Exploring There.com Environment

 

I spent a wonderful time exploring There.com environment. This virtual world are so attractive and that anyone who gets involved spends hours in front of the computer exploring There.com places .Let me first answer this question what does There.com offer as virtual world environment? ….. There.com is offering a good way for groups of people to exchange information, interact with other users. In There.com, Online community can share experience and information via chatting. Therefore, users can chat with others. It allows users to meet friends, hang out, and join groups of people who are interesting in the same subject. The good things with There.com are that you can create many things, such as furniture, clothing, and transportation; after paying little money to create your virtual things. It is very interesting that users can use such tools to create their objects and then they can just upload them. This is a useful way to deal with tools to be creative users. You may create these things for fun or selling this based on why you are creating your items for fun or selling!!

For educators who have sought to use There.com for education purpose, I have found that teacher and students can meet together in any public place or rent place. With using synchronous tools such as chat, teacher can start to discuss any subject with students. And the students can type their response which can fizz above the head of participants, so that each of them can refer back to teacher’s discussion. Also, educators can also build online community which can be design in There.com. This community can work together under its mission of any fields.  

Discussion about World of Warcraft

It was the first time I played World of Warcraft, it was fun to play with 3D environment. These games are so fascinating and addictive that any one who gets involved spends hours in front of the computer devising strategies to break a formation and so on. There is no formal learning imparted for these games though the player can definitely access the help box to maneuver. Many of these games are learnt only by trial and error and hence there is no school which teaches you how to play. The cognitive aspect of these games is on the very high side as self understanding makes a player successful. The tutorial suggests that such games do impart lot of cognitive skills to the players and bring out abilities in them.

Learning can be facilitated in the form of easy to difficult strategies, understanding and exploring unknown paths and trying to drop new ideas .this may lead to failures initially and strategies may be overcome but persistent tries would definitely prove successful. The plans and topography studies used here if learner would make study of geography easy and the same concepts are taught in school.

Learning could be impeded here by lack of downloading this game which is kind of difficult that encounters users and players. The paradigm of learning that best suits this system would be the assimilation of cooperative and consistent team work. This learning emphasizes that self learning and team work are the best ways to achieve progress. Individual outcomes are no doubt stressed but the group efforts and team work in building up a module of action is definitely more rewarding that individual efforts. In WoW the fact finding is self tutored. This is a very important concept of learning. This is called the self assessment where one has to create his own skill sets. This is best taught through the WoW.

There is no planned curriculum and every action is event driven. The better aspect of the game has to be self intended and through moral science books. Code of player conduct, ethical play and the others values have to self generated so values automatically get imbibed. There is a code of conduct for every game. This in practice is the study of values. The societal values in the form of code of conduct are imbibed and social conversations are intellectually designed so as to further progress. if a person needs to get interested in learning the best way would be to introduce him to the WoW .He would be prompted to make his own game with help from others and then would get along to designing his own structure and path of the characters. This would help him in making his own area if interest and his game would show case his natural capabilities. But the questions are still rise in my mind, how we can create a suitable formal learning in this 3D environment?  Do you see the gap between designer of this game and educator in order to design World of Warcraft to be formal learning?

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Learning

I have done a lot of reading in the subject of synchronous communication and asynchronous communication learning, and i have found that without this two modes of communication, learning cannot happen in online learning environment.  Using this two modes in online learning environment can demonstrate that learners can interact with instructor, content, and other learner. Also I think that these two modes of communication can promote interactive learning. In terms of collaborative learning style, synchronous communication and asynchronous communication can be used as tools to facilitate learning between students, instructors, and content. For instance, students and instructors can use synchronous communication in real-time chat, so those instructors can singh some project for students to work as a group work. However, students can work with asynchronous communication in discussion board as group work in order to discuss their project. Robert’s articles have stated that using asynchronous communication learning can make learning vary collaborative. Also, in the article that i have posted, Black (2005)have stated that asynchronous discussion board provides the interaction between students amongst students, and with instructor, in different time. This communication makes students to be social with learning environment, students can share their experiences with other students; therefore, they can construct their knowledge. Students socially can interact with learning environment by using synchronous communication and asynchronous communication learning which can be seen in different learning online systems such as WebCT, Blackboard, Moodle, and so on.

 Black, A. (2005). The use of asynchronous discussion: Creating a text of talk. Contemporary Issuesin Technology and Teacher Education, 5(1), 5-24.