Educational Video Games

I have played several video games in my life some are sports games, others killing games, and others have even been educational. What ones do I enjoy the best? The sports ones. Because, I grew up playing sports games, my first video game was Madden 64. Had my first video games been, Mathblaster who knows how much that could have improved my math skills. Video games are something that are taking over our youth. Books are getting pushed out, but we do have books online now and people are finding ways to make reading books on an ebook or computer "cool." I found a fantastic article about educational vidoe games ("Educational Video Games Mix Cool with Purpose" By: Stefanie Olsen) and even a place where students can create their own video games to help them. I think this is fantastic and can only help out youth learn and feel "cool" doing it.

(photo from flickr.com sean dreilinger's photostream)

Keeping Children Safe

We all know that the internet has been a hunting grounds for sexual predators. It is getting worse and worse. I will not lie I love watching, "To Catch a Predator." That show is pretty funny, people walk in with a bag filled with condoms and alcohol and say they were just coming to visit the 13 year old that they asked to see a sexy picture of them a week earlier. The worst part about that show is that most of the predators have a job that is associated with children. But, I found on the internet a source that is taking a stand against predators using facebook. This source finds predators on facebook and deletes their profiles. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/12/thousands-of-sex-offenders-booted-from-facebook-myspace/%E2%80%8F My only problem with this is that if I had been convicted of a sex crime and looking to do it again, I wouldn't use my real name. So hopefully they have come up with a better, more efficient way of keeping these people off the internet. I just hope that will all the other updates with technology this is something they look into controlling.

Picture from: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/original/predator_hansen_nbc.jpg&imgrefurl=

When will it stop?

After lecture this morning I began to think about how hightech is too hightech? When will all the updating stop? Before too long don't you think that we may become to hightech with gadgets, computers, and robots that we may eventually create something that could take us out? Who knows how this will all end up, hopefully not like the movie I-Robot. But with all these gadgets making life so much more easy for us wont it make our society lazy? I have already heard from several people that my generation is lazy and noone wants to work. So if we continue to get more and more inventions that make life easier for us I feel that this may becoming more and more true. I found a pretty good video that contains some good inventions and then some inventions that just kind of make you shake your head! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUxcVpWcoBU (The ice cream cone just makes me laugh)

Picture from: http://www.geekalerts.com/u/toyota-robots.jpg

Safetube?

The other day I was in my Feild Experience classroom and the teacher decided to show a youtube video. Not that big of a deal, but she had search a few different videos and watch a few different videos to make sure that she got an age appropriate video for her 2nd grade class (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wp3m1vg06Q). That is the video that she showed to her classroom. But, what I am wondering is if there is a youtube or youtube like site that has already regulated videos to insure them being PG, PG13, R and so on? Or if anyone thinks this would be a good idea to help save people from having to look through videos to make sure that they are appropriate.


Picture from: http://renegadekids.co.uk/shop/images/Do%20Not%20Enter%20Sticker.jpg