Reflection Notes

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Workshop 3:

Virtual Worlds for Virtual Communities

Outcomes

 

Issues Discuss

Issues that were brought up by the presentation group of Workshop 3 are stated below:-

• Definition of Virtual Worlds

• Virtual World vs. Virtual Reality

• History

• Avatars

• Characteristics of Virtual Worlds

• Different Applications of Virtual Worlds

• Advantages and Disadvantages

 

What was Learnt

The presenter of the presentation, Michael Yeldayo, started off the presentation with the definitions of virtual worlds. He defined virtual worlds by acknowledging us that it is a place where imaginary meets the real with a few pictures supporting the fact. However, I do not quite understand what the pictures are trying to say, as I think the picture are quite vague to me, maybe this is because I am sure quite sure what is Aerosmith Virtual Worlds and the Blair Witch Virtual Worlds.

 

Next, we went to the differences between Virtual Worlds and Virtual Reality. The explanation given between the 2 did gave us a bit of confusion, and I do not quite agree with their explanation as I believe that both Virtual Worlds and Virtual Reality involves human interaction with the machine. How would Virtual World occur without human interaction with machine??? People using computer to communicate online is still a human interaction with machine as I personally believe that all virtual related things needs to be done with both human and machine working together.

 

History of Virtual Worlds was discussed next, and I learnt that the virtual worlds evolved from the 1969 -player version of MIT’s Space War. The first virtual reality environment using avatars begins in 1985, and 10 years later, Worlds Chat becomes the first avatars environment on the Internet. Ever since this appear, you would be amaze how rapidly Virtual Worlds have been growing.

 

Finally, we discussed Avatars as there were a couple of students who are quite anxious at asking questions about avatars earlier in the presentation. As defined by the presenters, avatars is a 3D construct representing our point of being in relation to the rest of the virtual world. Avatars could be represented by anything that the user wish to be, it need not have to be a human like form, it could be a dog or even a car. And later on, the presenters amended their definition of the avatars as avatars does not have to be in a 3d construct, but a 2D construct too.

 

The characteristic of the Virtual Worlds was not really discussed in the presentation by the presenters, maybe everyone was too excited over the avatars, as a result, this topic was roughly browsed through.

 

Next, different application of the virtual worlds are discussed, which covers business, gaming, education, and chatting fields. The presenters told us that avatars conferencing software could be use in business purposes, which is not really agreed by most of the class. As most people does not really agree with the fact that people would need to hide themselves while doing a business another person. And, hiding the identity does not give business people the confident of having a business transaction between each other.

 

The next topic was on the gaming application of virtual worlds which excites nearly everyone in the class, except me and a couple of 'non-game players'. Most of the games that the class mentioned is not in my 'Things I Know' list. This gave me a some hard time in cooping with what the class is really talking about.

 

The education and chatting application was discussed next. Our lecturer, Valerie, asked us to choose between face-to-face and online lecture, which most of the class chose face-to-face as most people said that online lecture has too much distraction and more self-motivation is needed. Others who like online lecture is for the flexibility and convenience that they could have. And, the chatting application which was discussed could be in either text or graphic based depends on the software used.

 

Lastly, the advantages and disadvantages of the virtual worlds is discussed. Virtual worlds allow greater innovation and communication without physical appearance. While different time zone and low bandwidth made virtual worlds difficult to achieved at times.

 

Evaluation

 

This presentation was conducted 20 minutes late, as the presenters wanted to wait for more students to get in the virtual classroom. Being the third online presentation in this subject, the whole class is getting the hang of the online presentation. The presentation group is getting more organized and the class is behaving more appropriately while the group is presenting. This is a pretty good sign for the presenters and the lecturer for the subject to achieve.

 

The preparations and moderations of the presenters were fairly good, and there is still room for improvement as some of the points and explanation is not so convincing yet. Overall, the presenters had done a pretty good job. The unforeseen circumstances that happened in the presentation was some of the animations that the groups wanted to show for illustration was not working after being uploaded to the website. Well, that minor problem would not affect much of the student's understanding of presentation, as most student seems to be pretty familiar with the game that was used for illustration.

 

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