For the online roleplaying activity, I chose the role of a journalist. My character was named Ezra Lobsterman. Before we started, I had a lot of different ideas as to how I would approach taking the role of this character but once I got to down to actually typing and responding to others that were posting on Schoology, I had a very difficult time setting up Ezra's character. I felt like this was because of the topic -- Should cursive be taught in school? It is one of those topics that has a very lackluster debate to follow because it is not something that people feel particularly passionate about. People are either indifferent or leaning slightly in one direction, but as far as debates go, it is going to be one of the less passionate ones. So because of my less than enthusiastic feelings on the topic, I took on a neutral stance (as all journalists supposedly do). In doing so, I kept a professional voice and tried to provide readers with additional research on the topic as a way to bring into question the validity of previously posted sources. My responses varied -- some were in favor of cursive, others not so much. I wasn't able to really give Ezra a personality; the topic and role I took were very limiting and I couldn't figure out how to give him a memorable personality with what I had to work with. If I had to do it again with the same role and same topic I would have probably been more imaginative and liberal with how I interacted with others (for example, add new elements in the discussion through "investigation" and dredging up past events that may have influenced the positions of other roleplayers, questioning their motivation).
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