club penguin, post 7.

How much more fun can one have than spending their Saturday night on Club Penguin!?

Actually, I have to admit. The people were a lot more talkative tonight than the previous weeknights that I've been on. After I logged in and played around for a few minutes, I noticed somebody had actually sent me a private message! They're much more like e-cards than like email but it was still fun to get a little note from a stranger. I sent one out to another random penguin too and it costs you ten coins, so kind of like how in real life you have to pay for postage to send a letter.

When I was wondering around penguin world trying to collect stamps, I wound up in a room that I had never been in before. I randomly clicked on a rock in one of the places and it lifted up to reveal a rope ladder going down. Here is where I landed. I walked around it for a while and clicked around bit I couldn't actually find anything to "do" there. Usually when I type messages, nobody replies. This time somebody did! Granted they told me what I had already figured out but it was still nice to know somebody had actually read what I wrote.

All in all, I just left wondering how much different my experience would have been had I been a paid Club Penguin member. There was a lot of things for me to do as a non-member but many of the games even would not let me continue on unless I had a membership. I guess it's the whole try it before you buy it thing and they want to get you hooked and make you really want the membership. Now to go write my paper...

club penguin, post 6!

I just logged on to find somebody saying, "recording party at my igloo!" and decided to check it out. People were impressed with the igloo (imagine how many games they had to play to earn enough coins to buy all this stuff?!) but people still don't really interact. They might say things to each other, but at least of what I could see of their chatting, nobody really talks to each other. I know that they can send email-like messages to one another but I suspect they don't really do that. It's more about checking out what others have and playing with your own penguin. A lot of it is all about having pride in getting people to want to visit the place that you've spent your time making.

Unfortunately, since I'm not willing to be a paid member, I'll just have to visit others' igloos rather than decorate my own. Now off to play puffle launch on Club Penguin because it's actually sort of fun :)

club penguin. post 5.

Decided to play some Club Penguin today rather than do my work for tomorrow and I did the Easter Egg hunt they had on their site. There was 8 hidden eggs across the club penguin world and for each there was a little clue as to where it would be.

Even for me as still pretty much a newbie to the website, it wasn't very hard to figure out where the eggs were. There was a few that I had to use a cheat website to figure out what it was referring to but towards the end, it was obvious where the eggs would be since an egg was hidden in each part on the map.

Once I got them all, I could claim my prize and it was a background for my penguin. Not too exciting but my guess is people love collecting all the different ones.

I was however a little disappointed today when I thought I finally won enough coins to dress my penguin up a bit to see that it's a members only feature. I guess that's one of the perks to having the paid membership. It does let me play games and find items but the money I earn is kind of pointless if I can do nothing with it. However, I know this is a children's website and they likely care more about playing the games than amping up their characters like I do.

CP (post 4)

Hey all,

Tomorrow Jared, Alex, and I give our presentation on internet users and audiences. Although I my project is on tweens/kids, obviously (hopefully?) not website we're frequenting, you can get something from my presentation.

As far as my time on the site is going, I haven't really figured out much more but have come across http://clubpenguincp.com/, a website filled with cheats/hints for Club Penguin. I haven't tried anything from the site yet but there are tons of articles I read on things I didn't even know existed in CP world. Perhaps I'll have to figure out what the "Elite Penguin Force" is or the complete one of the missions with cute titles like the "Waddle Squad" or "The Veggie Villain." Looks like they're going to take a while to complete though based upon the number of steps under each one, however. Sounds like a task for spring break.

But anyways, I must get back to finishing my paper and I'll see you all tomorrow.

Here's one of our questions for tomorrow: In what different ways did these users use the internet compared to how you use the internet?

Club Penguin (post 3)

This afternoon I tried to figure out how to play games and earn coins on Club Penguin. It was a bit tricky to figure out where to play the games but I figured out where some were basically just by clicking on anything I could until options came up to play games.

I played a single player inner-tubing game first. It was pretty simply. You just us

e your mouse to go back and forth and click to jump over things. In the end I ended up killing myself in the game because it got boring but I earned some "coins" with it which I assume I can use at the various shopping places on the map.

They do have multi-player games however on the site I found when I walked into one room and sat down at one of these connect four looking boards. I was about to type "anyone want to play?" as you can see on the bottom of the screen but somebody had already started playing with me before I finished typing it. It was a quick game and when I won, I got 10 coins.

Today was also the first time I ran into an instance where I was limited in what I could do because I didn't have a membership. There was three different versions of the "Puffle Rescue" game and two of them were for members only. I'm not really sure it would have been worth it seeing as the two I couldn't play were just different versions of the game I could play, so not really anything new.

When I walked into the Pizza shop on Club Penguin was one of the first times I actually saw people interacting on the website with one another. Occasionally I'll see people say "hi" to others but here one member tells all those in the room who are girls to say "i" to which many respond. Also, people seem to be having conversations at the tables. Although people were asking/ answering questions, it never amounted to any conversation with much substance . Most users seem content on just waddling around and playing games by themselves.

Next time I'm on CP, I'm going to spend some of the coins I earned today to try to customize my penguin! Maybe then I'll also have a better chance of fitting in with the experienced users since I feel like I'm one of the only ones who's penguin doesn't have clothes.

tween audience site. (post 2)

I've decided to ditch the gURL.com website because I feel it's more for teens than tweens/kids and try out Club Penguin. The kids I babysit for, 10 and 8, are always playing on it or talking about it so I decided to sign up for it today. I've seen them playing it before but I don't know much about it other than it kind of looks like secondlife with penguins for children.

I signed up for a free account (there are paid accounts - I'm not sure what more you get with it) today and messed around with the site. It is definitely for kids as I has to "send an email to my parents" where they could click and allow me to use the site. I also found it pretty cool that parents were aloud to pick how there children could connect with others on the site itself by picking an ultimate safe chat or a standard safe chat. I picked the standard safe chat so I can hopefully see more of what the people are saying on the site.

I haven't figured much out about what the point of the website is yet or if there are certain things I'm supposed to be doing while I'm on it besides walking my penguin around but I do think the site does a good job of keeping its users safe. When I logged in and told the website to save my password, a screen came up explaining in simple terms what this might mean which I believe would be helpful to the kids using this site. Most (adult targeted) websites would never inform their users of the dangers of something like this so I think it's great that kids can learn it on Club Penguin and apply it to other websites.

Hopefully next time I'm on I can figure out how to play games and figure out how the "world" there works. There is a lot to see on the site itself but it's almost too big to me as a newbie as I don't know what to click on first. And maybe I'll post a picture of my penguin self :)

Tween/Kids Websites

For my practicum assignment, I have to explore a, "tween/kids community." Upon my google search of, "tween community," I've found gURL.com, a website that seems to be dedicated to tween/teen girls. There is definitely a lot of links to click and things to do on the website, almost to the point that I didn't know where to start.

The first thing I decided to do was listen to FOE (standing for friends or enemies) radio. It's really a lot of alternative punk/rock music but with pretty clean lyrics. Not really what I'm into but maybe that's what tweens are into these days. Between every song, their was a little add telling you that you should find and add them on twitter and facebook. It was also funny to me that some of the ads on the radio were for Lowe's. I'm pretty sure the users of this website are't doing very much home improvement.

While I listened to the radio, I spent the rest of my hour on the site was taking quizzes, trying to post on their confusing message board system, rating makeup pictures, and reading submitted "comix."

I think within time I will find my niche on their website but as my first time using it, it was very frustrating to me. The website is filled with links but half of them take you to other websites and the other bring up the url on a new tab even though it's from the same website. By the end, I ended up with about 10 browsers just of their website.

Next time I'll try to personalize my account more and post on some of their articles. It seems like they have a lot of information about issues tweens may have such as dating, family/friends, and body image to name a few.