run this world properly.  I was also struck by how basic the world looked.  I do occasionally play Xbox, and am used to much better graphics.  I did my best to navigate the worlds and talk to people, however I found it difficult to relate.  For the most part I accomplished my tasks for the class and got off of the world.  I can understand why some people might choose to use this in their lives.  People need enjoyment, and whatever safe thing that brings them that is okay with me.  I personally enjoy motorcycling, sports, music, and the gym.  I did have one moment I enjoyed, and that was jumping the Jeep I was test driving over a hill.  I was also able to drive it under water and I thought that was a funny experience.  Other than that though I can honestly say I hope that I never have to experience Second Life again.  I will forever and always prefer real life human interaction. 

Why find an E-Voice?

To be frankly honest, the biggest reason I took this class was the fact that it fit my schedule.  I seemed to be only able to fit a very select amount of classes into my limited time, and this was the winner.  However, I did hope that it would be something I could apply to my chosen profession for the rest of my life.  As the world changes it becomes clear that more and more students will be doing stuff online in addition to in class work.  Eventually I would guess that tablets will be the norm in classrooms.  I hope that I will take away some new and challenging ways that I can integrate online interaction with my students.  My strengths for this class will actually be somewhat limited.  I am constantly finding new tools and learning or sharing devices online that I know nothing about.  The internet keeps evolving and I have not been able to keep up.  Fortunately I am a quick learner and should be able to adapt as long as I can keep abreast of the newest technology.