Practicum 5 - Lauren

It has been a very long time since my last pos. The truth is that it has been very difficult to get my hands on an iphone again, but I finally did. I hoped that today I was going to be able to use the iphone one last time to finalize my understanding of ARIS and all that it has to offer … but I was wrong. Today was a disaster. First of all it’s FREEZING! I wanted to finish the “UW Campus Tour” game and find out who/what I might meet at the end of the quest. I thought my game had saved from the last time I played but I was wrong … I had to start all over. I ran to the first few sites that I remembered being directed to the first time I played and eventually got to where I had left off, Lathrop Hall. I tried to get through the tour as fast as I could, firstly because it was so cold outside and secondly; I wanted the chance to play some of the other games before I gave the iphone back. I ran to Lathrop Hall, then up the hill to the top of Bascom, then to south hall, then charter street, then Sterling hall, then Van Hise, Van Vleck, Ingram, north hall … and finally… the big finale, Bascom hall. The last quest was simply walk to Bascom hall … and that’s it. So that was a major disappointment. I thought I would be able to say more about the game than I had last time but the truth is I was right from the start. The UW campus tour is simply just that … a tour of UW campus.

Okay, so now I wanted to try out one of the other quests. I tried to play Dow Day, a game I had opened for a minute the last time I played. This is a situated documentary about two days in 1967. The first “quest” was to locate my “editor using the gps tab. I was at the top of Bascom and the map showed my editor to be somewhere on Langdon street. I started walking and then… disaster. I kept getting a million network error messages that read “internet connection is slow or unreliable.” I stayed outside walking around trying to find a better connection but the error messages persisted. Eventually I had to return the iphone … so another failed attempt at figuring out this horrendous game. Hopefully ill get another opportunity to play, but as of now this is all I have on the subject of ARIS.

Some advice to those curious about ARIS: don’t play! Its boring, unrewarding and Wisconsin’s winter climate and not conducive by any means to an enjoyable ARIS experience!