PUFS-SL+Experience

Enter your essay below, and don't forget to add your name. Read thru the other essays. When I knew about Secon life at first, I was very excited, because my avatar could act like a person in Second life. I thought I could spend my time joining in Secondlife, but it's a little difficult. At first, I had to install Second life program, but my notebook computer didn't work, so I usually used computers at school. Sometimes, I visited in Second life, but it was not often. I went to popular places and met some people. Some of them liked talking each other, but others didn't like talking, so they didn't answer when I asked. I'm afraid I couldn't communicate well with my members, because of differnt time. I expected to meet each other and communicate. So, we had to meet in Wiki. We posted our opinion, and discuss. By using wiki, we made our team name, flag, rules and so on. I visited our team place, some members has built wonderful builings. I didn't build anything, but I made my opinion about our building. I'm happy to know Secondlife, I have ID and passworld, so I want to join in Secondlife at my free time,. (**//__Shin Yoo jin)__//**

At the first class, When professor talked about our project, I have two minds. It looked really exciting, new and wonderful but also I'm worried about whether it is going well, I can communicate well with team members or not. I think that this idea is really good and nice try, it is one of good ways to know anout other countries eventhough I don't think this project is going well. Personally, I was really busy this semester so It wasn't easy to meet members on line on time. so sometimes, team meeting is a pretty burden to me beacouse of time. Also It wasn't easy to acess SL at home, school, work space because of competer capacity. I think that is a main problem to join SL because if I wanted to try to SL, I have to find to suitable computer to join SL. I think that if we have another chance to communicate with other country friends, we'd better find other communicate sites then it'll be going well. I'm quite sad because I have tofinish this project without any results. But thank you for giving me this chance to try new world.

(20050002 Kang min ju)

< 20050085 Jang In Kyoung > When my teacher showed us what is Second Life, I really surprised. Because SL was real place like reality. People are from all over the world and everything exist. We can go wherever we want to, we can create whatever we imagine. This was one thing that attractive to me. At the same time, this was a problem because I can do everything. Af the first, I thought what my avatar have to wear. I wanted to make her beautiful, but it was hard to make her t-shirt and jeans. Then, I thought where to go. I have no idea because there were too many places that I can go. Fortunately, at that time, someone helped me know about SL and he introduced me good places. With my team members, there were difficulties to meet each other, to share ideas, and to decide somethings. But it was good opportunity that we can learn more. And if we had more time to do SL together in school, we could do more activity, I think. Still, Second Life is difficult to me..

It was really great time to experience Second Life with many foreign students. Actually, when I used it for the first time, I wondered whether we can use this program successfully because we had some difficulties for managing computer and other technical problems. Japanese students also worried about the computer problems, but they were quite active and tried to solve them to log in to SL. I don't know how other team did for the project, but I think our team worked pretty good so far. It was not that easy to communicate with each other because of time difference, but we tried hard to meet in SL at least once a week using 'Social Hours'. At that time, some of American and French students were also helpful to do our first assignment (making team name, flag, and rules) well. But, as time went by, it was getting difficult to see each other's avatar in SL, so we had to contact only through the wiki. I thought it would be easier to meet our team members after joining the team, but actually it was not. Instead of SL, we had to check the team page almost everyday to see whether someone suggested good building idea, left a message, or a comment for our building project. I saw that French students are building many things and it looks quite interesting. Learning foreign culture and meeting different people through virtual campus was so fun and excited, but I felt that we couldn't accomplish the project successfully. If we do this again, it would be good to use SL with email or MSN messenger like Minhwa said to keep communication with each other. And I think doing easier and more interesting project (such as interviewing European or other Asian people, visiting many places that represent Japanese culture and taking picture with them, introducing each other's culture and discussing how they feel about it, and so on) is also important. If we do these projects, I think that students feel more interested about it and might be able to learn more things than they expected.

By Heejung Indigo

20050018 Kim-Mihwa As you know, we don't have much interaction with our team members. Especially I was not available to use SL in my dorm because of some technical problems, so I just talk with one of my team members once by MSN messenger. At the beginning, I knew that there are many problem to get in to SL and I suggested to use MSN for communication to my team members. That why I could talk with my team member at least once. I want to say that wiki space is very good, but I have to say it has a limit. I am afraid but it is not so convenient to communicate frequently. So I think it would be better if we use MSN or other messenger to have more interaction. Then, everything will be proceed faster before. And we couldn't have much interaction because of the time zone. However, I think the trial to have interaction with students in another culture with new methouds. We had opportunity to make our own space on the web. Next time, I think we could have better fruit with better ways to do it.