A lot of time has passed since my last post (typically an indicator of how busy I am) but since then I have at least found out something interesting.
You might recall, I was trying to get a wiki created for my class that is starting this next quarter. Well I had some great examples from my profs, friends, and other awesome wikis. So I thought to start there. My advisor uses mediawiki and seems to move quietly through the process of adding information and running his various classes with it. Me I was not so lucky. Perhaps its due to my inability to identify with the way the open source software worked, or just my inability to easily articulate what I wanted where. In any case, mediawiki and I parted ways, and not so peacefully.
After a few weeks of colorful expletives, I decided to choose something that I didn’t need to install. Truth be told, I love to tinker with things, but I needed more production and less tinker to get accomplished than was possible at the time. So, instead through the suggestions of a another professor and his book (shameless plug to follow) "Build a website for free" by Bell – I decided to investigate, Google sites.
Much to my amazement, it is awesome. My site is up and working well (albeit not perfectly as of yet). GS manages to point to my lovely URL, it provided templates, it lowered my stress and it got the material up and online so I could concentrate on other matters.
My kudos goes out to Google yet again. Keep on taking over the world, one byte at time. I will submit and be assimilated, happily.
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Well its not like I been dreading it.. just postponing the inevitable. So yes, I use wikis, and a few of them. I have one at work. I have on for my research. I have one I share with colleagues. I have a few more for some of the smaller workshops I have conducted.
Up until now, simple wikis worked. Ning and PBworks were quite sufficient. After all, even though they were wiki’s the predominant user was, well me.
Now, I have to have a number of people that need to access my wiki -add documents, add comments, create blogs. AND it would be much better if it came with my domain name. I mean after all I am creating it and organizing it. Something like joyworks.pbworks.com sorta looses its zing. Instead, how about courses.joyrobinson.com/nm503 or the like. Now that sounds nice. But that means an install and some headache.
But, I guess I have postponed it for quite long enough and now I am ready to dive right in. I could do it with Drupal, if I just want to shoot myself in the foot multiple times a day. (And somedays I am up for that, but I am in a painless mood). Or I could tackle a software that wont need to be squeezed into a box like that. A wiki software makes more sense, even though Drupal would be more extensible. I think..wiki wins out.
And after not having really liked any, I might as well choose one I have used. Thus, wikkawiki wins out.
Everyone take a collective breath in, and then out, as I launch wikkawiki for my next class.

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Aside from the dissertation, I am also taking an online class this semester. The class called "Technology Tools for Online Learning" is aimed at a certificate that will permit me to be a virtual instructor. (And yes, in the future there will be avatars in the classroom).
As a part of the course, we are examining technology in educational environments. This last module includes  blogs, thus promoting me to remember I actually have one (or a few).
And today’s post was born…
Today Facebook lite was also born; Google enlarged its Google box;  09/09/09 came and went (tomorrow is 911); And I finally updated joyrobinson.com including my portfolio. Wooohoo!
My website in all its (supposed) ease has been a real pain. Perhaps had I followed my own advice (plan, storyboard, review, act) it would have gone better. Mostly, the problem is that I keep adding things, with no time to really get them done. And to top it all off, I needed it ready for my upcoming exam. So, 4 days later and a bit of headache, she is shiny new.
Normally, I do websites in iWeb to save time and drama. But my web provider was not playing nice with iWeb and posting was a real mess. But its done, take a peek. There will not be more to come any time soon. Well unless you count blogging of course.
www.joyrobinson.com

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I haven’t read a lot about identity, but from what I can gather, identity is currently considered a fluid entity. People move in and out of various identities throughout their life. I think that if we carefully separate the concept of identity from personality, that might be indeed be the case, especially in (computer mediated) virtual environments. "One can have as many electronic personas as one has time and energy to create." Kimble p. 5. 
I know for myself, I have a smattering a various personas littering my electronic footprint. Most are related in someway; lately I have been attempting to collect all the bits and pieces into a unified perspective. (re: joyrobinson.com) although after a few conversations with some of my colleagues, perhaps that is a recipe for failure. (However, I will not let my paranoia take control here). I think a unified front is actually a deterrent to identity abuse.
Having made that minor disclaimer, what happens in gaming? Out on the internet, I have tried to collect it all – my FB, websites, wikis, blogs unified by the same name "Joy Robinson" and the single url. But what of games. In WOW I found out the other day, you can have up to 50 chars; 10 on a singe server, under 1 account. (The fact that you cant play any of them simultaneously, is a bit of a downer, but I digress again.)  I have about 5 now (my new iphone app says 6…hmm must be 6). What I wonder then is this.
If each of my chars (in WOW) are different, different race, different class, different professions, different levels – are these all parts of the different me. Do these various chars say something about my identity on a whole. As I add to these characters and imbue them with "me" what of me shows to the outside world? WOW has an interesting feature "inspect". For anyone walking by you can – check them out. See what they have on, what guild they belong to, their race, their attributes, etc.
Articles talk about trust and identity in virtual teams – how does this manifest in the game? Do we start out trusting, until we are "let down". Do we believe in the identity as we see them?
Now my first char, I really felt very "invested" in. I dreamed about her, about WOW, about other chars, about the various quests regularly. She is now 59 and I dont play her much (njoying is an alliance side elf,  a druid – with leatherworking and enchanting…). I have a deathknight now that I play most and I dont dream much anymore about the game. But, I have met many people in the game (most I dont know offline) and I find it difficult to remember their names – only their char names seem to stick. And when they dawn their alts (other chars), I can only relate to them by the first alt I encountered.
For example; back when I played druid, we did a few dungeons in a group with a character called Sax. Sax was a Pally, he was higher level than most of us, and helped us complete a number of dungeons where otherwise we would have not been able to. A few months later the owner of Sax sold him (He got good WOW coin for this) – and instead plays a mage. This mage, I can never remember the name, so.. we refere to her as Sax’s Alt. However, recall, Sax was a char in the first place. The 16 yr old kid who owned Sax – no one remembers his name either. 
Virtual teams in the workplace, what does this mean for them? Will the FIRST impression you make with them be the only one that counts? Is this similar to the 6 seconds to make a good impression in F2F interactions?

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One of the more interesting aspects of MMOs are the fact that we interact with the world as a representation of our selves that we create; the avatar. These avatars are created based on our preferences (for the most part) within the constraints of the game.
Then we traverse the various experiences in the game (questing, meeting up with other players, instances, selling things, buying things, farming for items, making things, etc) as this avatar. Things that happen in the game, happen to the avatar and as the player we ‘interpret’ what that means. For example, there is a stat for how much health a player has. This stat can be expressed in various terms (depending on the game genre) as hit points, life points, etc. These hit points are then shown as a bar or some other graphic representation of the total number of points and the remaining number of points. The idea being that when the points are at 0 the avatar has died.
As the points are being expended in various way (via battles, or exertion, from not eating) there is the bar that shows you you are loosing ‘life’. But sometimes in a game there are other graphic representation. The avatar might start to slump or turn colors, or whatever. But in most every case, the process requires the player to interpret the data. The player must look at the health bar, the color of their avatar and decide, hmmm I am in a bad way and need to rectify this matter.
Most other indicators in the game are simlar. There might be one for determining how much magic a mage has used and how much potentially he/she might have left. There might be an indicator for how rested a player, etc But all of these are indicators, we as the player must interpret to understand what it might mean to the avatar and the game play experience.
Sure there are forced feedback systems and what not, but that is a translation. As a car rumbles around the track, you get force feedback in the form of a shaking controller.
Today, for the first time. There was a spell cast on my avatar, that affected me the user. Some ogre cast a spell that made you drunk and stumbling with blurry vision. I got the blurry vision (player) which then made make my avatar stagger around drunk.
The blur was applied to my entire screen. It lasted for only 15 seconds, but it was a very weird experience. Is this where we are headed with games? What potential does this bring to our body of knowledge?
Hmmm…

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