Photo Blog post 5

Virtual worlds offer a multitude of opportunities for companies to do marketing for retail or advertising purpose. As we all know, Second Life has a large amount of participants in role playing modes, however, these large numbers of target game players could also be the main target for advertising avatars or customers for different products.

As previous readings have mentioned avatars are divided into two types: human spoke avatar, and non- human spoke avatar. On a trip to Apple`s store, maybe because the time is not appropriate, no-one communicated with me, however, the store looks so real and everything is quite organized.

Entrance of the apple store.

Inside of the store, plenty of apple computers are lined up in the lounge, Job’s photo is also hanging on the wall, and a huge screen hangs on the wall (blank currently).

Photo Blog post 4 some of adventure of different plaza and communicate with other avatar

After my last adventure I was planning to build a classic building - a vacation village. For this purpose, I decided to visit a few quite strong, inspirational, successful, cultural based classical buildings, such as a Japanese Tea House, the Japanese Yamato market plaza, a few Japanese scenic spots, some gothic architecture and Roman buildings. Classical culture has been brought into Second Life in an altered and imaginative view of the past integrated into the present.

Japanese Yamato market plaza snapshot

Also, I chatted with a girl named Misu Tanaka - the only person I could meet at this time in the place.

She showed me how to detach my shopping bag. Unfortunately, she went offline too fast.

Apart from classical buildings, there are also attractive modern cultures within Second Life, such as, a Southern Pacific relaxation island, named Jezebel’s jazz club, with an environment in a Pacific style, as the houses are all built of wood, the island surround by ocean, and people in grass skirts - quite symbolic for specific vacation villages. Also, I have been to the place called Twilight blue Jazz Club and had a look around places like a jazz collection lounge, where Suzy Saxophone is also hanging on the wall, which gave quite a fantasy atmosphere to visitors. 

Also, as my own topic is to advertise a vacation village with a strong and profound cultural background, I have visited a hotel named Seijugumi hotel. The hotel has a classical oriental style, decorated quite beautifully and luxuriously in green and gold.

Above all, from my point of view, Second life`s colorful visual images, avatars’ varieties of appearance, the vivid background music, the facilities, such as building bars, gesture coding, drawing programmes, such as ‘Sketch up’, are all main attractions for new users.

Photo blogging post 3.

In my previous reading I discovered a range of well-known companies advertising in Second life. There are food companies, media companies and digital companies, such as, Coca-Cola, Sony, IBM and Samsung. I decided to have a look at their grounds and store (there are a few snapshots below).

The first snapshot is the free advertising ground named ‘Effective GridWide Advertising’, the website address is FreebiesRezAds.com.

After visiting, I realized this advertising ground is for people who are already dedicated to the software or project, and want to attract new users or visitors to have a try of a new programme.

This builds up a general idea of how my poster board looks like in AUT language ground, as this is as a door opener for me. Afterwards, I received a clipboard ad, which introduced me to an official website http://www.rezads.com/. This site gave users steps to build up a clipboard, showing a few businesses/projects/programs they wish to advertise to visitors. This makes the process of the advertising quite clear and easy for creators/producers, giving the producer more desire to advertise their project.

Brainstorming - autoethnography and relevance to SL

Ellis et al'. (2011) article that I had reviewed prompted me to consider autoethnography as a method and a way to approach the final project.

But first, I'd like to refer to what I've been doing for the first 6 weeks. The task to upload weekly photoblogs reporting about my experience and exploration of SL is an example of an auto ethnographic activity. It involved writing about personal experiences that I encountered whilst exploring this platform and then reflecting on and analysing them with relation to theory/ies. For those who visited various sites (replicas of the places in RL), this experience could also be seen as a simulation of field work or a possibility to do it in SL.

Apart from that, it was a great learning curve for most students. The majority had not used or heard of SL before, so to be able to complete the task we had to learn how to use it, navigate, build objects, change our appearances, etc. I think the usefulness of this experience can contribute to our expectations. For example, having explored SL myself I now know what I could expect from the students that I'd be teaching and the kind of feedback that I can anticipate.

That's what I'm going to do for this project

Obviously, the time is limited and I expect my machinima to be around 2-3 mins. Having watched other students' works, it seems to me that to have a clear outline at the beginning is a good idea. So that's what I'm going to cover in my project.

I'm still in the process of finalising sub-themes (what I'll be talking about in each section) and how I will communicate and present those ideas. I quite like creative approach, so might be spending some time on choosing the right font, some background music or sounds, etc. 

Sunya Week 9

I have worked on the project creating machinima involves the theory of language learning in Second Life.
It will be learning english experience section in comparision to the theories, conclusion and references.

Here is the progression of my project

Sunya: Sunya: Sunya:

Sunya: Sunya: Sunya:: Sunya: Sunya: : Sunya: I visited Virlantis Island last week. Classroom Chating area I went in after class finished. I would like to experien...

Autoethnography

Ellis, Adams and Bochner’s (2011) article provides an extensive overview of autoethnography as one of the qualitative methods in social research. It outlines the history of development of this method, process, end product or an output, potential, issues and criticisms. I thought the article was well written and could be a very useful reference for those who are not familiar with this method.

I can see that autoethnography could be one of few methods that I would be able to apply in L2 acquisition and ESL teaching research. For example, being a language learner and writing about this experience. Or in the case of ESL teaching, this experience would be complemented with teaching and communication with other teachers, their experiences and thoughts, and possibly students’ perspectives as well.

Having read this article, I kept on pondering whether I would utilise this method in my research that tends to address a wide range of issues, such as crises of identity among ethnic minorities and marginalised groups of society, consequential effects of public and social policies, including language policy, etc. If I wanted to do field work somewhere, for example, in northern Iraq and carry out a research on Kurds’ national identity and the way people feel about it being suppressed by the former government of Saddam Hussein, how would I be able to experience what those people had faced? My assumption is that being an ethnic Korean and a Russian citizen, I would be treated in a different way, which will affect (again, my assumption) the findings. Furthermore, the level of education, cultural and religious beliefs, gender, sexual orientation and social class might also affect this experience and treatment. This is just one of many examples of the research that I could be carrying out, but how will it be different to ethnography? And another reason why I would probably not use it is because I simply lack confidence in my writing and ability to write the way other authors do – in a very engaging and artistic way. I might be too self-critical. And perhaps, to be a good writer, one needs to have at least some sort of training, which I never had. All this makes any writing task quite challenging especially if things have to be written in L2 or L3.

However, what I found interesting about autoethnography (and I must acknowledge that I didn’t have a prior knowledge of this method and hadn’t done any reading on it) is that it challenges canonical ways of what research is, the way it should be conducted and how the findings should be reported (Ellis et al., 2011). I remember when I did the Language Learner paper, both assignments were supposed to have a conventional structure that had been prescribed by both lecturers: introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion and conclusion. And I clearly remember how I felt about those prescriptive instructions – quite negative I must say – because it was limiting and I felt I could approach this task in a different way.

Another interesting finding from this article is that unlike other methods, autoethnography acknowledges and accommodates subjectivity, emotionality and the researcher’s influence. It does not hide these matters like other methods tend to do and neither does it try to assume that they do not exist (Ellis et al., 2011). The notions of objectivity, absence of bias, validity and others are often considered as benchmarks of a good research, especially in quantitative and some qualitative works. Autoethnography, as implied by Ellis et al., 2011, challenges what social research is and what to expect from both researchers (how it can be done) and the audience (it can be much wider and also it can be urged to change their attitudes and civic activity).

Although autoethnography may not be suitable in all types of social research (in terms of the topics and issues that one wishes to examine), looking at various methods and assessing their suitability is a positive thing. It allows the researchers and academics look outside the square, which is constituted by scientific paradigms, established views, attitudes and whatnot. It can also help us approach issues in an alternative way and who knows, maybe that’s where the answers are hidden.

Reference:

Ellis, C., Adams, T.E. & Bochner, A.P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum: Qualitative social research. 12(1)

week 9 - wendy

In order to analyse players' identity in the virtual world deeply, I try to have some interactions with them. There is no doubt that a good look will make these things easy. After dressing up, I don't need to find sb to talk, they come to chat up with me. I meet a man in  Atlantis. He is a new resident in SL, so he asks me to help him get familiar with this world. We communicate through texts. From his words, I'm sure he is definitely not a native speaker, which is proved later. I make this speculation based on three points: first he uses complete sentences and the written English, I think second language speakers tend to do that in case making mistakes; second no slangs or  abbreviation; third the speed he types is a little bit slow. After talking for a while, he asks me where I come from, I let him guess. Perhaps because of the English environment in SL, he guesses some English speaking countries, but I all say "no". Then the interesting thing happens, he asks "are you from Philippines?" I think I know where he comes from at that moment, because after the possible answers, people will list the names they are most familiar with when guessing. I'm right again, he is Philippinese. Through this experience, I think speculating one's real identity through his words is very interesting. There must have sth that can't be hidden, even though we are in the virtual world. I plan to invite one of my friends to join SL, and then I will go to talk with him/her, but as a stranger. In this way, I can analyse the differences and connections he/she acts online and offline.