New Technologies Usually Excite Me, Not This One

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I’m getting a new phone for my birthday but, that doesn’t interest you. My point is that I am usually excited by about new technology and sometimes receiving it. The topic I want to discuss is the concept behind self-driving cars. I recently read over in a report titled Deep Shift Technology Tipping Points
and Societal Impact and noticed that there was a self-driving section in the report. I have never been high on the idea of self-driving cars. I do not like not being able to have control over the car and I am always afraid it will get hacked or something.

In the article goes into some interesting details. Driverless cars will equal about 10% of the cars on a U.S road by 2026. I find that really interesting that already we are hearing about these cars so soon. Think about it, in approximately eight years, we will see a lot more of these cars on the road. We are even seeing some self-driving cars right now. Look at Japan. In a CNN article by Daniel Shane, he talks about how Nissan is already putting some of these cars on the road in Japan by 2019. These cars will have all of these cameras and sensors to make sure that the car can navigate correctly.

It is not only Japan and Nissan who are looking towards the future, GM is as well. In an NBC article by Phil LeBeau, he talks about how GM wants to get self-driving on the roads by 2019 as well. In fact, they have some Chevy Bolts on the road being tested in the San Fransisco. It seems as if they want to make this a taxi service? Maybe just for now.

Going to back to the original article, these cars do have some positives going for them. Safety will definitely be improved or else if something goes wrong we could have some big lawsuits. These cars would also be electric and won’t be giving off a lot of air pollution. Some negatives are that truck and taxi drivers will more than likely lose their job. We now get to which I think is the biggest negative and that is the possibility of somebody hacking your car. I’m sure that somehow GM and Nissan will figure out ways to counter that but hackers are always thinking. If it was not for the possibility of hacking or the car just responding incorrectly, I would be all in but, that’s not the case. We have a lot of time to perfect this right now though. I think we will be in good hands down the road.

The Infographic Experience

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Recently I made an infographic on a blog post I am currently working on. Don’t worry, it will be out soon. Anyways while doing that I learned a lot about infographics. It is a various useful tool to help organize information. I used my infographic to demonstrate different statistics on video games. I discussed different stats like how many hours people play video games and what video games are the most popular.  The way they have set up is really helpful as well. You can choose from various different types of charts and they are very helpful for whatever type of data you are putting on the graph. I would definitely recommend using Infogram.com Here is my Infogram that I made https://infogram.com/video-game-statistics-1hkv2njx1nyn6x3

Grammarly and Hemingway Editor Review

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You have a paper due 11:59 P.M. that night. Every single college kids worst nightmare. Well, at least one of them. Anyways you have to rush to finish the paper and mess up a lot of grammar. Luckily, we have to writing tools on the internet for free. In this article, I will review the two free writing tools, Grammarly and Hemingway Editor.

First up is Grammarly. I will start with my likes first and the segway to my dislikes. What I like about Grammarly is how easy it is to install. Go to your web browser, type in the website, make an account and then install the extension. It’s really easy and free! In terms of Grammarly itself, I have found it to be very useful. One thing I like about it is that it asks if you are a student, teacher or a writer and then proceeds to ask you if you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced. After selecting your two options it tells you what it will look out you while you write. My dislikes include the fact that you have to pay to unlock all of Grammarly’s features. It is $30 a month which is pretty expensive for a grammar editor. Overall I would recommend the free version. It gets the job done and it is an easy process to install.

Next up is the Hemingway editor. What I like about this writing tool is that it gives you more suggestions on what to do. The problem is, it doesn’t always tell you exactly what to fix. Sometimes it will just say it’s hard to read. That’s great but what if you review that sentence multiple times but can’t find something wrong with it. It’s confusing sometimes but it does give some helpful insight at the same time. It also points out when you are using “fluff’ words and when you are using the wrong tenses. While you need to pay for Hemingway Editor to get all of its features, it is a surprisingly reasonable price. It is only $20 which I find to be very reasonable. I do not all the full features that you would obtain. I do however know some of them. If you upgrade you can edit anywhere. It also includes the ability to send your papers to others with the recommended edits and then others can tell you how you could potentially fix that.

Overall I think both are great for being free. I would pick Grammarly because once you install into your web browser, and you see suggestions everywhere you write. After writing this article, I can definitely see a difference in certain things I used to make mistakes with.

Video Games and Violence: Do the two correlate?

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Video games have come a long way since the first game invented back in 1958 called ‘Tennis for Two’. Now we have 4k graphic compatible games and multiple game consoles. There are many genres of games ranging from adventure to sports. One genre causes more discussion then the rest. That genre is violent video games like first person shooters and fighting games. Examples would include Call of Duty, Mortal Kombat, Gears of War, etc. Even Pokemon can be included because the monsters have to fight each other to determine a winner. So now to the main question, do video games cause violence or violent actions?

I came across an article on CNN titled “Do video games lead to violence?” About a year ago a teen killed nine people in Munich, Germany. This teen was a fan of first person shooter games, so naturally the discussion came up about if video games cause violence. The American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics each agree that teens should not being playing violent video games. The American Psychological Association (APA) says that 90% of children play video games in the United States. 85% of games for sale contain violence of some sort. The APA says that “research demonstrated a link ‘between violent video game use and both increases in aggressive behavior … and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy, and moral engagement.'” The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says “that violent media set a poor example for kids” and “should not use human or other living targets or award points for killing, because this teaches children to associate pleasure and success with their ability to cause pain and suffering to others.” The academy conducted over 400 studies that show a link between violent video games and acts of violence or aggression in society. However not everyone is on the same page. Some scientists have some other thoughts and experiments.

Whitney DeCamp has discovered other evidence that opposes the APA and AAP. Whitney is “an associate professor of sociology at Western Michigan University.”  He concluded that evidence does not show a correlation between violence and violent video games. He says the studies have shown that the two correlate, however, he says that there is a chance that the kid or teen “may have a predisposition toward aggression.” In his own studies he asked 6,567 eighth graders if they had played violent video games within the past year. He concluded that violent video games do not predict violent behavior. Christopher Ferguson, associate professor and co-chairman of the Department of Psychology at Stetson University, not only agrees with this statement, but even goes as far to say that playing these games reduces societal violence. His reasoning behind that statement is that they stay off the street and do something they enjoy, hence causing less harm to society. During the week of the release of a popular new game, there is a general decrease in societal violence.  Recently a group of 238 scholars told the APA to retire its “outdated and problematic statements on video game violence.” To me it seems as if times are changing and these two professors and other scholars seem to think there should be an update in the studies. DeCamp said that almost young males play violent video games and the large majority do not commit crimes in society.

Personally I do not think video games and violence have a direct correlation. I have played violent video games since I was 12 and I have never once thought of committing a violent act in society. Obviously I can not speak for everyone who plays violent video games. There are studies that prove and disprove the correlation. I think there is a slight correlation but I think there are other factors besides just the violence of the video game. The best method which was pointed out in the article is that parents should monitor the games they play and their actions.

 

Have you ever googled yourself?

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I think it would be safe to say everyone here has used google. In fact, you probably used googled when you were young. Back then you could not really google yourself because you most likely did not do anything worth notice. However now it may be a different story. Have you ever googled yourself? I did and what I saw shocked me a little bit.

Okay so it did not really shock me because I did not really expect too much. I am not really into social media that much so I did not think I would see much and I was right. The only social media applications that came up was Instagram and Facebook which is what I expected. I only created my Facebook so I could join the Muhlenberg Class of 2021 page. My twitter for my First Year Seminar also came up. Now I know from doing this in the past that people with the same last name as me also show up. In fact the people with the same last name as me show up more than I do.

Now besides social media and other people my name does actually appear on google! Is that not crazy? In high school we had a news network that I was apart of and we covered sports and other school events. Since I was a senior I took one of the leadership roles in developing the sports footage. The featured video was from my friends and I covered National Signing Day. My friend and I also made sports hype videos for the school and for professional sports. We made Super Bowl, March Madness and NBA finals hype videos.

A year ago in the summer my friend asked me if I wanted to write a sports blog for fun with him and his friend. I accepted as I thought it would be a cool opportunity to write about sport topics I liked to talk about. Throughout the course of a month I wrote four different blog posts. One about football, another about basketball and two on baseball. As I continued to write I noticed my writing was getting better and more people from my school would read it. The blog never really took off but it was still fun during that last month of summer.

Naturally I used google before I looked up myself like I would assume everyone would. It is interesting to see if Yahoo or Bing came up with something else. It was interesting to see that Yahoo and Bing showed less of me and more of others with the same last name. My Facebook did not show up as well as my twitter for my First Year Seminar. My blog post were also nowhere to be found either. So do not just google yourself, check out the other search engines as well. Overall googling myself was interesting. You never really know what you are going to see on the internet. Hopefully down the road when you google my name you see that I am sports broadcaster.

 

Do we own our Domain?

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Writing for a blog during your first year seminar is pretty cool. You feel like you have a job and that you are writing for people who can read online anywhere any time. In the The Web We Need to Give Our Students article, the author (Audrey Watters) mentions that the students have more control over what is viewed and said on their own personal site. The author also states that students can express their thoughts and opinions through writing. I agree completely that when you can free write your thoughts for others to see and give feedback. Another cool thing about this whole concept is that you can look back at what you have written throughout your time of schooling. Having your education travel with you throughout your life is a big advantage.

I love the points that the author brings up in the past article, but in this next article “Do I Own My Domain if You Grade It?” the author (Andrew Rikard) brings up some good points I agree with. His first point he brings up that what is the point of making it public if the only people who will see it will be your peers in the class and the teacher. To us students I can absolutely see where he is coming from in that regard. The point he is trying to get across is that the students will see it as public grading system and therefore it would not feel like a blog to them. However, overall having a blog that is part of my education has more pros then cons.

Hello world!

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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!