Online Courses

So this course was my first online course and overall I feel like it went well. At first I took an online course because with the rest of my schedule was kind of hectic with labs and stuff. Taking an online course allowed for me to free up some time during the day and allowed me to do the work whenever I had free time between other classes. At first it was hard to get used to. Im used to having teachers reminds us each class of when the assignments are due. Although through Web CT it reminded us when assignments are due, unless you checked every week, you only realized something was due a couple of days prior when Web CT said an assignment is due soon. After getting used to this fact and realizing it was up to me to check on the assignments and stay on top of things, I think things went smoothly. Another thing that I needed to get used to was the fact that when you ran into problems with the assignment or the sites that we being used, it was kind of up to you to communicate with others and try and figure it out. Of course Professor Reid was on instant messanger whenever you needed to ask him things, but having someone explain how to do things online was not as easy as I expected it to be. I think this is because I was used to meeting with the professor face to face and having them show me how to work things and how to fix my problems, so having to communicate through the internet was definiatly something I had to adjust to. Besides getting used to staying on top of things myself and communicating through the internet, everything else was pretty good. I am happy that I took an online course and I am happy that for my first time, everything went pretty well.

Our Final Podcast

Okay so before when me and my roommate went to the library to complete the podcast assignment we usually anticipated that it would take hours. This is because it did take us several hours to complete and upload the assignment. During our first podcast we have several problems getting the microphone to work. After figuring out how to work the microphone, we had issues uploading the podcast onto itunesU. Therefore the process was frusterating and extremely long. The second podcast went a little better and it took us less time to get the microphone working but we still had problems with uploading. The third podcast took us even less time but it still was a lengthy process and we were still running into some difficulties. I was very happy yesterday when we went into the library and completed and uploaded the assignment in an hour and half. This was like record time for us and even though we still encountered some problems, they were not hard to fix. This makes me extremely happy because now I definiatly feel as if I have come a long way since the beginning of this course. I feel as if I have really accomplished something. It is a good feeling when you get better at something not by accident but because you kept trying and got used to the device. I also feel like I am becoming more computer aware. I feel like I know a lot more about computers and how to fun things than I did four months ago. I am really grateful for the opportunity to learn how to create podcast and I really do hope that I will have use for them in the future.

Play Money- Overall

After finishing the book Play Money, I can say that this is by far my favorite read for this course. I felt as if this book was the easiest to read and I think the author did a great job making it interesting and keeping my attention. It could be because I have personal experience with the things that were discussed in this book, but overall I enjoyed it very much. I wish that I could have the computer knowledge to take part in the virtual world, and maybe even make myself some money. Although I do not know much about the trading and selling of virtual items for real life money, I wish I did. I envy those who know enough about this topic to know which items are going to be wanted and which rare items to pursue and buy. When I first began reading this book I felt as if trading and selling virtual items was an easy route to fast cash. I was completely wrong though. I now understand that just like every other person who works forty hours a week to make a living, even those making money from this profession still have to put in their hours. It seems as if the hours needed to make a living through this type of action may even exceed the forty hour work day. Although I do not know much about this process, I do know a lot more about it than I did previously to reading this book. I feel as if the author has given me the knowledge to expand my horizons and see that there are far more ways to make a living than the popular professions. Now a days people are making more money through the internet than doctors and lawyers are making. I am happy that I no longer think that the only way to make a decent living is by going to school for years to become a higher paid professional. Overall I feel as if I have gained a lot of knowledge from this book and not only was it useful but it was interesting too. I give the author credit because previously it was hard for me to come across a book that was both interesting and useful, I usually only could find one at a time.

Neovox # 2

Okay so for my second Neovox I decided to talk about the negative effects of video games. I feel as if when most people discuss the advancing technologies, they fail to look at the negative side of things. I also decided to write about video games because I have personally witnessed a lot of the issues that I discussed. When working with children I have witnessed parents who fear their children will become obese because they enjoy playing video games rather than playing outside with their friends. Obesity is becoming a more and more common issue among Americans. The number of obese children are increasing, and increasing fast. I do not mean to blame all obese children on video games, of course there are other important factors that contribute to obestiy like children's eating habbits, but the lack of physical activity plays a role also. I have also witnessed parents who fear that their children does not have that many friends in school because they are always playing video games and this results in them not building on the necessary social skills. Again there are other factors that could play a role in their child's lack of friends but the parents feel as if video games play an important part in their child not having friends. Another huge thing that one will run into when working with children is aggressive behaviors. When someone witnesses an aggressive child and talks to the parent's about what may have caused this behavior, some say violent tv and video games. There has been many cases done that proves that children who play violent video games for more hours are more likely to have aggressive behaviors. When parents are concerned as a teacher or an assistant teacher at the time, I would suggest simply monitoring their child's video game playing. If the parent is really that concerned they can take the video games away completely or they can set a limit of the time their child is allowed to play. Now there are ratings that go on the video games to give parents the opportunity to know what age the game being looked at is appropriate for. There are always ways that parents can get around the problems at hand, all the needs to be done is for the parent to take the necessary action.

Play Money- Taxes on Virtual items

I am kind of drawn on how I feel about taxing virtual items. I feel as if people are making profit off of selling virtual things than they should be taxed because everyone else is taked when they make a living. Another part of me thinks that there shouldn't be tax on virtual items because these items don't actually exist. I feel it is almost bad enough that someone is paying real money for a nontangible thing but then to turn around and get taxed on those items it's even worse. I never really understood the point of paying real money for virtual things but I guess if someone is really interested in getting ahead of the game in a video game than he or she will go to whatever limits to do so. I just don't know if I feel it is right to tax someone on something that they will not be recieving in real life, but then again I don't agree with taxes at all so it could be a biased opinion. I guess I may feel as if it is only fair for our government to tax these items because if they are in need of the money for more important issues, it is only fair that they tax these items if their going to tax tangible items also. I don't know, when it comes to these issues I have mixed feelings.

Play Money- Work And Play

After reading some more of Play Money, I have come to realize that there really is an issue between the two terms work and play. Some may think that for those who make a living working online and selling or trading virtual things, it is more playing than working. Before reading this book I was one of those people. I always thought that if people were spending their days online trading things or playing games, it wasn't work, it was play. After reading this book I have come to change my mind. Within these chapters we read about several different people who made a living online, and their lives did not seem as if they were that much better than normal. Of course they didn't have to worry about leaving their houses early enough to make it through traffic and still get to work on time, but they did have other obligations. Every person that was talked about in this book seemed to be online for an excessive amount of hours everyday. Some people are even online and working for longer than the normal eight hour work day. I believe that working online has its ups and downs. For one, if a person has young children and does not want to put them in day care, they can stay at home and watch the kids while making a living to support these kids. If a person is handicapped and in a wheelchair they may find it tedeous to find a business place where transportation and moving around is easy. There are certain circumstances like these that make me feel like the ability to make a living online is extremly beneficial. However, there is always the case that while working online you do not have a boss that is always checking over your sholder to make sure your staying on task, there is not way to guarentee that your not going to get distracted easily. There is also the issue where a person working online may lack the social interaction needed. Besides communicating through the internet, when working online, these people are usually in their houses for the majority of their day. Who do they talk to? In this book it shows how easy it is to get addicted to an online occupation. It may start off as one who is doing it for fun and enjoying whatever little income they are getting. Then once that person starts to make more and more, they strive to keep that income increasing. Although many may see this type of job as playing, I believe that just like every other job there are negative aspects that go along with it and there are also tedeous tasks that they must complete. I guess whether or not you work online depends upon your preferences. If your not a peoples person and you would like to sit home and do your work, online professions are just right. If you like to communicate with others while being out and about, then online jobs are probably not the road you want to travel.

Virgina Tech

The Virgina Tech shooting was a horrible incident. After hearing many different stories about the incident from various news channels, I have come to the conclussion that technology played a role throughout this occurance. Technology was used from the campus staff to send students an email to tell them to stay in their rooms because it was not safe elsewhere. This is my eyes may have saved some lives. Although there was a lot of lives lost this day, I feel as if it may have been a lot more if there weren't emails being sent to students telling them to stay in their rooms. I even heard from on news channel that the shooter has posted onto some type of blog telling whoever could read it that he was going to shoot people at Virgina Tech that day. This gives me mixed feelings, part of me feels as if maybe it were a cry for help thinking that someone would read it and somehow he wouldn't have gone through with the whole thing, and then another part of me feels as if it was him being cocky and bragging. Regardless of my feelings the fact of the matter is if the news was correct and this really did happen, someone should have read it and someone should have done something. I understand that there may be a lot of this going on all the time and therefore it must be impossible to decide what threats of statements to pursue but if that isn't the case was it not reported because no one read it? I always imagined that once you put something on the internet there would be hundreds if not more people reading it or watching it. Was I wrong? Another disturbing part of this incident is the video that I saw on the news off of someones cell phone. I mean cmon why is this person close enough to the scene that he/she could record the horrible incident on tape, why wasn't he or she running for their lives? I mean is technology really advancing to the point where people would really be stupid enough to put their lives on the line to catch something "big" on video? I am sure there were a lot of people inside that would have rather been outside like that person, and if they were they would have been running to safety rather than taping the damn thing on their cell phone. These are my feelings and I do understand that there are facts that may not be correct, regardless of that though this incident was horrible and sad. My heart goes out to friends and family of the lives that were lost that day.