What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning

Despite my age and gender, I am an avid video game player and I started when Pong was cutting edge! I haven’t participated much in any computer based games as I prefer different game systems such as Nintendo, Playstation, and X-Box. Currently my system of choice is the Wii.

For me, video games are not just a mindless waste of time. When I start playing, regardless of the game, Spyro, Zelda, or Second Opinion Trauma Center, I am on a mission to master the game. While playing any of the above-mentioned games, my hand eye coordinate becomes more acute, I become more observant of the gaming environment, and I think about strategies on how to get to the next level of game play. I just don’t sit in front of the television screen mindlessly pressing buttons; I’m truly engrossed in the game and my strategical thoughts. Video games promote active learning, not passive learning. The instructions that come with a game provide you with enough information to get started and then you need to figure out how to proceed, unlock secret areas, get to the next level of game play and, ultimately, to the end of the game.

Although video games typically do not fall into the traditional realm of learning, they are becoming more integrated in family life in preparing youngsters for school with reading and math games that are interactive. Being interactive is one part of becoming a good member in a learning community. Video games also teach children responsibility. For example, Nintendo DS has a game entitled Nintendogs that teaches pet responsibility while having fun participating in competitions, agility training, and grooming. Not that I need to learn pet responsibility, but I have this system and game as well. I just like to play with the cute little puppies and, admittedly, get quite competitive in the training and agility competitions!

Science has found that video games help promote better brain activity and may even be a preventive exercise against Alzheimer’s disease. Nintendo DS has a game out, Brain Age that directly targets that certain audience.

From fantasy games, surgery games, interacting with cute puppies, to games that promote better brain activity, I play them all and enjoy every minute of doing so.

A Rape in Cyberspace

After reading A Rape in Cyberspace; or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society by Julian Dibbell, I found myself questioning my thoughts concerning the ethical boundaries of virtual reality, pretend, and censorship.

Part of the magic of participating in digital otherworlds (MUDs), is that you can masquerade yourself to be anything you want, such as a cute dolphin or even a sick, twisted, fat clown rapist. It’s pretend, right?

Although I find the semi fictional acts of Mr. Bungle absolutely deplorable, I must admit that I advocate the thoughts of the technolibertarians. Mr. Bungle was an asshole, but his existence in this technical system was impossible to avoid and, because this otherworld is supposedly a place of pretend, the questions of expulsion and censorship start to arise.

In today’s virtual reality otherworlds, there are self-protecting softwares available to block cretins such as Mr. Bungle if YOU choose to do so. For me, it’s just like television or radio. If I don’t like what I’m watching on television, something that I may find uncomfortable, I turn it off. It’s my prerogative; however, it’s the prerogative of someone else to continue enjoying a program that I may find offensive.

As much as the actions or actually the words of Mr. Bungle sickened me, I do believe he had a right to play his character regardless of how offensive I found it to be.

It’s pretend, right?

Interesting Blog…Stuff White People Like by Clander

I was poking around WordPress and looking to read some interesting blogs for my own inspiration and, of course, entertainment. I found Stuff White People Like by Clander and, since I’m white, I decided to check it out and see what kind of stuff I supposedly like.

Clander touches on all different behaviors that he/she observes of white people. For example, Clander’s blog #76 Bottles of Water discusses how white people fail to understand the concept of turning on the tap, putting a glass underneath, and drinking. Clander refers to a PR Campaign launched in NY City to show white people they could actually drink tap water.

The blog continues to discuss the conceptions and/or misconceptions of white people and bottled water. I agree with Clander and his/her opinion that sporting an expensive bottle of water suggests…..ewww……tap water, oh no, too many impurities, blah, blah, blah.

Since there is now an environmental concern with plastics, Clander suggest that “advanced white people” are concerned about the waste that comes with drinking bottled water and their concerns for the earth. White people on the cutting edge are into water from metal bottles of water with a twist cap.

This particular blog comes across to me as lighthearted; however, after reflecting upon this thought of white people and bottled water, it seems true. So, if you want to be want Clander refers to as “advanced white people,” get rid of the plastic bottles and be the first on your block to have the cutting edge metal bottle. This allows you to still be fashionable while suggesting that you also are environmentally correct.

Video games is not a waste- Tere Cheatham

Not having to much knowledge on video games, I feel that they are not a waste. Their educational video games out there for young kids to play and be educated at the sametime. However, I notice that some video games are reported to be negative games but those games all have to do with violent actions. I feel that video games is a literacy because is known as having the ability to read and write but having a visual aid is good as well because someone could learn from seeing as well. I know that Dora the Explorer has been a good aspect to younger kids learning because she helps them with reading and speaking another language. Im not really certain but she may have a video game that helps kids with the samething but the only thing that would be different is instead of them reading from a book or watching television, they could combine the two and also earn the skill of using their hands because of the controllers.

Yes, I know there has been news reports on many young people trying out the actions they learn from a video game and in up hurting themselves or others but I still fill that’s just certain cases. Even with that being siad, young people are still learning from the negative video games because if they were not learning then how would they pick up on what moves to use when they play around when they try the stunts with their friends. I mean I feel they learn right from wrong when they play the negative video games. For example, if a kid is playing a video game that the action figure their portraying to be is killing everyone, I dont think that all kids will gomout and start a killing festival. So video games has meaning and kids learn from what they see, read, and write.

Also there maybe young students who want to become graph designers and video games ahve plenty of it so they may love to play video games because they can learn about their future lifestyles. I feel video games can be looked at from many views and different shades but in reality video games should be looked at as a literacy. One video game I do know about is Mario and I use to play the game on my game boy as a young girl. On the game there were parts where Mario was completed tasks and then there would be a stage where he has to like fight a monster. I never looked at Mario as something bad when I had the fight the monster. To me it was teacher me that Mario was a hero or a leader and I knew that I would want to accomplish tasks and lead. That was my perception!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So video games have a great meaning and kids know whats right and wrong, what they can learn, what they can do and say when they play video games

We Are the Web- Tere Cheatham

So many different web pages are introduced to people everyday and people have viewed these sites and joined different groups that beneifits them. In the article different sites such as Amazon. com. The companies who created this site serves high quaility material that will draw attention to buyers to make them buy or sell materials or items on this particular site. Every person in the world who uses the Internet has their own purpose and that is why the title ” We are the Web” is true because if people were not viewing the Interent and  creating ideas everyday then the Internet will never get any usage. Even the creaters of Facebook, Myspace, or even bloggers have their reason of creating their sites and that for communication purposes.  In the article it is stated that a person who blogs create it for their ” own delight and for the beneifit 0f friends” ( Kelly 4). If billions of users were not using these social websites the Internet would not really be popular in our society. The Interent is filled with so much information that helps people shape their lives and people who use the Internet are keepin the webpages alive.

Naked in the ‘Nonopticon’ – Tere Cheatham

Facebook newsfeeds has caused a problem with the college students. Speaking on behalf of myself, when Facebook first started the newfeeds, I was upset because it was personally stuff posted. For example, if i was in a realtionship it would say who i am with, their name and etc. Just too much personal information out. Plus everyone could see what’s going on with your life. Then when I notice that you could block the information so no one can see what you dont want people to view, I felt better because I like my privacy. I feel that  no one has enough privacy anywhere. I have different views on provacy. I feel that there is a lot crime that makes society place cameras up everywhere so I feel that privacy may be invaded but for a good purpose but when it comes to the internet privacy is not respected. The article made a statement about why “young people do not usually care about privacy but they care about what’s viewed on websites like Facebook” ( Vaidhyanathan 1). or myspace. I feel that young people care because of their image or because they want to keep secrets so if a girl has a boyfriend but does not want people to know then she would want to hide that for whatever reasons.

After the class discussion I was interested in knowing the fact that we reall have no privacy. Not having knowlege on the facts that where ever you may use a credit card, information is transported to the government sayin where you used it, how much you spent, who used it and etc. really made me open my eyes. Now I know we are being followed everywhere we go.

The Governor: Brittany Meyer

I really think that it is a disgrace that the governor is constantly cutting funding for higher education and all of its programs and resources. It’s bad enough that he has no real clear-cut plan for how he divides up the funding for the state schools. Some of the bigger state schools are getting less funding than some of the smaller schools. Honestly, it doesn’t make any sense. There is no transparency in his methods at all. This would be my first pet peeve with the governor. Then, last week, he came to Rowan and was speaking about his new plan for the tolls. Although in theory the plan seemed effective, in actuality the plan is going to cause a lot of problems for the majority of New Jersey residents, many of whom have to drive through these tolls every single day. There were many people who stood up to speak to him and ask him questions about his plans. Instead of the governor trying to appear concerned or sympathetic, which is honestly the least he could have done even the emotions were not genuine, he was extremely rude. He spoke over people, cut people off mid-sentence and rushed people when they were speaking with comments such as “Okay, Okay, I get it, just stop.” His utter lack of respect and speech etiquette were my second pet peeves with him. However, my latest pet peeve with the governor is how is treating the Knowledge Initiative Act. At every state college and university, the governor is cutting the funding for all of the major online database journals, such as EBSCOhost and Academic Search Premier. What does that mean to us? It means that when we have our big research papers due at the end of the semester, we are going to have to look for printed sources at various libraries and have them sent to us instead of just being able to search for them on these databases. This is a huge hassle, especially because many of the libraries have stopped subscribing to some of the printed resources because everything is available online and we’re trying to save some paper and trees. We can’t just sit back and allow this to happen. Please voice your concerns about these issues. Flood the governor’s office with calls. Email him. Send letters. New Jersey residents need to speak up and prevent him from doing any more harm than he has already done.

COSGA: Brittany Meyer

I am going to Texas this weekend and I am so excited about it.  Every year, there is a conference called COSGA (Conference of Student Government Associations) that is held at Texas A&M University.  The delegates of the conference are drawn from SGA members from 85% of all colleges/universities across the country.  There are a variety of workshops to attend and they are all very informative and give great ideas about a variety of different topics that might be useful to bring back to your own school.  There are also these really cool roundtable discussions that delegates are able to go to.  Each roundtable has between 15-25 people.  The roundtable groups are created by putting together delegates who represent schools of similar sizes but from different states.   Honestly, it’s so neat to be able to meet people from all fifty states who are equally as passionate about SGA and are interested in comparing notes and sharing ideas.  Many of the ideas that I have had for SGA for this year were taken from ideas that were sparked by things that I discussed with other COSGA delegates last year.

 

Our SGA here at Rowan got selected to do a workshop at COSGA this year, and it will be the first time that Rowan has ever presented there.  The workshop that we are doing is called “How to Respond When Tragedy Strikes.”  Our SGA decided that we wanted this to be the topic of our workshop because of the events that occurred at our school this year and how we, as SGA, chose to respond to them.  This workshop relates directly back to COSGA, too.  Last year when I attended COSGA, I went to a workshop that LaSalle University presented about how their school united its students and bettered its image after tragedy struck at their university a few years back.  The ideas that were presented during that workshop are what I suggested that our SGA do when we were responding to our most recent tragedies this year and they were really helpful.  Our SGA wants to give back to COSGA in a way, so that maybe our workshop will be just as beneficial to someone in the future as LaSalle’s workshop was for us.

Internet Plagiarism – Tere Cheatham

Internet plagarism has caused a lot of college students to be place out of their classes or even the university they attend. Just speaking upon some students I know from here have been examples of the Internet Plagiarism cases. From being in english classes, plagiarism has been the number one concern and especially when articles are used of the internet as sources for one’s paper. Since the internet has so many different links that could obtain the same information, students have to be very careful of which websites they search on. Most college students know that www.org or the colleges library have different databases that are considered good sources. The day I saw a friend of mines get dismissed because the teacher felt that her paper and another paper was similar and that they both went to the same website which was not a good source, I thought the samething that is stated in the article: ” My sense is that Internet plagiarism is becoming more dangerous than we realize” ( Laird 1). After hearing a huge amount of people getting dimissed for Internet plagiarism, I knew that Universities were taking it very seriously.

Most the time students may forget to give credit to whoever has made a statment and dont think anything of it but professor would consider that as bascially the student is saying that they were the ones who wrote the statment or quote. The article states that ” the internet is described as the cause of a percieved increase in plagiarism” ( Howard 1). I agree because  random websites which may not be academic can give false information.

Another reason Internet plagiarism can be a huge problem because now google and yahoo have essays written on wahtever topics and students are know to copy and paste , place the date, class period, and their name on the paper and turn it in. Knowing that technology is improving, now professors are checking to see where students information has come from and there is a 99% chance that the student who plagiarized will be caught because plagiarism is not just wrong but its considered a crime as well.

The one thing I argue about plagiarism is that sometimes students misuse sources. In the article it says that the author at her university was working on “urging that the university she  is working at adopts a plagiarism policy that differentiates plagiarism from misuse of sources” ( Howard 12). I think that is a good idea because some situations involving plagiarism are not serious cases but are taking seriously even if there was misused sources. I feel like the internet is good at times but not goot at other times especially when it comes to academics and getting good and educational sources.

Is playing video games a wast of time?-Jen Festa

Video games, as well as music, television and listen to someone tell a story are all forms of literacy.  I do not think any form of literacy is a waste of time, unless it is a type of video game which just involves killing.  But I have seen video games were there is like a story plot to the video game, and to understand the video game you must understand the story plot.  Also, most of the time, when you play a video game, at least a new video game, you have to learn it either from reading the directions or listening to someone tell you the directions.  Like Zelda is not an easy game, I think that you would definitely have to read the directions to understand it, and if you are not able to read the directions you will not have a good chance of understanding the game, making it clear that literacy is needed for everyone and it is presented to us in many ways.  I just want to add that I think music is a great literacy.  Like Jack Johnson for example, his CD Curious George, has so many great songs on there for younger kids to enjoy while learning literacy.  And there is plenty more just like that, but I feel like personally I have learned about myself so much through music and lyrics can definitely change a persons life.  One of my favorite forms of literacy is storytelling though, I love to hear a great story that is passed down in my family from generation to generation, to me there is no better literacy then that.