The article "violent media is good for kids," seems one-sided and only focuses on the possible positive effects of gaming.

First off, I don't believe all violent media is good. Senseless violence, or media that demoralizes violence is no good at all. This type of violent media serves no purpose in venting anger or rage.

I do believe some forms of violent media are therapeudic though such as video games.

I myself like to play video games to relax and vent my anger.

I'm not sure if it's such a good way to do it though because video games don't solve your real life problems. They simply just make you forget until it comes back later to haunt you.

Also I'm not quite sure violent media is suitable for everyone. Not everyone needs violence to vent their anger. Girls are raised differently from guys and seem to vent their anger just fine without the need to hurt or destroy things.

I think the author of the article is trying to get at the point that violent media CAN serve as a tool for therapy. He discusses cases where they have worked but then again there are many others that didn't. Take Columbine for example.

The kids that went on a shooting rampage were found to have video game addicts of first person shooters. Although there might or might not be a correlation, it brings into question whether violent video games are harmful or beneficial.

Violent media can encourage violence by demoralizing it and making it seem like second nature to children just like scary movies have desensitized audience viewers in the past decade.

I was incredulous at the aspect of someone editing information that is supposed to be correct. It makes me somewhat skeptical of the information I read on the website.

The wikipedia shouldn't be used as a definitive source on a topic. I think it becomes useful when you want to gauge other people's opinions on them against other more "traditional" sources.

For instance I used the wikipedia to research taiwan-china relations. Since this topic is so controversial, I searched through the wikipedia pages with the intent of looking for biases. I was looking for opinions that people thought were true enough to be in an encyclopedia. That or they wanted to mislead people.

I suppose the underlying problem with wikipedia is that there is no concrete author for a piece of work.

Granted, there are user names, but all one would have to do is create a new one to create more havoc if you get banned. I think that if they someone limited a person to one user account, perhaps accountability will help preserve accuracy on the site.

I browsed www.wikipedia.com and it seems to me people immaturely vote articles to be deleted based if it goes against their personal opinions.

For instance, the article about us election fraud was voted down based on "inconclusive evidence." The article sounded pretty accurate to me (ohio's provisional ballots, etc.). Although the proposition to delete is ultimately held up to a vote, I think that motions to do drastic things like delete, etc. should involve more than one person -- to ensure against bias.

Otherwise, I find the wikipedia easy to use since it was written by people for others.

I think I can safely assume that most people on campus have a computer and thus use AIM.

It seems to me that only international students use windows messenger or icq.

I'm not quite sure that that a Stanford IM server would be necessary (in response to the daily article) since many of the proposed features they want to include in the service are already included in AIM i.e. video, audio, mobile, etc. services.

Although I suppose that it could be a good thing since for some odd reason, the campus network doesn't like AIM servers since we periodically black out from being able to use AIM.

Also, if ITSS is going to do it, they're probably going to charge us a ridiculous fee for using it like they already do for land-based phone lines (which no one uses by the way), etc.

I would personally say that AIM is very important to me. They article was correct when it said that AIM has come to dominate all forms of online communication (email, etc.).

I suppose this is true since it lets people communicate in groups, in real time, and allows for premeditated conversations.

I have personally never used the audio, video functions of AIM but at least it is an option.

There's no other form of online communication that lets people stay connected all the time without it being a hassle.

I suppose that email would be the closest thing, but it would be bothersome to check your email every five minutes by refreshing your inbox. But even that five minutes is considerable lag considering that AIM let's people communicate instantly in a fashion that resembles face-to-face interaction.

It also allows for people to meet new people through the simple action of adding their screenname or searching for a person's email.

I suppose AIM, like cell phones have their negative points though. It would be distracting to always be in touch with people, and privacy would definitely be lost.

I think that using a blog for the past few weeks has been an enlightening experience. Prior to using one I couldn't understand why people would reveal themselves online to other people on such intimate levels.

After having been forced to use a blog, I have somewhat changed my opinions of blogs. Because we had to use blogs in response to ideas and topics presented in class, blogs have provided an outlet for me to present my own opinions and outtake on them.

You might ask why is this important? Well, in a classroom setting, you can't always express yourself completely in class and even then you can't exactly compose yourself the way you want to on the spot.

As such, the blog has provided a way for me to express myself as much or as little as I want, when I want.

To provided a comfortable margin of disparity between the blogs that initially turned me off and the ones that I have written thus far, I find it important that blogs be written in response to something, a directed prompt, controversial idea, etc. Otherwise, blogs tend to ramble on and extend to trivial matters like what a particular person ate for lunch or how hot the person sitting to their left in class is. As interesting as that sounds, a guided entry will most definitely be more concise and powerful in sending a message.

As a discussion, blogs can be good as they replicate the opinions section of newspapers. This does not necessitate that they are good if no one reponds at all or if they feel forced to respond.

Researching is not required for blogs since blogs are written in prose compared to concrete essays or persuasive essays.

Hmm.  What do I think about PowerPoint?

Well in my experience, I think PowerPoint is good for presentations simply because it lets you keep track of where you are in a presentation.  I also think it is good for students who don't want to copy every single thing down in class at the expense of their paying attention to the actual subject matter.  For example, I took Economics 50 last year with David Johnson and for the exact reasons against using PowerPoint in the article "Julia Keller: Is PowerPoint the devil?" by Julia Keller, he opposed using PowerPoint or anything electronic for that matter.  As such, I hated the fact that I had to copy approximately 10 pages of material every lecture and I also found it hard to pay attention to what he was saying at the same time. For those two reasons, I think PowerPoint is a good thing. 

In my lifetime, I have only used PowerPoint twice.

I'd have to say that I did not like it very much simply because it forced people to adhere to a new standard of presentation and reasoning. If I don't use PowerPoint, everyone criticizes me for not "working" hard enough (like the people who posted regarding my presentation). I think that is a bit unfair. I think the high demand for PowerPoint belies the fact that many people have become lazy when it comes to paying attention.  I believe my speech was short and easy enough to understand that a bullet point reiterating exactly what I was saying was unnecessary.  Like the article says:

• "I'm surprised at how resistant I've become to PowerPoint and such classroom technologies," mused Todd Parker, an English professor at DePaul University. "When they were first introduced, I thought I'd be happy to use such aids, but after trying several of them, especially PowerPoint, I've come to loathe them all with a passion - in particular because they easily become a crutch for the poor student and a stumbling block to students already too disengaged from the act of learning.

I also agree with the fact that the presentation should rely on the person presenting and not on PowerPoint.  Presentations like that are dry and unassuming simply because the presenter has no passion for what he is saying, but rather is allowing the slides to control what he is saying.  I felt this way about some presentations given in class thus far.  I mean if someone is going to use PowerPoint solely for that fact, then he might as well have his points written on paper and something else on the screen.  I find it redundant to talk about a self-explanatory PowerPoint presentation when it's already being displayed.  Surely, if I were a student for the class I would like to have a copy of the notes for the class afterwards for reference, but I find it wholy unnecessary to display during the presentation. 

For the same reason, I think a lot of people use PowerPoint as a means of looking professional and making up for their possible lack of insight and knowledge about the subject they are talking about.  Afterall, it is not a prerequisite of using PowerPoint.  All you would have to do is copy and paste what you want to say in PowerPoint exactly where and when you want to say it and that's the end of that.

Although there are many benefits to using PowerPoint, I also think there are many pitfalls such as over-reliance.

The article I mentioned can be accessed here:

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/5004120.htm