Merely Mere

If only we could all escape to the perfect planet full of super intelligent people and everything you’d want from a planet. Not. I thought it was interesting how this story grabbed the readers attention by describing how people don’t come back from Kimon once they have arrived there. And how salaries are a hundred times better on Kimon rather than Earth. Even down to a breeze on Kimon smelling like perfume. This ideal planet has everything a person could want, like how the Bishop images the building like the Ritz. But, what I found interesting was the selective nature of who is allowed on Kimon. In order to be accepted, a specific IQ is required. This means that only the top percentile of the Earth’s population is invited to live on this super planet. This automatically makes Kimonian’s better than Earthlings. This reminded me of Anthropology when we talk about Colonialism and how certain societies feel like they are better than others. Anthropologists avoid skewing their data when they observe other societies but being unbiased outside resources. The Kimonians took an approach much like the colonial mentality, where they are better than everyone else.

Another part of this “Immigrant” story that caught my attention was the discussion of letters. I though that this was remarkable how it described the process on how letters are transported from Kimon to Earth. The tube landing on the desk of the mail clerk, just after he or she has finished a day of work. This reminded me of Santa Claus. Sounds like a great idea to have a fat man roll down a chimney to give presents to little kids just after they fall asleep. But seriously? I just thought that this was something more related to class….how letter writing became a form of new technology in its ability to travel from one planet to the next. Certainly we have discussed how e-mail and computers have changed the old fashioned pen & paper letter….but planet traveling tubes take it to a whole new level.

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On a completely unrelated topic, I wanted to discuss my final project a little bit. Yesterday and today I started liking a stop-motion film….just to see if I could do it before I began the real thing. Sure enough I made a few seconds clip of a dancing piece of clay. I’ve got some really good ideas on how I will bring the real-life Webkinz stuffed animal to life and compare it to the computer animated Webkinz on the computer. I’m hoping that the result will be a youtube video that ties ideas of the real world and the virtual world together. Now that I have the ideas in the works…I think its time to start to bring them to life.

Illich made a lot of interesting comments in “Deschooling Society”.  I primarily liked his discussion about the problems with schools these day.  I agree that people learn practical knowledge and knowledge essentials just by going through everyday life.  I feel like the most difficult part about schooling is how you are forced to conform to a structure.  For example, tests that require you to spit back the information just as the teacher has taught them to you.  This prevents students from grasping the information and relating them to other things or new ideas.  I really liked Illich’s line: “we can depend on self-motivated learning instead of employing teachers to bribe or compel a student to find the time and the will to learn.”  I think that it is true that when people become interested in the material that they are learning they have more motivation.  We were actually discussing this concept in my business class today. We were talking about theories and techniques that managers use in companies to get their workers to do what they want.  In class we were discussing how one company we studied gave workers stock options after they worked for one year.  According to my teacher, this was a bribe given by the owner.  According to some of my classmates, having a say in the company helped to further motivate the workers.  Wherever people find their motivation, it is imporant that they find it…whether its in the classroom or at the work place.

I’ve thought a lot about our class discussion on work and play.  And after reading Two Tramps in Mud Time I came up with another thought.  While the enjoyment that comes from play is its suspension from the reality of the world that surrounds you and the sense of accomplishing someonething, it can also be a task that can bounce in and out from being work or play.  If you play something long enough it can become work.  If you work for a short period of time it can feel like play.  The fine line between work and play is so fine that you can find yourself bouncing between something that is fun and something that is a required task.

So, today I saw the movie for Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who with my roommates little sister (the one that started this Webkins madness).  Now it might be the fact that I’ve always loved this book or that I just saw the movie for the first time…but I couldn’t help but think about it while doing the Viola reading.  His discussion on how things are precieved, particularally with peoples existence.  My favorite part about the Dr. Seuss book is how Horton realizes this whole new microscopic world, Whoville.  Most people just believe in their own world, like Horton and his other jungle friends.  But once he hears the tiny sound from Whoville on a speck, he realizes that what seems insagnificant to him is the entire world for someone else.  Somewhere in Viola’s discussion about life as parts and being able to edit it, I thought about Horton trying to help protect this tiny speck from harm.  In his own way, Horton is editting the lives of the citizens of Whoville and suddenly creating an “individual existence that is continuous”, much like Viola stated in his first sentence.  I feel like in both the movie I saw this afternoon and the reading I got a sense of thinking about our existence in relation to others.  Somehow I find it comforting to think about.

Another fun connection that I made while reading Violas article was with the concept in holism.  The article describes holism and how we think of computer technologies in terms of a whole, as suppose to the individual structures that make them up.  In terms of cultural anthropology (as I’ve learned in my Anthropology class) holism is based on the concept of observing the pieces of a culture and putting the pieces together to drive observations about the entire culture.  Hearing someone describe holism in relation to computers is quite strange after talking about entire cultures.  It sort of makes people and cultures seem like computer systems.  It strange how we use the same word to describe such a vast range of concepts.

I’m posting this now since the internet in my room has decided to stop working….

After class, I was remembering things that we had discussed about McCloud’s comic. I liked how McCloud appeared directly in the comic and was talking to us. I felt like he was more personal by addressing us rather than just ignoring us. However, I feel like this made McCloud feel like a character. He is only comparable to authors that speak directly to the readers. While other authors might display a similar message regarding frames, I felt like McCould was most successful by physically putting a frame in the picture and describing it….instead of other authors who verbally just describe the computer frame. The computer frame is a hard concept because we are blocked from seeing it. We have aspects of our computers that are more relatable to other things that make the screen more relatable. For example, we have our desktop with a start or tool menu. This helps to not only direct us to other parts of the computer, but reminds us of a control panel like a television changer remote control. This whole desktop flattens everything to one image in a non-3D way that makes it hard to see the potential of the computer screen.

Compared to McCloud’s comic, article for today was not as enjoyable but still was interesting . In the article, I particularly liked how it referred to films and relates it to experiences on the computer. I also liked the section related to suspending yourself from reality through the computer. It might be because I have never played games like World of Warcraft, but I felt like this article gave me insight on why people play such games.

So, I got one of those twitter things.  I figured I’d put it up here in case anyone else in the class wanted to be my friend on it:

 http://twitter.com/merelanger

As a final project, I have decided to work with Jessica Hedrick and together we will become experts of Webkinz World. The idea to work with these cute little toys that are linked to a huge virtual world sparked when my roommate was constantly playing games online to help her little sister make more “kinzcash”. Curious about what she was doing, suddenly we all found ourselves surrounding her computer and addicted to playing the games. Suddenly I found myself curious about what made this whole virtual world so addicting.

In order to gain access into Webkinz World, you have to first go to your local gift or card shop to get your dream stuffed animal. With the stuffed animal, you get a unique secret code that allows you to gain access from www.webkinz.com. Once in the website you see your stuffed animal “pet” in the virtual world. Your pet has his own room waiting to be furnished, but furnishings just don’t appear, you need money to buy your belongings. There are tons of ways to make money, known as “kinzcash”, in Webkinz World, but the main way is through playing new versions of your favorite Internet games. The over thirty-six available games include versions Solitaire, Mahjong, Snood, Collapse, Snake and Mrs. Pac Man. The further you go in the game, the more money you make and the more stuff you can buy to treat your pet. These aspects are just one of the many reasons that Webkinz are so addicting to the people that play them.

Webkinz World’s addicting nature is related to how it incorporates many different games in a successful way. The physical stuffed animal has created a sensation much like Beanie Baby stuffed animals. But what makes Webkinz more like “Beanie Babies on Steroids” is how it links onto the Internet where you have to take care of your pet, much like the Tamagotchi and Neopets. In addition to taking care of your pet, you also get to furnish its environment and give them jobs and responsibilities much like The Sims. The real catch is how Ganz, the founding company of Webkinz, has incorporated all of these games together in an educational way. The games teach kids about math, spellings and puzzles. Jobs and everyday activities in the virtual world teach children about responsibilities like brushing your teeth, taking baths and sleeping. Webkinz surely include everything that not only children but anybody could enjoy out of a game.

To help explain all of these multiple parts to the Webkinz World, Jessica and I have decided to create a www.youtube.com video following the life of a Webkinz pet and all of the things it can do. This video will flip between screen shots of the virtual world and the physical stuffed animal sitting in one of the rooms we have created online. We are also planning on doing further research from several online newspaper articles talking about the surge Webkinz have created among young children. By becoming experts about the Webkinz World, we hope to present all of our information to the class and help inform them on why this stuffed animal stands out from all the other toys in children’s toy chests.

I really like McCloud’s approach to explaining time and how to express things in comic form.  The set-up like a comic telling a story not only made it entertaining to read, but also helped to clearly describe what he was trying to say.  The picture reinforced his ideas with the humor of the commentary of the other people in the strip.  McCloud made a lot of really good points about things that often go unnoticed while someone is reading a comic.  For example, I never really thought about the impact that a border has on a particular frame in the strip.  Next time I find myself reading a comic, I feel like I will notice these details that I had never observed before.

After class on Tuesday I was thinking about our discussion about how “most teachers don’t expect high performance from students”.  Most of the people in class discussed how much the expectation effects the students’ outcome.  It got me thinking about the author’s choice to use the word “expect” to gage a student’s performance.  I feel like the expectations aren’t relevent to the result of a student.  For example, I feel like people often have expectations that are different than the result….much like when people tell you “don’t judge a book by its cover”.  You can judge and expect one thing that is different from the text inside.  I feel like whatever a teacher expects from a student is not relevant from the performance of that student.  I also agree with a lot of the students in class on how each individual has a different definition of “high performance” which makes it hard to set a standard for an entire class.  The high performance outcome comes after and regardless of a teachers’ expectations and are judged based on many other factors.  This includes the environment that is available for the students to learn in, what is available to the student, how the material is presented and the interest that individual has on learning the material that is presented.

I found the Mindstorms article interesting with its approach to looking at computers specifically for their impact to children & education.  I think Papert has a good point when discusses how children learn how to think with help from the guidance of computers.  I agree when he says that by teaching computers how to think, the children are inadvertently teaching themselves different ways to think.  I believe that this is true, because children today think differently than the generations before them.  This is because of the way that they are brought up but a lot the way that they learn.  There is no question that adults today work quicker and expect things to be done faster than the generations before them.  This is realted to their upbringing and how they learn.  Children today are taught to work with computers and technology at a fast pace.  E-mail instead of writing a letter.  Text message.  AIM.  We teach computers to do things instantly for us, and in return we accept ourselves to work faster.  Monkey see, monkey do.  Or something like that…