Response week 12

This week I chose to answer a classmate’s questions.

Erika asked: For my research project, I studied children’s interaction with the media. In these websites, we are reading about people have virtual worlds with their churches. Will this stretch out into schools? How will children be affected by virtual reality, specifically in an educational environment?

I have recently been seeing commercials for online high school.  It appears that it works in the same way that college online works and allows students to work from home at their own rate.  I think that this could be a positive thing for some students but probably not for all.  If a student, for instance did not feel comfortable in a school environment or if they were made fun of school this seems like the perfect solution for them. If they are particularly social, it seems that they would not like to be separated from other students in this way.  As far as how children are affected by this I guess time will tell!

She also asked: What makes virtual worlds a new idea, separate from other digital environments like video games? How can I relate this to how children will relate to media in the upcoming years?

Virtual environments are different for a number of reasons but I think the most prevalent is customization.  A user in Second Life is able to create their own goods to wear or sell.  While in a video game a user can generally just choose from a set list of clothes that have already been made. I think that this will relate to how children view media because they will want everything to be as customizable as possible, in fact they will expect it.  So, I think that games need to be as customizable as possible.