Violent Games are Healthy?

I was shocked by the title "Violent Media is Good for Kids." I never really considered the idea that violent games could be good. I am usually disgusted by shooting games and fighting games I see friends playing. This article was convincing relating to helping children deal with rage at a young age. I think the key is that the violent games and shows are fine until a certain age. At some point children should be mature enough to talk issues out. In reflection after instances such as school violence middle schoolers hsould not being playing violent games. By middle school games are most likely much more relatively violent than games played at very young ages. Middle schoolers have the necessary tools to deal with rage which younger children d not. These preteens would be better working on creativity activities expanding the capacity of their mind than playing army video games.
The interesting relevance to my own life is that there is a girl on my lacrosse team at Stanford who believes she is the Hulk. We lift as a team in the weight room three times a week. It helps her when we lift to viualize that she is the Hulk and she can envision having similar strength. I do not know what she would be capable of lifting with out these visualizations but I am impressed with how the role playing surrently helps her. The difference is that she is depending on channeling the Hulk's strength, not the violence. Also, she can turn off her fantasies at any point, younger children may struggle differenciating between their fantasies and realities. My weakness is that the only games I have enjoyed are the Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog adventure games so I cannot relate to the forum of violent games.
I found the links which Jones embedded in his text to be interesting. One link which read "our fear of "youth violence" isn't well-founded on reality," and took the reader to the website for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. I can see a small connection between the two but I am not sure why the page was linked.

The Future of the blog

This is my first experience blogging. Since it is my first time I like the structure provided in the current assignments and am able to respond well to the provided articles since so far they have all been veru interesting. As I explore the genre more I think it would be more interesting to have half of the assigned posts be content-response and the other half expressivists to try the other side of blogging and get a more well rounded experience. I realize I could do the expressivists blogs on my own but this quarter is so busy! Also, if they are part of the class classmates have the option to respond. I think research logs can be a bit forced, especially if someone is behind in research and has to make up details. This routine would make blogging painful and turn students off of the medium. Responses and expression are the way to go. Dicussion which is not graded could be engaging. I know personally I could not stand Panfora but an optional discussion as an alternative to a blog post could be attractive.

Wikis

These readings were the first I have heard or learned about Wikis but the idea immediately interests me. It appears to me to be an Internet version of what I liked so much from the Gup article we read the second week of class. Gup discussed the thrill of researching in the encyclopedia and learning so much more as you flip through the pages. Wiki has a similar mentality but with a delayed reaction, when you post something and then later check back similar somehow related topics will be added or edited to your original posting. It seems like a fun medium to connect with other people and explore different ways of considering an idea.
While I think the concept is ideal for brainstorming fictionalized stories and creating unique connections, I question the mediums validity on research topics. Since anyone can post it seems more than likely that some false content will be published. This validity can be established if people who post include links to relevant sources.
I found the UseMod page with questions and answers on Wiki to be particularly interesting; especially that the term Wiki derives from the Hawaiian word for quick, wiki wiki. Also, Wiki etiquette includes not erases portions that do not need to be erased and not using foul language. These parameters make Wikis appear to utopian websites, everyone is kind to each other and working together to make the best possible website… almost too good to be true. So I explored a few Wikis and am impressed with what I found. They are very simple websites with several hyperlinks to more in depth definitions. One on kayaks in particular was very easy to navigate, and clearly had been contributed to by several knowledgeable users (http://kayakforum.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/guille/wiki.pl?action=browse&id=WhiteWater&oldid=Whitewater).
I am still not quite sure that I would trust a Wiki for my own personal research but I would use a Wiki to start off looking for ideas for research and to view what sort of links Wikis can point me towards.

AIM

This post took a while for me to get started. I opened my computer which has a feature to allow instant message to sign on automatically. Before I had opened my blog I was already talking to Asheley about how David got back together with his ex-girlfriend and I was discussing with a different David (whose dad is a doctor) how I think I have acid reflux. Eventually Asheley went to sleep and I told David I had to get some work done. So I read The Daily article AIM-less Addictions. It was eerie how much the author hit on my own personal AIM addiction. Right down to the detail of signing off every once in a while just so the counter doesn’t get to days.
I thought the most salient point he hit on was how on AIM there is a certain ability to talk with someone for hours, then run into them in real life and not have anything to say. I think this is the most interesting aspect of the AIM phenomenon because it seems unexplainable. While the author acknowledges a certain convenience of AIM he cannot cite why is such a comfortable fourum. I realize that AIM allows the user to hide behind a screen to express themselves but a telephone still provides distance yet cannot be related.
I am exploring the topic of AIM and communication in my hypertext so I found this article particularly relevant. It helped me brainstorm ideas for a possible survey since I had so many of the same experiences as the author such as signing off so that the counter doesn’t get to high, that I would like to see what percentage of students have had the same experience.
The author concludes that we have become more social as a result of AIM. I agree in that I communicate with more people on a daily basis than without AIM. But I wonder what social interaction abilities do we loose when we do not have to be brave and use our own spoken voices to ask for a first date, or to apologize to a friend.

A lesson on blogging

What’s funny is that I had not truly formulated my opinion on blogs and blogging until I set about to write this blog. A short time ago, say two hours, I sat down to write about the suggested articles to read on blogging that I had looked at over the weekend. I was definitely on the fence about how I felt about blogs two hours ago when I began. I had the positive effects on education, was struck me was that kids were really enjoying writing, but also could not imagine an elementary education that did not stress handwriting; I wondered what these children were missing. I went so far in my blogging and thought process to quote Gup, and how reading his article had helped me reflect on what I had appreciated in my own computer-less elementary education. I continued the education issue by worrying about privacy issues. Children need to us writing as a means of discovering themselves. I wondered what details were being omitted from personal essays with the knowledge that anyone in the world can read their essay. This presented a natural segway into the article on Ms. Cutler and my important opinions on her freedom of speech versus improper use of a common medium. Through my examination I was still undecided on whether or not I supported mainstream use of blogs.

That’s when things went awry. This Mac I am writing on decided it could no longer support the 6 websites I had running. Without warning the Internet quit on me, closing all operations including my well thought out response on blogger.com. I immediately became frustrated and angry that I had put so much time into the posting and I had lost all the work I had put into it. I walked away, so upset that I decided I would not even do this posting, I would wait until the next one, I simply refused to recompose my thoughts when it was not my fault they had been lost. Still angry with my Mac, I considered going to sleep when I realized that my experience with writing the blog was just as valuable as the articles I had read. Blogs are a part of technology that can let you down. Paper and pen will always be more reliable to save your thoughts, but paper and pen are not accessible anywhere. So my conclusion is that the value of blogging is dependent on the situation. More importantly, always save your work.

Note: This blog was written in Microsoft Word and then copied and pasted. The author will no longer be taking any chances when blogging.

Paper Proposal Ideas

A research topic I am interested in involves auto technicians suing car manufacturers. Many cars today are manufactured in such a way that they require computer processing abilities specific to the manufacturer to fix the car when there is a problem. This presents a major issue to the average auto mechanic since they have to spend a great deal more to buy the necessary information to repair the cars. Recently auto mechanics sued car manufacturers to make the computer knowledge public so that they would not have extra fees when making repairs. Further car owners have also been suing; they pay so much for the specially made cars and are then expected to pay exorbitant fees for the repairs.

Another topic of note is the prospects of education over the Internet; I would like to examine what is lost by taking a course over the Internet with no face-to-face in-class time. How effective are course taught over the internet and also which societal group stands to profit most from the accessibility of courses taught on the internet.

A third idea includes the use of instant messaging in the Division One recruiting process. For the first time this year coaches are able to instant message with recruits. Previously instant messaging was considered as the one phone call for the week. I am interested in why the instant message conversation is no longer equivalent to a phone call according to the NCAA. I would look at the similarities between the typical instant message and phone conversations and also the formalities involved.

Right now I am most interested in my first and third ideas but will be open to exploring other options as I research the ones I which I currently find most engaging.