My essay is going well, honestly the only thing I really need to do at the moment is finish my negatives aspect (adding in medical stats and whatnot), finish my conclusion and draft - another 250 words then I'm done. It's flowing really easily and the information I need is readily at hand. I'm following the plan I set up last time and it's working for me so I see no need to alter it or change directions. I have however found that the positives of my topic seem to outweigh the negatives - although that has just come from one book so I do need to collaberate the information I have now with more recent studies. In saying that though I have a fair idea of where to look for this info.
But I was rather surprised with the medical facts I did find on the positives. The stats I did find were unexpected but it was interesting to note how video games were being used to help sick kids and even the military. I think I was so facinated by the posisitive aspect of this topic that I wrote more on it than I meant to lol.
The information I have found for the negatives seem to be saying all the same thing, and while that's a good thing I need to find more stats and it would be nice if I could find more medical journals on the topic. It's a minor issue but one I intend to fix when I take a long visit to the Library.
I'm not really 'organising' my essay continually on paper like a continually updating plan. I just write a very basic plan that allocates how many words I can apply to each subtopic and what order they are to go in, write a basic intro, do a skeletal outline of my essay ideas without references, then I go through and find facts to back up what I've said and add those in (I generally have to change my original ideas when I do this), I write my conclusion and then I go through and draft everything - this sometimes involves re-writing entire paragraphs. It works, I know how many words I can spend on what and I can focus on one aspect at a time without getting confused and going off topic.
I do this for every essay I write and so far it hasn't let me down.
About Me
- ~*Cass*~
- This is an online research journal/blog for my Uni class - I actually don't like blogging, at all, I can't understand why anyone would care what someone else is doing ^_^; so if you're reading this I officially don't understand you, unless you're my tutor, in that case - HI! ^_^
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Friday, 23 September 2011
E-petitions and Clean Feed
I suppose there are lots of ways to stay in touch with what’s going on politically via the internet and stay true to your own beliefs. I mean I for one don’t really care about what’s going on, mostly because it’s all about the parties making them selves look good (and frankly that gets old after a while especially when they’re not doing a very good job) but I know there are ways to involve myself if I chose to do so. For example I’ve signed and e-petition a while back, it was to do with the rising cost of licenses.
It was easy to do and I had it sent to me via an e-mail. I know this particular e-petition raised a lot of support and got a lot of people involved. There are sites were you can create your own e-petition and even seek out one’s to sign. All in all while it may not always work it at least allows people to feel like they’re contributing and having a personal say in what’s going on. It’s a step up from simply allowing our local member decide for us.
Another interesting topic is ‘Clean Feed’; basically the government wants to censor what we can look at on the internet. It’s a good idea concerning child pornography and other evil things floating around; I just worry about where they’ll stop. In the end who’s going to decide what we can and can’t view? I’ve already taken a look on Google and the first three hits I got where “No Clean Feed In Australia!” So while it’s a good idea in theory, especially when it’s out to stop nasty things from floating through the net, it’s a bit intrusive and, no matter how you look at it, it restricts our ability to surf the net as we please.
Plus when they black list something we don’t even know about it because it’s ‘classified’. So, in theory, I could be on my way to check up the timetable for an upcoming tournament. But if the site had been vandalised and had material that should be ‘censored’ attached to it, then it could be blacklisted and I wouldn’t be able to access the site – and truthfully that would just make me grumpy.
So unless they stick to just censoring child pornography and other evil notions then I don’t really want a bar of it.
Further Reading
Essay Plan
My Essay Plan
Video Games and the Effects they have on Children today.
It’s a rough draft that’ll likely change when I’m writing the essay but for now my ideas include:
Introduction – around 150 words introducing the idea that there is a debate on whether or not video games are harmful to the health of our children (keeping this quite unbias). Talk a little about the pros and con’s (nothing to in depth) then move on.
Negatives – I’m going to start with the bad here, it’ll be around 300 words, concentrating the first half on what professionals are saying are some of the harmful effects of games – mostly lack of exercise, anger problems and a safety risk if some of these games are online.
I’ll focus the second half on really analysing these topics and discussing how and why these problems occur.
Positives - this’ll be around 300 words as well and virtually a flip of what I’ve just talked about. In this I’ll discuss the good effects that video games have on children – learning experience, depending on the game can depend on what they learn, e.g. it might require a lot of reading (something like the Pokémon games is a good example), or it might be a puzzle game; basically anything that requires them to use their heads in a good way.
In the second half I’ll discuss the benefits of what games can do if they’re monitored and the children are allocated a select amount of time to play them. I’ll analyse this and hopefully have an even counter argument.
My opinion – this’ll be about 200 words and I’ll use this to weigh both arguments and come up with my own idea of what’s best.
Conclusion – basically a sum up of everything, including my own opinion and it should only be around 150 words.
Random Essay notice
Essays! Love them compared to videos. I have chosen to do video games and the effects on children as my topic. I’ve gone through the Uni library and databases and selected books that look like they’ll offer some interesting information. I made sure to find books, and journals, that argue that video games are effective tools for learning and others that say they are detrimental to the health of children. I’ve written out a base plan for where my argument will go and have tried to divide my essay into small topics so I’ll stay within the 1000 word mark – not easy I tell you, I’ve gone well over the word limit in my plan alone so I’ve got some work to do in cutting it down. All in all it’s going much better than the video and I’m actually looking forward to writing it. ^_^
Video Update
I’ve finally finished! My video is complete. I haven’t the fuzziest idea how to post it on my blog but it’s done and dusted so I’m happy either way. It took a little more effort than I thought it would just to play around with the camera angles, motions of the characters and the facial expression – but now I’ve got that warm fuzzy feeling just knowing that I finished it ^_^. I think I partially own this video, I mean I did create it, however the idea (produsage) isn’t mine and neither is Wikipedia. So while I own the video, credit must be given to those people whose idea’s I used in it. The content I used was likely public domain material (Wikipedia and Xtranormal). I did have to share my video on my Xtranormal and it does allow for others to share my video with blog spaces as well.
And yes I realise this is out of order but I wrote this up ages ago and only no decided to post it.
Week 8 Free and Open Software
What is the difference between free and open software?
The fundamental difference between free and open source software appears only to be in the values that they both represent. ‘Free’ software refers to the program being free to use as you’d like, not ‘free’ as in it costs nothing to obtain. It, in the words of Richard Stallman, “mean[s] that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes” (1).Basically it allows us to tinker with the program and reshape it into anything we want. ‘Free’ Software is an ethical stand against proprietary software; it gives us the opportunity to choose what we’d like to use rather than being confined to using just what we’re given by the corporate giants of the technological world. It’s likely that we’ll still have to pay for it though.
On the other hand ‘open source’ software values a more practical approach to offering a free service, rather than Stallman’s ethical one. Like its name suggests you can take a peak at the source code and mess with it to suit your needs, whereas with closed source software like Microsoft and Mac you’re restricted access and have to like what you’ve paid for. Unlike ‘free’ software, ‘open source’ software has some restrictions placed on them that ‘free’ software does not. To sum it up, ‘open source’ software merely means that the source code is available to look at and can be modified, it has less ethical standing than ‘free’ software but it’s still a useful alternative to proprietary software.
Further Reading
1. Stallman, R. 2011, Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html, updated 13/07/2011, date accessed 16/09/2011.
Multiple updates on the process of making my vid
Blog 2.0
With a lack of a speedy internet connection, I’m having trouble getting anything done. I can’t really explore anything at the moment since our connection isn’t fast enough to load anything outside a time frame of ten minutes ^_^; totally sucks. I’m having trouble even loading the readings for this week – its day’s like this that make me wish for unlimited Wi-Fi.
Blog 2.1
It’s a new day! And finally the internet is back so I can do something. I checked out the Xtranormal website, looks like it’ll be fun to play around with the only thing that has me a bit bummed is that if I want more points to access different set and characters with I have to pay for them – which isn’t happening. So that leaves me with trying to ‘finance’ this little film – which I haven’t even started yet.
Blog 2.2
Finally! I’ve actually started my video and am currently writing my mini script for my little minions on Xtranormal to rehearse lol. All jokes aside, I’ve found it hard to really get into the swing of this video and truthfully I’m only on a role now because the dead line’s already past and I have better things to do then worry over this video. Although, it certainly has been entertaining making my video people sing and dance ^_^
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