Artifact Analysis WorksheetAn artifact is something made by a hu.docx

Artifact Analysis Worksheet
An artifact is something made by a human.
It can be a form of art or a form of self-expression that has
meaning to you. It can be anything that a human conceived of as
art and deliberately crafted.
For this assignment, you are being asked to share your artifact
with your classmates. Please consider this as you select your
artifact by choosing something you are comfortable sharing and
avoiding potentially offensive material.
In the Learning Resources area, there is also a document on
“reading” images and text. It includes many questions which
can guide deeper analysis of your artifact.
Share your artifact or a link to your artifact in the space below.
Include a description of the artifact and include research on the
background of the artifact. For example, information about the
artist involved.
*** Make sure to cite your sources by including a list of any
outsides sources of information you are using to answer this
question. Remember, research is always a good thing as it
shows effort.
What does this artifact mean to you? Please explain.
To explore this, consider these additional questions:
How has it inspired or moved you? Has this artifact helped
make your life or the life of others better? How does it connect
to your life or to the educational journey you are starting along
with your classmates?
Many people have artifacts displayed in their home; for
example, a certain painting on their wall. In a way, we’ll be
creating a virtual gallery of artifacts by sharing our choices as a
class in the Class DocSharing area.
How does your artifact fit into our class gallery? How do you

think your artifact communicates your life perspective to the
class? How do you think others will interpret your choice of
artifact?
Discuss in your own words, how technology has changed human
art making and human art sharing. How do you, or could you,
use technology in making your own art?
You will submit your completed worksheet as your Week 2
Assignment using the link at the bottom of the assignment page
in the classroom.
Additionally, for Week 3, you will post your artifact in the
DocSharing area. You will find instructions about how to do
this on the next page. Only post the artifact, not the completed
worksheet.
Again, you need to do both of these:
Submit for Week 2 AND post to DocSharing for Week 3.
As stated above, you will be asked to share your artifact in the
Class DocSharing area to use for the Week 3 Assignment 1.
To do this, click on the DocSharing link in the left-hand
navigational window (red arrow below):
Then, click on the Class DocSharing area to enter this space.
From here, you will click “Create Blog Entry” on the top
towards to the left:
Then fill in the appropriate information and hit Post Entry at the

bottom right.
(Please do NOT post your entire worksheet- post only your
artifact)
You should now see your entry. Sometimes a larger link or file
will take a little longer to upload. So if you don’t see it
immediately, give it a minute.
Make sure that your artifact is showing up properly. Some
pictures will not copy and paste directly into the classroom.
You’ll have to attach a file or document instead.
© 2014 Laureate Education, Inc.
Page 2 of 4
Artifact Analysis Worksheet
An artifact is something made by a human.
It can be a form of art or a form of self-expression that has
meaning to you. It can be anything that a human conceived of as
art and deliberately crafted.
For this assignment, you are being asked to share your artifact
with your classmates. Please consider this as you select your
artifact by choosing something you are comfortable sharing and
avoiding potentially offensive material.
In the Learning Resources area, there is also a document on
“reading” images and text. It includes many questions which
can guide deeper analysis of your artifact.
Share your artifact or a link to your artifact in the space below.
Include a description of the artifact and include research on the
background of the artifact. For example, information about the
artist involved.
*** Make sure to cite your sources by including a list of any
outsides sources of information you are using to answer this

question. Remember, research is always a good thing as it
shows effort.
What does this artifact mean to you? Please explain.
To explore this, consider these additional questions:
How has it inspired or moved you? Has this artifact helped
make your life or the life of others better? How does it connect
to your life or to the educational journey you are starting along
with your classmates?
Many people have artifacts displayed in their home; for
example, a certain painting on their wall. In a way, we’ll be
creating a virtual gallery of artifacts by sharing our choices as a
class in the Class DocSharing area.
How does your artifact fit into our class gallery? How do you
think your artifact communicates your life perspective to the
class? How do you think others will interpret your choice of
artifact?
Discuss in your own words, how technology has changed human
art making and human art sharing. How do you, or could you,
use technology in making your own art?
You will submit your completed worksheet as your Week 2
Assignment using the link at the bottom of the assignment page
in the classroom.
Additionally, for Week 3, you will post your artifact in the
DocSharing area. You will find instructions about how to do
this on the next page. Only post the artifact, not the completed
worksheet.
Again, you need to do both of these:

Submit for Week 2 AND post to DocSharing for Week 3.
As stated above, you will be asked to share your artifact in the
Class DocSharing area to use for the Week 3 Assignment 1.
To do this, click on the DocSharing link in the left-hand
navigational window (red arrow below):
Then, click on the Class DocSharing area to enter this space.
From here, you will click “Create Blog Entry” on the top
towards to the left:
Then fill in the appropriate information and hit Post Entry at the
bottom right.
(Please do NOT post your entire worksheet- post only your
artifact)
You should now see your entry. Sometimes a larger link or file
will take a little longer to upload. So if you don’t see it
immediately, give it a minute.
Make sure that your artifact is showing up properly. Some
pictures will not copy and paste directly into the classroom.
You’ll have to attach a file or document instead.
© 2014 Laureate Education, Inc.
Page 2 of 4
How could we create a virtual world with technology?
Answered by Meredith Bower and HowStuffWorks
1.
Contributor

Meredith Bower
Some people just don't "get" the virtual worlds of Second Life
and similar massive online environments. These people aren't
necessarily luddites; they simply prefer to keep their heads in
the real world. And even to tech-savvy Internet warriors, the
idea of a completely virtual world may seem incomprehensible.
What would it look like? How would it feel? And what effect
would it have on the real world? When you look at the advances
constantly being made in technology, it becomes apparent that
we are closer to building convincing and useful virtual worlds
than many of us realize.
Maybe you've played one of the games in SimCity series, using
a computer to design and simulate life in a virtual population
center. If you have a talent for games like this, you may also
have a talent that can be applied to the real world. The annual
Future City Competition, hosted as part of National Engineers'
Week, provides middle-schoolers the opportunity to design
complex simulations of a proposed city of tomorrow, first using
the virtual environment provided by SimCity 4software to build
their city, then actually translating their virtual designs into
physical models in three dimensions. The stated goal of the
competition is to pique the interest of middle school students in
engineering, technology, science and math. It's conceivable that
the ideas the kids have today will eventually be part of life in
the future. In the 2011 challenge, contestants were tasked with
designing a product or system to improve the quality of life for
sick, injured or disabled people. The winning team created a
city focused on helping people with type 2 diabetes
[source: Future City].
In the same way that virtual modeling could help us design
better cities, virtual augmentation could help make existing
cities more user-friendly, so to speak. The idea of a virtual city
is not too far-fetched. The University of Southern California
offers the community a geospatial social networking Web portal
-- in other words, real-time data overlaid on Google-style maps.
Dubbed iCampus, the technology is a hybrid of the real and

virtual worlds, enabling users to see and avoid traffic problems,
determine the exact location of the campus-wide tram, find out
what pedestrian routes to avoid due to recent crime and locate a
place along their route to get a bite to eat. Developers believe it
won't be long before this technology will be applied to entire
cities [source: USC].
It's 1 a.m., and the "Dublin" nightclub is packed. Women in
trendy ball gowns and men in miniskirts dance to Bon Jovi.
Simon Stevens spins his wheelchair across the room, then leaps
up and starts dancing, a move he can execute only here in
Second Life, a 3-D virtual world that Stevens roams on his PC
screen, using an avatar—a graphic rendering of himself,
liberated from his cerebral palsy. "I flourish in Second Life,"
says the 33-year-old, who heads a disability-consulting firm
called Enable Enterprises, out of his home in England. "It's no
game—it's a serious tool."
Rhonda Lillie and Paul Hawkins live thousands of miles apart—
she in California, he in Wales—and until this week, had never
met face to face. But they've been dating for more than two
years—in Second Life. The detachment of meeting through their
avatars allowed them to open up to one another in a way they
might never have done in the real world. "We felt like we could
go in and really be ourselves," Lillie says.
Anshe Chung is a virtual land baroness with a real-life fortune.
The woman behind the Anshe avatar is Ailin Graef, a former
language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. Three years
ago she started buying and developing virtual land in Second
Life to see whether its virtual economy could sustain a real life.
Turns out it can: Chung became Second Life's first millionaire
in 2006. Her business, Anshe Chung Studios, with a staff of 60,
buys virtual property and builds homes or other structures that
it rents or sells to other denizens of Second Life.
When San Francisco software developer Philip Rosedale

dreamed up the idea for Second Life in 1998, he never imagined
that it might have such an impact on the world at large. Just as
Google sexed up the way we search, and instant messaging
altered the way we interact, Second Life is fast becoming the
next red-hot tool on the Internet.
The numbers tell the story. Rosedale launched Second Life in
2001, but it got off to a slow start, reaching only 1.5 million
registered users in 2006. In the past year, membership has
soared to more than 8 million users—2 million having signed on
in the last two months alone. This hypergrowth, driven mainly
by word of mouth, is now attracting competitors. South Korea's
Cyworld started out as a social-networking site, but has evolved
into a two-dimensional equivalent of Second Life, claiming 20
million registered users from Asia to Latin America. Richard
Branson's Virgin recently announced plans to create its own 3-D
community called A World of My Own. By 2011, four of every
five people who use the Internet will actively participate in
Second Life or some similar medium, according to Gartner
Research, which recently did a study looking at the investment
potential of virtual worlds. If Gartner is to be believed (and it is
one of the most respected research firms in the field) this means
1.6 billion—out of a total 2 billion Internet users—will have
found new lives online.
The power of Second Life lies in its utility for the gamut of
human activities. It's a potent medium for socializing—it
provides people with a way to express, explore and experiment
with identity, vent their frustrations, reveal alter egos. The likes
of MySpace and Facebook have already created online
communities, but they lack the three-dimensional potential for
interaction that Second Life provides. The people who are
coming to this online universe aren't just socializing, however.
They're also doing business, collaborating on research, teaching
courses, dating and even having sex. More than 45 multinational
companies, including the likes of American Apparel, IBM,

General Motors and Dell are beginning to use the medium for
customer service, sales and marketing. Many people are
coupling the Second Life chat technology with Skype, the
popular audio Internet software, so they can talk out loud while
interacting inside the virtual world. Or they use live streaming
video to talk and see each other in real life (sitting in front of a
computer screen), as well as through their avatars inside Second
Life. "The unique thing about Second Life is that it's
immersive," says Michael Rowe, head of IBM's digital
convergence team. "There's a huge opportunity here, just as in
the early days of the Internet."
The medium sucks people in. A recent Dutch study found that
57 percent of Second Lifers spend more than 18 hours a week
there, and 33 percent spend more than 30 hours a week. On a
typical day, customers spend $1 million buying virtual clothes,
cars, houses and other goods for their avatars, and total sales
within this virtual economy are now growing at an annual rate
of 10 percent. As a result, the money flowing through Second
Life has attracted the attention of the U.S. tax authorities, who
are currently investigating profits made in online businesses.
And as it has evolved, those with ill intentions have apparently
discovered Second Life, too. FBI agents are investigating
possible gambling operations, and the German TV news
program "Report Mainz" recently revealed allegations of child
abuse in the virtual world. (Adults were purportedly using their
avatars to have sex with the avatars of minors; they were
expelled.)
See All Of The Best Photos Of The Week In These Slideshows
Back in 1998, Rosedale simply hoped to create a vivid three-
dimensional landscape in which graphic designers could create
likenesses of their real-world ambitions—houses, cars, forests,
anything one might find in a virtual game like EverQuest or
World of Warcraft. Except Rosedale's creation wouldn't be a
game: Second Life had no rules, no levels, no dragons to slay. It
was open-ended, a digital landscape without regulations (much
like the Internet in its early days). It was created on software

that operates across multiple servers—a grid system that could
easily grow to accommodate a large, far-flung community. A
user in Germany could easily partner with a peer in Mexico to
form their own mini-community inside Second Life, based on
common interests—architectural designs, whatever. "It's
basically Tom Friedman's flat world," says Philip Evans, an
economist at Boston Consulting Group who studies the industry.
"It's the globalization of the virtual world."
At first, it was a world with no rules. Rosedale's company,
Linden Lab, oversaw the allotments of server space, which
translates into virtual real estate, but imposed no controls over
what went on inside the Garden of Eden it had created. A user's
representation in Second Life—his avatar—would be bound by
no social constraints. And anything could be built, as long as
you could write good enough code. The first pioneers—graphic
designers, for the most part—simply set up display spaces for
their technological projects. Then small communities with
common ideas and visions—much like an artistic community,
say, in the real world—sprang up. Since then, cities have
grown, with urban amenities from stores to clubs. Upon arrival,
users are given the PC commands that enable them to move
around (walk, run, fly), dress their avatar and communicate with
others.
Newcomers agree to a list of several do's and don'ts, but within
the communities they form, residents can impose their own
codes of conduct. That laissez-faire attitude seems
unsustainable—as Second Life expands, eventually Linden Lab
will have to figure out a way to deal with the darker elements.
In one of the first troublesome incidents, residents reported last
year that "gangs" were forcing avatars out of public spaces.
Rosedale declined to intervene, saying his hope was that
residents would organize to police their own communities. They
are currently doing so successfully, with rare exceptions like
the recent alleged child-abuse incident.
For the moment, the social freedom is one of Second Life's big
draws. One can teleport to a nightclub like Dublin, find a

pristine beach on which to relax or start looking for business
opportunities right away. Crowded urban streets are lined with
clothing stores, car lots, supermarkets and nightclubs. Real
estate is the hot moneymaking market, with "islands"— private
invitation-only plots of Second Life land—selling for as much
as $1,650.
Real-world entrepreneurs and businesses sense the opportunity.
With its large, densely settled population, which allows for
division of labor, and citizens universally armed with ownership
rights and the tools to produce just about anything, Second Life
is in some ways the ideal free market. Consider 40-year-old
Peter Lokke. Toiling away as a department manager at a
Pathmark supermarket, the New York native had dreamed of
opening his own design business, but "never pushed myself to
get into it professionally." Two and a half years ago, a friend
urged him to chase his goals in Second Life. So Lokke paid
$230 to Linden Lab to buy a 375-square-meter plot of Second
Life land, and opened up his own clothing shop.
Today his avatar—a woman, incidentally—earns nearly $300 a
day selling clothing he designs for users to drag and drop onto
their avatars—twice what Lokke earned at the supermarket. As
for the clothes, he can make "infinite copies of anything." Once
he's designed a T shirt, he can make millions of replicas at no
additional cost. "My supply is limitless," he says. "There's no
bottom line. The costs are only what I pay Linden Lab."
Linden Lab's "no control" policy allows for any income made
inside Second Life (the virtual world's currency is the Linden
dollar) to be cashed out through the company into U.S.
dollars—even deposited directly into your checking account (at
an exchange that has remained fairly stable at about 270 Linden
dollars per U.S. dollar). A product created in Second Life can
also be sold outside it—on eBay, for example, a private island
was recently listed for $1,395.
And unlike, say, Sony, which owns the rights to anything
created in EverQuest, Linden Lab has relinquished all
intellectual-property rights to creations in its world, spurring

entrepreneurship. Roughly 90 percent of Second Life's content
is created by the users themselves—Linden Lab built the basic
architecture, like "Orientation Island," where users first create
their avatar and learn about Second Life. Indeed, the barriers to
entry and to commerce are so low, it is hard to imagine a more
ideal business environment for entrepreneurs, which may prove
to be the biggest driver of Second Life's growth. Lokke is so
hooked, he says, "I'd rather panhandle on the street than leave
Second Life."
A kind of alternate global economy is emerging in Second Life.
Linden Lab keeps information on transactions within the virtual
world to itself, but economists who study it closely forecast that
by the end of the year users will have spent 125 billion Linden
dollars in Second Life (about $460 million). About 5 billion
Linden dollars were changed (through the official currency
exchange, the LindeX) into $19 million in 2006. So far this
year, they've converted $37 million, much of it earned in
virtual-world transactions.
The multinational companies are using Second Life in a
different way: some are holding staff meetings where avatars
representing employees can discuss ideas via instant message,
e-mail or Skype, in a souped-up virtual office. Others are using
it to connect to customers. For instance, IBM is working with
clients like Sears and Circuit City to enhance the shopping
experience: adviser avatars can walk customers through models
of, say, televisions, and actually show them how the product
might fit in the living room. The 3-D, real-time experience also
allows multiple customers, who might not be together in the real
world, to communicate while shopping. A husband and wife on
separate business trips can pick out a new couch "together,"
discussing the dimensions, color and material in real time.
"Second Life allows you to strike up a natural conversation that
you can't do on a two-dimensional Web site," says IBM's Rowe.
With face-to-face interaction on the decline in offices—where
it's easier to e-mail or videoconference than schedule a live
meeting—and companies increasingly use the Web for

everything from distribution to customer service, a virtual world
offers the potential to form relationships that are far more
personal than online forms or e-mail. Nissan, for instance, lets
customers talk to salespeople and even "test-drive" its new
Sentra on a virtual driving track in Second Life. The Dutch
bank ABN AMRO has financial advisers available as avatars.
That communication potential also makes Second Life attractive
as an educational and research tool. Architecture professor
Terry Beaubois began teaching a Montana State University
course in Second Life two years ago, remotely from his
California home. Now at MSU full time, he meets with classes
each week out of "University Island," a mock campus that his
students designed and built, with classrooms, workshops and an
oceanside gallery where they display their work. Rather than
using paper sketches and cardboard models, they build
interactive replicas of real buildings and neighborhood-
development projects, adhering to proper structure, gravity and
physics. The texture of these structures, though certainly
animated, is detailed to the point where even a reporter can find
herself lost in the arches and hallways of a virtual workshop.
The idea has caught on. Although Beaubois's colleagues
questioned his decision to teach through what they called a
"computer game," he's now head of MSU's Creative Research
Lab and has the backing of the university's president (who has
an avatar of his own). And more than 250 universities,
including Harvard and MIT, now operate distance-learning
programs in Second Life. Students meet in virtual classrooms to
discuss history and political science. Teachers give virtual
presentations, and lead virtual field trips. Guest lecturers visit
from all over the world.
At the University of California, Davis, psychiatrist Peter
Yellowlees has set up virtual simulations to show students what
happens in a schizophrenic episode. Students can walk through
a replica of his psychiatric ward, analyzing terrifying voices
and eerie laughs, and can even see simulated schizophrenic
hallucinations. Many students find the images disturbing, but

Second Life helps them comprehend the "lived experience" of
patients who "constantly complain" that doctors don't
understand them, says Yellowlees.
True to the unofficial Second Life mantra—by the people, for
the people—patients themselves are utilizing that clinical
potential, too. "Brigadoon," for instance, is a Second Life island
inhabited by a group of adults who suffer from Asperger's
syndrome, a form of autism characterized by awkward, eccentric
and obsessive behavior. Asperger's patients have trouble
interacting socially and don't perceive things that should come
naturally—how to introduce themselves or strike up a
conversation, for instance. But in Second Life, these patients
are learning to interact in ways that would be terrifying for
them in real life. One sufferer has re-created a favorite
restaurant, where the group regularly meets. Gradually, they are
leaving their private island to venture into the rest of Second
Life, integrating into the larger community. "The one thing that
really amazes me about Second Life is the way it empowers
people," says John Lester, the former Harvard Medical School
researcher who set up the group (and now works for Linden
Lab). "It frees them from the role of the biological device."
Not everyone is convinced that Second Life is a good thing.
Some critics are uneasy with the idea of people's getting more
and more of their social activity online. "No matter how you
beef it up with little icons or fancy colors, [virtual worlds] don't
have the nuance of face-to-face interaction," says Oxford
University's Susan Greenfield, who heads the U.K.'s Institute
for the Future of the Mind. It all depends, of course, on whether
you see Second Life's taking the place of ordinary social
interaction or supplementing it, or as just another kind of
diversion—like "the 21st-century version of the novel," says
Greenfield.
For diehard inhabitants, Second Life is a novel they won't put
down soon. Elizabeth Ward, who suffers from reflex
sympathetic dystrophy—a severe and chronic pain disorder that
now keeps her at home—says "the interaction goes one step

further than anything that could be achieved online." Ward, who
lives with her husband, a software engineer, in Rhode Island,
says her disability can make life "frustrating and lonely," but
Second Life "has opened up another world." It's allowed her to
continue working, to meet people, to visit her son, who lives in
Nevada, and her best friend in India. She's gone sky diving, ice-
skating—even played an eight-piece violin concerto with a
group of mermaids under the sea. "I told my husband when I
first started, 'I felt joy as I did when I was little, playing with
paper dolls'," Ward explains. "But now the paper dolls are
virtual and can interact with real people." Whether you think it's
a pale imitation of reality or a vivid world of the mind, it's
captivating the globe.

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