Thoughts on SpacePlace and PlaceSpace Online Simulation
So we had a chance this week to see what happens when conflicts and tensions play themselves out online. What is public and what is private are important considerations. In 45 minutes, we saw:
- Many private issues became the topic of public discussions.
- Characters used language and tone that they likely would not use face-to-face
- Characters created groups to exclude and tease one of the characters
- At the same time, an “Anti-cheating” group was created as a positive response to an issue of cheating that seemed to be going on in school.
- A bullied character, recreated himself online and adopted a “tough” and “humorous” persona online in response to the treatment he received during the school day.
Click here to view all of the character stories if you want.
Please leave a comment about any thoughts that you have related to the simulation and the complexities of interacting with others in an online space. Playing the character was probably a lot of fun, but try to focus your comment(s) on the issues that the simulation raises about what it means to be a member of an online community. What are the challenges? What are the opportunities? Feel free to come back and reply to comments made by others. This is an important conversation.
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A challenge i had was people kept making me feel guilty and sad. The good thing was none of this was done face to face.
I think that the perpetrators n would rather do the mean things over cyber so they don’t see the other person cry but it also means that EVERYONE sees it so its really bad for the target. This was a good simulation though to see how what you post can totally back fire in the end.
Though in what ways might this actually be worse?
I thought it was really interesting to see what would happen if everyone went crazy mean to each other on the site. I think it was good that we got to try it out because now people will have a new outlook on cyber bullying hopefully. I think some people tried to stay out of the conflict, but that didn’t really work because everyone had a part so they were immediately sucked into the fight. Almost everyone did something they most likely wouldn’t have done if it was real.
Yes I totally agree and every one is involved and every one is connected some how and every one is effected by every one.
I was surprised by how much conflict arose. There was so much gossiping and talking behind other people’s backs. Some challenges that I had while being on Space Place were that I didn’t know how to react to some of the things that people sent me. Some people tried to avoid conflict, but is was really hard because you pretty much had to do what the sheet of paper told you to do and everything was designed to create conflicts. I could tell that everything was “fake,” so it was hard for me to pretend to be the character I was assigned to be. I was forced to say things that I wouldn’t have said in real life on a social website, but everything went quite well and I think that the activity itself was fun.
Same as Sophie, I was surprised on how much people knew about each other, and lots of others just assumed something even though they had just heard it and had no way of knowing what happened. Many tried to stop conflict, but others tried to make it happen. I don’t think that people would act that way if it was their actual social blog. Many people acted differently than they would in real life, myself included.
Interesting. Though even in real life online interactions do you think that people assume that people will keep things private?
I thought it was interesting to see the conflict. This “school” was nothing like LREI especially with all the cyber bullying.
I Thought that this school wasn’t like our school because we don’t have people that are not in our group.
I thought that it was more fun depending on what roll you got. Like if you were the bully it might be more fun than being the person getting bullied. I also liked the simulation because it felt realistic.
Remember, try to focus on what we can learn from what happened not on just what happened. For example, what factors came into play when you wee deciding between sending a message to someone or posting something on the wire?
It was very interesting we really go to see what people had to say. This is a life situation. You dont know who is who, and you didn’t know the whole story. People were causing more chaos. You didn’t know the whole story, and you dont know who was who… It was weird, because at one point “Sharon” our character got asked out by “Jim”. We didnt really write anything on the wire, but we looked at what people were writing…
I thought that it was weird that in the sense, this is what the real world is like, and we ned to start to realize what comments can do to people. It can really hurt them, mentally and psyicially.
I thought it was fun because you could talk to the other people in like a different virtual world. It was hard at times because the person you asked to send you a photo never did. ALll together I understoud it all. Some comments were hurtful to use like somepeople would call us buttchecks and we didn’t even say anything to them before.
It was fun to adopt a new character for a little while but it was weird talking to people because I didn’t know who they were, even though I knew they were in my class it still felt weird. It felt like I was talking to a total stranger. When I saw the people who had mean personalities I was so surprised because no one in our grade acts like that so to see one of my classmates do that (even though it wasn’t real) was so surprising.
SpacePlace was fun but it was kind of weird becuase someone might have talked to me about soemthing that I had no idea my character said. I was suprised the way different people acted because no one in our school is like some of the characters. However, it reminded me that there are people out there who may act like these characters.
A challenge i had was people kept making me feel guilty. Another thing is that I would not cheat in real life like in the simulation. If this was in real life I would be guilty
I challenge I had was to really BECOME the person. I don’t like being mean, I tried to hold back a bit. ;_;
A challenge i had was to literally cyber bully EVERYONE. I don’t really like being mean it felt weird to cyber bully.
Honestly it takes a lot of energy to be mean like that and it sucks (so much effort in a negative direction). How could you feel good about yourself doing that all the time?
I think one very interesting part of this simulation was that people acted in ways that they would have not in real life. Although I know that people usually write in texting language with TONS of spelling and grammar errors, they would NOT have written the content they did in the simulation. I also thought it was interesting how people would say things that were really important, meaningful or even mean on the wire, or through a private message, when really they should be saying things in person. You really need to put emphasis and thought into what you’re saying, and it’s very hard to take someone seriously when they’re writing an email, especially with the way people write.
I thought the simulation was really interesting, it gave us each a chance to kind of experience things through a different story. I noticed that people said things that they probably wouldn’t say in real life, I think that maybe it’s because they can’t see you so they don’t really think about how it will affect you or see your reaction.
I thought that doing the simulation was a very interesting experience considering that those problems actually happen to people in real life. I thought that we really got to feel sympathy for those who are stuck in these problems tied into sisal media. I also thought that it was a little strange to take on a character that wasn’t you and also the fact that we didn’t know who we were chatting to. I personally got to really step into someone else’s shoes and feel like their story was mine. Overall I thought it was a very fun lesson and hope to do more like it again.
If we were dealing with these problems face to face I feel like a lot of us wouldn’t have said half the things we did. I think the internet gives you a way to say those things without being afraid, because all you need to do is press send, and then its out for everyone to see.
I think working on spaceplace was really interesting because we got to see what would happen if we were really mean to each other. I think if we were talking to each other face to face we would have said things that were a lot less mean because over the internet you can’t see each other so you don’t really know what the other person is feeling.
I think that it was really interesting because we got to learn about what to do in a conflict and we could how to deal with these problems. I think that it was cool because nobody knew who each other was and who they were talking with. I think that you could become your character and be a bully or a alley.
Messaging people was a lot different from talking to someone face to face;
Online my group and I were going crazy threatening people and typing things that we wouldn’t say. And as fun as it was, we might’ve gone over board with threats and nasty messages. There was mostly confusion when it came to problem solving. But it was a cool experiment trying to see what would happen if there were problems that we couldn’t fix at school and we could only fix on our computers.
It was really Interesting how badly people treated each other. Also it was very lifelike and made me more aware of cheating, cyber bullying, etc. Even though it was fake deep, deep, down you feel somewhat hurt.
I thought that it was really mean that people had to chose sides because they thought they were going to get picked on. Also I didn’t like how much people thought it was funny because it really wasn’t and how people thought that if they didn’t make the website but still passed on the message thought it was not there fault!