Avatars: Barbie for the 21st century

       Avatars are a crucial part of online communities such as Second Life. Without avatars it would be hard to take part and interact with not only the other avatars in Second Life but also the objects in Second Life. If you did not have an avatar you could not sit, or stand or fly on the objects that exist in Second Life. With that said I do not think avatars play any bigger of a role than a doll that you would play with in reality. You dress your avatar, put make up on your avatar, create your avatar to meet your aesthetics. The same concept of master and puppet goes for the movement and where you walk your avatar to and the situations you create for your avatar. Second Life, I feel, is like a new version of playing with Barbie dolls. You set the stage, you arrange where you want certain things to go, you move your avatar and you dress your avatar. You chose what your avatar is saying and doing and most of the situations that happen on Second Life are based off of real life situations. You sit in a chair, you can view artwork, and you can make your avatar visit other worlds just like you made Barbie go to China when you were younger.

My Start Up Avatar

I do not think Second Life frees us from social issues or could help with social issues. The first reason is because Second Life is an escape, it is a new imagined world and people cannot connect this imagined world with the real world. Anything is possible in Second Life, your avatar can be half animal half human, it can fly, it can do great things that we cannot do in the real world making it not real and inherently not something most people can apply to reality. The second reason why Second Life cannot help with social issues is because it uses a money system and I feel like when people view this money system they inherently think that more is better and if you have more money on Second Life you automatically have a better avatar or a better account, when really you have the same avatar as everyone else your account just has money tied to it. With a money system in place it is hard to extinguish this idea of socioeconomic class, the more money your avatar has the higher the class it is part of. The third reason I do not think it will help with social issues is because you know that the person with the half gargoyle half zebra avatar is still a person, you accept the fact that the person has decided to be this action figure today but you still accept the fact that this is a human you are communicating to. It may be easier to become friends with this person because you do not have a physical barrier, you do not have to worry about what you look like, if this person is judging your physical attributes. But lets say you have a hatred of a group of people that your new Second Life friend identifies themselves with just because you are friends with them online does not mean you will recognize this friendship in reality. And just because you are friends with this select person it does not mean you will automatically let go of your beliefs about the people he identifies with. Second Life also does not give us the ability to make our person have a disability, such as being in a wheel chair, being an amputee, being someone who is significantly obese and even if it did give us this option for someone who is not disabled making our avatar have a disability does not have the same effect as if we physically experienced this disability.

I dressed my avatar in some sweet red pants.

Seeing as I do not think avatars address any social issue, I do not think I could make a lesson plan that involves that type of criteria but I do think avatars can lead to a creative outlook on functionality and body parts. I would have students think about the advantages of having frog legs versus human legs the advantages of having wings and so on. I would then have them create their perfect enhanced body on a piece of paper first and then translate that into an avatar on second life. I think this lesson would open doors for creative thinking about perhaps engineering certain equipment that would help the population physically.

My avatar was not showing up so this is a snapshot of my ghost avatar.

As a teacher in an increasingly technology based world, I would like to think creatively but also realistically. I want my students to be aware of reality, of real social issues and how these issues can be changed using technology but also by being a physical force. I want them to be aware of how making something visual can be more powerful than having to rely on auditory communication.  I want them to be able to think creatively about problems and how to solve these problems and not rest on what others tell them. If my students can do this and I can see these landmarks of thought then I know I am succeeding as a teacher.