Seeing Both Sides

Common Ground

The common groung we were able to find was that Jamie and I both agreed to say that there needs to be more regulation but not take guns away completely. And then We also agreed that there should be mandatory gun safety training and regular shooting practice requirements.

Remain Respectful

Keep trying to find middle ground and a balance to both regulation and training everyone. Not leaning one way or the other.

3D Gamelab Wrap-Up

The thing I liked about 3d game lab was the new innovative way for students to relate popular culture to school and be able to do the homework at your own pace. What I also liked were raid days that helped you go in and get in person help if you did not get anything. I also liked the idea of being able to use a lot of available sources out there to do homework like Youtube, Twitter, Blogger, Cinch and Glogger. One thing I didn't like was not being able to ask the teacher questions directly through game lab in case of any questions. Another thing I didn't like was that quests were all over the place instead of similar and on the same point. I thought a lot of quests were about relevant things but there were no options to it. My only suggestion would be to make an in-game way to communicate with teachers or peers. Another thing I thing I think would be very beneficial for mastery quests would be to allow more options on some of them instead of making it about a certain topic, some quests let you go out and find the thing you wanted to write about but other made you examine and analyze one particular thing. I also believe that being able to link external websites to 3D gamelab would make assignment turn-ins way easier instead of having to find links. Kind of like being able to link twitter onto blogger and being able to follow others blogs.

Unpopular Culture

One trend of contemporary popular culture that is bad for society would have to be the text messaging language used by many younger generations. The text messaging language has if fact ruined current students ability to use proper grammar and spelling. In one study called "The National Text Messaging Bee?" they asked the students ranging from young kindergartners to preteens a riddle where the answer was giraffe and everyone got it right except one person and the point was to show how many different spellings the students came up with. Some examples from this study are, " garaph, graiffe, giraff, girraff, jeraf, geraff, giraiffe and draff." Another study called "The impact of text messaging language shortcuts on developmental students' formal writing skills" argues that students are unable to differentiate between text messaging and academic writing. The author in this article, Sherry Rankin, tries to explain that text messages shows students to take shortcuts around proper spelling and grammar. I myself sometimes have experienced this in my writing I will put U instead of you and I don't notice this in my papers until I proofread it but sometimes it will take a few times to go over it and proofread to even notice it. This study also argues that people who text heavily also force teachers to try and adapt their teaching styles to fix and help students low literacy skills, they tend to be the ones who text the most.

 The study showed that when people who text a lot started writing they were the ones with the most breaks and most grammatical errors. But once they were given a cell phone their responses to text messages were immediate and they made all the same mistakes but the people they were texting did not even notice or bring it up. Another study showed that people who are texting right before or during a paper will make 35% more errors than someone who is taking their time and not texting. After I saw all this research that goes into this I decided that it is bad because it also makes it acceptable by people for someone to misspell something or have grammatical errors. As a young preteen or teenager who will influence you the teacher who is telling you what to do or your friend that accept you for all the flaws. So I believe this also has a big impact on this because kids now are happier being accepted in a group than they are being judged or graded. So if people don’t tell you every mistake you make in a text message and just let it slide then you see it as what is acceptable. Teachers are grading you and writing down every single mistake you make and showing you everything that is wrong and people react negatively to this. Although there is no way to stop this at all their needs to be some kind of common ground found so that people can still use their short texting and still have proper grammar.

Works Cited

Rankin, Sherry. “"The impact of text messaging language shortcuts on developmental students' formal writing skills".Walden University. 2010

Sobotinic, Marilyn. “The National Text Messaging Bee?”.Children and Libraries.Winter 2008

Everyone Googles

I first started my search on Google by putting in the date of February 26, 1939 and letter to Mrs.Henry M. Roberts Jr. In this search I got of bunch of .com websites and and a bunch of crazy titles to these links. But this gave me a starting foot that said it was a letter from Eleanor Roosevelt. Then i searched Letter from Eleanor Roosevelt on February 26, 1939. The first link was to docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/tmirhfee.html This seemed like a good website at first until i started looking for credibility. There wasn't anything just background information on the letter and what the letter itself said. There wasn't any indicators that it was good website. The next link wast to National Archives website. To begin this website seemed very credible because it was a .gov link. The website was sponsored by The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and gave a phone number and everything. So I believe this is the most credible source because it is a government organization that solely specializes in researching these documents and archiving them.

On my first Google search of this Document I just entered Background Map. This was a terrible mistake because I got a lot of links to a bunch of stuff I did not want. Then I refined my search by googling Background Map AP Newsfeatures because I saw that right on top of the legend. Right away as the first link i got a .gov website. This was the Library of Congress website so I automatically knew this was a credible website. This site is also the most credible because the Library of Congress has the most important document of our country and if they have this document they have to have done extensive research on it.

My first Google search was City of Montgomery Complaint of 12-1-55 with this search I got a bunch of random links. I got some that were not even on that date i also got some that said how to file a complaint in the city of Montgomery. But I had no luck. The next search I did was City of Montgomery Arrest 12-1-55. This search was much better in the top 5 search results i got 3 .gov websites one was the CNN website which they are known for their news reporting and the last one was Historical academic journal. I clicked on National Archives link because I had already been there and established it was a credible website. I believe the National Archive has to be the most credible source for this document because it has experts that just deal in this document.

I first typed House Roll Call Feb 10 1964 for my search on google.com and the very first link that came up was National Archives this was a website I had already established as credible. And next link was to Library of Congress website that I also established as credible. Then the search after this starts to fall through by first going to a Wikipedia and then a few .com websites and then some blogs and finally it just goes off topic. The national Archives website is the most credible because it has extensively proven its credibility and the credibility of the experts that work for the organization.

My Lovemark

My “lovemark” would have to be my Nike shoes. Nike has established themselves as one of the biggest named brands in athletic wear. They have put out sports wear in every sport on the planet and every country on the planet. I find myself so loyal to Nike that I only buy Nike brand footwear. I believe this is because I consider myself pretty athletic and I love sports and Nike is at the heart of all that. Also this all started when I got my first pair of Nike Air Jordan’s when I was in first grade. I wasn’t considering how much they would last or how much better they were then my previous knock off brands. All I could think was Michael Jordan made a huge success with Nike’s because that’s the impression I got from Nike. We all know he got his success from hard work but Nikes gave me the impression that by just having the shoes it was possible to just be at the top. And from then on my love and loyalty to Nike began and have not bought any other brand of shoe. Every Nike commercial now has some kind of physical related activity in it. This gives off the image that Nike must be worn in order to be as good as those athletes. Also if you pay attention not one commercial has anything about the shoes and why they are superior they just go on talking about how in all of sport when push comes to shove you “just do it” in Nikes. Every time I have been playing in a soccer game when the game gets tough I just think of all the people in the same Nike shoes and how the push through and have a lot of success in professional sports. I know this is a little weird but somehow that comforts me and gives me the energy I have to finish the game.

Here is one Nike commercial that was made for the FIFA World Cup:

In this video all the Nike company showed was when there is a big moment in soccer everyone does it in Nikes. It has no detail at all about what Nikes are or how good of quality they are made. 

So as you can see my Nike "lovemark" used my love of sports to get me to get me to love them. This assignment help me understand what that feeling inside of me when I go shoe shopping that makes me pick Nikes every time.

Wednesday June 27 pics

We're All Doomed

I read an article called 5 Reasons Most Studies About Violent Video Games are B.S. By: Dan Seitz. In this article it is clear that Dan is against all the studies done on violent video games. One thing he says that seeing violence doesn’t not make a person violent. He continues on to say, “Then there’s the fact that in the U.S the crime rate peaked in 1991 and has been dropping ever since. Factor in crimes per capita and it drops like a rock. So, it’s pretty clear we, as a country, have developed a huge taste for violent media…but are becoming less violent as a country.” After looking it up on the FBI UCR Crime Report this is a true statement the crime rate has dropped drastically from 1991-2010. So that’s one reason on violent video games making people violent isn’t true. Later on in the article Dan also claims that research is only focused on video games but it does not compare video games to other violent media like football, ufc, hockey fights. After I tried looking it up on Google, LexisNexis, and other Article databases I was unable to find research on these topics so that’s another good point he made. So if you want to blame violence on video games to be fair you have to take into account all other violent media that kids are being exposed to. Dan also states that research also fails to take into account the home factors in before the violent video games are introduced and he says, “One thing psychologists definitely agree on across the board: if you beat up your kid, or scream at them constantly, or just ignore them, they’re going to have serious emotional problem.” After I looked up an article on CNN and Palo Alto Medical Foundation and these two articles did no research what so ever on the home life of their subjects all they tested was the video games. So if your not taking into account the other factors you are leaving a lot of information out making your study incomplete. I was able to find on many articles on LexisNexis that did support his claim that psychologist do agree that if you abuse your child they would have emotional problems. Dan Also goes on to explain that the “studies” to claim this do not say what kind of study was done or what where the methods used to take the study. I believe this is true I found many news articles and videos on Fox News, CNN, AZ Republic that all just state studies they never mention any researchers name or what the study was called or anything. So I believe Dan has made a very solid argument and I found that all his major claims were supported by some kind of research because I went to look up the claims he made and everything was supported. It was all supported by major credible and widely accepted sources like CNN, Fox News, The FBI’s UCR, and LexisNexis.

http://www.uproxx.com/gammasquad/2011/11/5-reasons-most-studies-about-violent-video-games-are-b-s/