Planning+Issues

-Please READ (by Steven Moinester-Elmo Wilder) -- September 28, 2007, 3:50 SLT

I ll send u all (WUE Teachers) my statement... Pe

-- Some ideas for possible tasks and/or challenges


 * Selecting a team uniform.
 * Taking snapshots of various locations that include multiple members from each team from different institutions.
 * Build and decorate a residence for the team (teams could vote on the best design)
 * Convince other avatars to visit your site and take a snapshot with as many visitors as possible (reward each group that has greater than X number of avatars in a snapshot).

Larger Storyline

As I understand it, we are asking our students to role-play in this story of a crashed spacecraft. If this is the case, then each student will need to develop a character within the context of that story. In some ways then, this become more like //Lost//, if that TV reference makes sense internationally. I think the role-playing concept is interesting. I hope my students will buy into it. But if you are going to role-play then you need to invent a role, or have one give to you. It doesn't have to be so very complex, just enough to give you some guidelines and motivations for behavior. In some respects, perhaps it is not so different from developing one's persona as an avatar. That sense of difference between first and second life, which for some users is quite large and others quite narrow, is maybe an interesting space to explore.
 * What was your role on the spacecraft?
 * What was your life like before you took that fateful trip?
 * What is your relationship to the other characters/avatars?

In this context though, I could certainly see students taking on roles that undermined group cohesion (sometimes it's fun to play the villain). In fact, one could assign roles to each of the students, much like those party games where one person is the murderer and everyone else is trying to figure out who it is. The Exchange Scenario already suggests that crimes have been committed.

I'm not necessarily advocating these ideas. I'm just trying to figure out the implications of having a larger storyline. -Alex