Motivation from Second Life

Participating in Second Life was an interesting experience which gave me many new opportunities. Being able to play the role of my mom was exciting for me because I was able to learn much about her. The experience of project one was vastly different than that of project two. By participating in the program, Second Life, I learned many things through reading and writing, discovery learning, leadership, and sympathetic imagination. The two projects were very different because the use of Second Life was the driving source of project two. The many differences of the projects greatly affected my motivation in many aspects.


At the computer while participating in Second Life conversations.

I learned many things about the skills of reading and writing in completing both of these projects. However, the things I learned from the experience of each project were greatly different because of the different approaches to each project. The things I learned about these important skills changed my motivation to write each project. In the first project, a lot of what I learned about reading and writing was how these skills influenced my mother becoming the successful person she is today. Excelling at these skills helped my mom do well in school and college in order to attain a good career. These skills also aided my mother in being successful raising her children, which she feels is her greatest accomplishment. After participating in Second Life, I realized much more about the skills of reading and writing. These skills not only affect ourselves but the people around us as well. Reading is extremely important to understand others’ ideas. During the conversations in Second Life, I learned that it was important to sometimes stop typing and read what others were saying. This made it easier to feed off each other’s ideas to keep the conversation flowing. Additionally, writing is an extremely important skill in order to express your ideas. When having conversations on Second Life, those with the best writing skills had the easiest time expressing their ideas and contributing to the conversation. Many times, we express our ideas using direct language. With the growing use of technology in today’s world, writing is becoming even more important. When writing, as opposed to speaking, no one can see your use of nonverbal language, such as facial expressions and tone of voice. You must be excellent at writing in order to make sure the reader gets the message you are trying to convey. Previous to this assignment, I thought of reading and writing as skills that just involved one person. As I reflect on our society’s lifestyle, I realize how much we interact with others through reading and writing. In the growing world of technology, we use emails, text messages, websites, and many other sources in which reading and writing are necessary skills to understand and interact with others. Just as in the use of Second Life, our skills of reading and writing affected others’ understanding of our beliefs and also what we all were interpreting the conversation to be. Reading and writing are skills that essentially affect every aspect of our lives. What I learned about reading and writing had an effect on my motivation to write projects one and two. For writing project one, I did not have as great motivation because I felt I already knew much of what my mother had taught me about the skills. On the other hand, when writing project two, I felt I had learned a different side of these skills and was more motivated to express these ideas.

I am in the back left, working on Second Life.

This is a picture of my avatar of my role model, my mother.

The use of discovery learning also had an effect on my motivation to complete the assignments. Project one did not require the use of discovery learning. I knew I had to think about the quality traits of my mother which made her my role model. Then, I interviewed her, reflected on past experiences, and researched for quotes that were fitting to her character. These skills are similar to those I have used on many assignments in the past. I was not as motivated to write project one because, even after my preparation, I did not feel like I learned much about the topic or approach. Project two was immensely different however. Using Second Life was a brand new concept. From creating my avatar to conversing with classmates on this computer game, I had never done anything like it. The role of discovery learning played a big role on motivating me to do project two. I had many feelings throughout this project. At first, I was excited to get to work with and explore a new program for a new approach. I was also a little anxious because I am not that good with new techniques on computers. As I began working on Second Life, I felt frustrated. As I was trying to make my avatar look as close to my mom as I could, it was very frustrating when I knew what I wanted to do, but couldn’t do it. After exploring the program and getting accustomed to working with it, I felt accomplished when I finished creating my avatar. The same type of emotions ran through me when participating in conversation. At first, the conversation seemed to go a little slow because no one really knew what they were doing. The conversation on Second Life was much different than a normal conversation. It was a little confusing at first because everyone was typing at the same time, but then we got the hang of it. I thought it was great that we could see everyone’s role model avatar while conversing, as compared to emails or text messages, because you were able to put a face to each other’s names. By the end of the class, it seemed everyone was comfortable and the conversation flew by quickly. The whole experience overall was enjoyable and satisfying. After succeeding in participating in Second Life, I felt very motivated to complete project two because I had already accomplished a major step of the project.

The first conversation in Second Life about leadership with Edwin Dorn, Beverly Kelly, and Shakespeare. My role, Beverly Kelly, is the avatar in the middle in the purple shirt.

I learned many things about leadership throughout the course of both project one and two. In project one, what I learned about leadership came primarily from my own role model, my mother. In project two, I learned various aspects of leadership through conversing with others’ role models. During our first discussion, the conversation was focused on leadership. My group discussed the definition of leadership as well as important traits of leadership. We decided the qualities that make a good leader depend upon the situation and the people they are leading. Shakespeare states, “Greatness comes from how the people see you.” Different people view leaders in different ways. Another aspect we discussed in detail was the factors that determine great leadership skills. While playing the role of my mother, I asked, “Do you believe leadership skills are based more on genetics or your environment?” After much debating and discussing, our group determined that leadership skills are predominantly based upon one’s environment because “leaders are not born great,” as Edwin Dorn states. After the first conversation wrapped up, I moved on to a different group and discussed the relationship between leadership and diversity. In this conversation, I was in a group with Catherine Crier and Benjamin Franklin. Catherine Crier stated in our discussion that “there are different kinds of leaders in the world because of the diversity.” Since everyone is different in their values and beliefs, there are many different kinds of leaders and followers. We discussed that leaders must adapt to the situation they are dealing with and the different people they are leading. Also, followers must adapt to the style of their leader. We also discussed how leadership has an effect on diversity in our society. Leaders can understand diversity and promote diversity in our world. By bringing people together, new, diverse ideas are encouraged. All of these conversations in Second Life that we participated in were great instances of leadership. We all acted as leaders in our groups because we played the role of a significant leader in our own lives. We were the leaders in the conversation. The general topic was given to us, but it was up to the members in the group to help facilitate and keep the conversation going in the right direction. I felt each member in the conversations played a leadership role by bringing up new topics. By feeding off each others’ ideas, we were able to learn more about others’ views of leadership. I also felt that each of us learned more about our own role model and ourselves. The conversations in Second Life were a great way to converse with others’ role models in order to learn much about leadership in our diverse world. The many aspects of leadership I learned affected my motivation to write project two. I was more motivated to complete this assignment because I felt I had learned much about myself, my role model, my classmates, and my classmates’ role models. I thought this was a fun, new approach.

The second conversation in Second Life about leadership and diversity with Beverly Kelly, Catherine Crier, and Benjamin Franklin. My avatar is the one on the left.

Sympathetic imagination is defined as “the ability of a person to penetrate the barrier which space puts between him and his object, and, by actually entering into the object, so to speak, to secure a momentary but complete identification with it” in our course website. This concept is directly related to our experience with Second Life and avatar conversations. By playing this role and participating in sympathetic imagination, I felt I was able to ignore any preconceived notions. I was open to listening to everyone’s ideas and almost forgot that it was actually classmates because everyone was playing their role model. By seeing on the computer screen the avatars of members in our group, I was able to picture the role model and get a feel of their beliefs. For the most part, I was very successful in becoming my mother as my role model. The most successful point was in talking about the qualities of great leadership skills and what makes a good leader. I felt successful at this point of the conversation because my mom has really expressed to me what she feels about this topic. I was least successful in accurately playing my mother in a section of the diversity and leadership discussion. When my group was discussing the relationship between leadership and diversity, Catherine Crier and Benjamin Franklin were able to draw on past leadership experiences to explain how they promoted diversity. It was difficult for me to imagine what my mother’s views on this were because her leadership experiences in my perspective do not directly pertain to this subject matter. After really thinking about her role as a leader in diversity, I was finally able to imagine her views on the subject, but at first, it was a little difficult. Through playing the role of my mom through sympathetic imagination, I was able to learn so much about my mom and myself. I was able to learn the true qualities of my mom that I admire. My mom’s leadership views show how she is such a great leader in her family as well as outside of the family. I continue to strive to be more like the caring, honest, loving leader my mom is today. Through the use of sympathetic imagination, I was able to learn about Shakespeare, Edwin Dorn, Benjamin Franklin, and Catherine Crier. I learned about their leadership views and how they became successful leaders in their time. Another interesting fact to me about sympathetic imagination was that different role models came from all different time periods. It was very intriguing to learn how differences in leadership changed from the 1600s of Shakespeare’s time to the 1700s of Franklin’s time to the 1900s of Crier’s and my mother’s times. After using Second Life and sympathetic imagination, I felt I gained much insight from different perspectives. Because I participated in these conversations and learned so much, I was more motivated to share my thoughts in writing project two.

I am in the middle of this picture with the class and Professor Bump.

Motivation comes from many sources and is important when trying to complete any task. My motivation to complete project one was very different from project two because of the widely different approaches. During project one, my only motivation was the typical academic motivation I have to get good grades. Project two, on the other hand, came from different motivation. Because we used a new and different approach, I was more enthusiastic to participate and complete project two, in addition to my typical academic motivation. I felt the use of Second Life was very beneficial in gaining new insight on leadership through interaction with our role models.

This shows the entire class working on computers on Second Life. I am in the top right corner.

Word Count (without quotes): 1,976

All photos are taken from second life and in class.