Academic Log Example

Ventura, Matthew, Valerie Shute, and Yoon Jeon Kim. "Video gameplay, personality and academic performance." Computers & Education. 58.4 (2012): 1260-1266. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.



Claim: Video games actually tend to improve social and cause other positive benefits.
Reasons: 
1)Like many other forms of entertainment (e.g., movies, music), video games are so popular because they engage a particular (and rather broad) audience.
2)video games can be seen as vehicles for exposing players to challenging problem solving activities. 
Support: 
1)engagement in video games has been claimed to be a product of particular video game features including: arousal, challenge, competition, diversion, fantasy, and social interaction
2)problem solving in video games requires a willingness to work hard despite repeated failure



Matthew Ventura, Valerie Shute, Yoon Jeon Kim explain in their 2012 article "Video gameplay, personality and academic performance" that video games may actually cause positive influences on certain people. He begins by describing how older studies denouncing games were actually incomplete and biased, and newer, more advanced studies describe all the benefits from different types of gaming. The authors explain the modern research into gaming in order to prove the validation to the pass time. This article uses a praising tone towards the audience of education research that it was intended for

What strikes me most is that about half the article is in parenthesis, which could easily provide further information and other sources.

quotes: Challenge entails adjusting the optimal level of difficulty for a player and is consistent with the theory of the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), which states that learning takes place right at the outer edges of one’s abilities. 

    Thus video games can be seen as vehicles for exposing players to challenging problem solving activities. These problem solving activities become more difficult as the game progresses. This repeated exposure to problem solving can affect Conscientiousness, Openness, and academic performance in many ways. First, problem solving in video games requires many organizational skills important to Conscientiousness. Organizational skills in video games can be anything from managing time to solving an investigation case (e.g., L.A. Noir), managing resources (e.g., World of Goo), to maintaining skills to upgrade in characters (e.g., World of Warcraft). Additionally, problem solving in video games requires a willingness to work hard despite repeated failure, which is another important aspect of Conscientiousness.

    Video Games expose players into a realm of problem solving. As their gameplay continues, so does the difficulty of the problems. They come with many different organizational skills that can be helpful to a person, such as resource management. It also requires hard work despite many failures, which is also important to the development of a person.

Valerie Strauss, in her 2010 article "Video game hurts schoolwork of boys--study," argues that video games negatively affect the schoolwork of boys. Through explaining the research of supposed experts on the subject, she describes that boys who have their own video game system spend less time with homework, on average. Strauss seems to think that everyone already holds her opinion that video games are detriments to society and wants to show that they are scientifically bad. The author uses a very high and mighty tone and is most likely writing this for parents to prevent the purchase of game systems.
Strauss article

The 2012 article in USAtoday, written by Greg Toppo, explains how Steinkuehler, a video games researcher, was hired by the white house to do advanced studies about and create video games that teach their demographic major life skills. He goes over information how it has become a widely known fact that video games are not only popular, but have an innate ability to teach knowledge, and it is Steinkuelher's 18 month job with the government to tap into this ability that games not often use. The author has written this to state a government project and expects us to feel relieved because there is a genuine plan to create improved education and knowledge among youth. The writer takes a very passive stance and targets this towards, generally anyone in America who has an interest on this.
Toppo article


 Her 2010 article in the Washington Post, "Study links violent video games to violent thought, action," argues Jennifer Huget's stance about how video games are violent and cause no positive side effects ever. She pulls through many random studies, many of which are unnamed, to reinforce her opinion that video games are evil. She wants to persuade anyone she can that games cause violent behavior in an attempt to bring negative behavior towards them. She targets this article towards mostly, older readers and has a very condescending tone.
Huget article

My Father

In my life I had the fortune (or perhaps misfortune) of having two fathers in my life. My first one, the biological one, met my mom in high school. She married him for no real reason. He was not smart, did not have an amazing personality, and generally was not the best person. I remember when I was little, we lived in a house together. My dad, the alcoholic he was, got drunk and through my brother out of a window. It was luckily only the first story but he still has a scar on his face from it. That was the last steady house I lived in for a quite a while. I would still continue to see him on alternating weekends, however.
 My parents divorced and my brother, mom, and I moved in with my grand parents. We were allowed a phone call to our father every night. The phone call was recorded, probably because my mom was hoping he would say something incriminating. At this point, I cherished him as my father; at that point I stayed really close to him because he was my father, and or that he did earn respect. He did not have many things keeping him along in life. Thinking about it now, I'm not exactly sure how he managed it. He was divorced from his family and lost his wife and kids, could not hold a steady job (I remember him working at Tire Stone for a while but not the other jobs), his family disowned him, and he did not have many friends (if he had any left by that point). His family, in turn after disowning him, disowned me as well. They never outright said “you are disowned” or anything like that, but they refused to talk with us and we were generally shunned from the family. I am not very concerned about that because they were and most likely still are incredibly classless people.
 My dad was the kind of person who would live life to his fullest. I remember he would do things like pop the car onto two wheels in traffic and scream out the window, while his family was inside. I was young and did not realize how stupid and reckless that was, all I know is that it was funny and kind of cool. The years since his passing I slowly realized how many different instances like that there are, where he is either reckless and stupid, or just incredibly crude and irresponsible of a person. To avoid child support, he claimed unemployment. At the time I assumed it was just legal thingies (terminology I used) because he made money making phone face plates and selling them on ebay. I never considered what a scummish thing he was doing. He rejected normal employment to avoid paying child support for me and my brother, and all he did was glue printed paper onto store bought blank face plates and put a glaze on them.
 When he left, he took my brothers pet poodle with him. He also remarried another women he met online, most likely just so he would not be alone. She was not really a bad person though. I never heard anything about her family, and almost nothing about the rest of her life, though. On Saturday mornings I would always wake up extra early, then me and her would play word puzzle games on the internet. It was simple, but I found a lot of enjoyment out of it, probably because I was treated equally when we were playing those games. Something I envied about them (especially the way they made money) is that they seemed free. They were not kept busy by a schedule they had to keep up with, they made their own rules. That is the way I like to live my life (to a limit) and that may be the one biggest thing I am truly glad I got out of this whole ordeal. The one gift I am glad my father gave me is my sense of freedom. I love going where I want when I want. I'm not keen on planning activities, and I love life this way. They did whatever they could to try to keep me, even though I did not notice or even feel like that was what was what was happening. I never complained though, that was the only time I could ever be spoiled.
 I do not even remember how old I was at the time, but my mom started dating my counselor at summer camp one year. I am still not sure, to this day, how that happened. She made quite the impression when they first met, not as an attractive single lady, but a bitchy Jewish mother. I do not even remember exactly how the earlier time of it went, but I did not realize how awkward that it was at first. Once in a while me mom would take me and my brother to sleep over my counselor, Greg's, house. I also did not realize what was actually going on and why we especially could not “wake them up” at night, I just assumed the ceiling was normally really creaky. I did not mind the nights over there, he had a Sega Genesis. To this day I am still an avid gamer, although underprivileged. I never got the latest games so when I got to play Sega, I was extremely happy. Games were also my distraction from the world and what goes on around me. Greg ended up moving in with us, and taking care of us physically and financially. His entire family, including him, is composed of music teachers. This fact in itself had a tremendous and irreversible affect on my life, the gift of music. Between my two fathers, I obtained the gifts of music and freedom. I never had the easiest time growing up, but if I had to choose a normal life without those gifts, then life better give me all it has.

I am a reader.

I was told to look snobby, so I went to Starbucks.