Immersive Environments, Part 3

As part of our blogging assignment, we've been given the tips on how to make screen shots to add visual interest to our blogs: command+shift+4 to select a segment, command+shift+3 to select entire screen.

In yesterday's blog, I uploaded several glorious images made with the command+shift+4 feature that's a simple feature available to our fingertips.  At 11:40pm last night I was still waiting for Blogger to upload my images. The assignment was due at 11:59.  I deleted the images, keeping only two very small ones, and was relieved when it uploaded immediately.  Lesson learned: don't overload your blog with images because it will cost you time.

Here are the next 3 virtual environments on the list:

AE English, Trace Effects, a video game for learning American English and Culture
http://americanenglish.state.gov/trace-effects  This is a site from the US Department of State's English Language Programs elprograms.org and is a government site.  This lends a bit of a 'dry' and not exactly cutting-edge feel, but it's still a valid and potentially worthwhile site.  I met with the people from EL Programs last semester on campus and applied for a job as a specialist. You can also apply for a fellowship position on their site.  This is a good group and my guess is that they've developed a virtual site in order to engage with students in countries where classroom and DOS teachers aren't in situ.

Kaneva,  from their blog, claims to be "the first to integrate social networking, shared media, and collaborative online communities into a modern-day, immersive 3D world for the masses. Kaneva…imagine what you can do, do what you can imagine,"  http://blog.kaneva.com/?page_id=2

A blogger and reviewer commented: "The question I posed, why would someone prefer to spend their time in the Kaneva beta, which is extremely limited in the range of actions
available to it’s users,  compared to Second Life, which has many thousands of times
of virtual space as Kaneva, a developed economy, a scripting language, etc?" https://suezannecbaskerville.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/kaneva-kicked-from-mall-for-mentioning-second-life/

Vside, https://www.vside.com/app/start
My take: Techno-hipster, 2000's club vibe, anime visuals. Good music. Seems like a rather small audience, select-group of users. While it is engaging and visually interesting, I doubt if I'd ever go here to teach a class unless I had a student who was a member and preferred meeting in this environment. I'm open to new experiences so it's possible that I could enjoy this site.  It just isn't one that is at the top of my list.

Here's a screen shot of each one of today's sites. (I think I can do this!):