The Relation of Narratives and Video Games Essay Example for Free

The Relation of Narratives and Video Games Essay Video games are a relatively new form of entertainment; the first video game is considered to be Tennis for Two (1958), around fifty years ago, while film has been around for over one-hundred years, the printing press for over five-hundred, and storytelling for thousands of years before that. Because of its newness, video games are a developing medium, their conventions and potential have not been explored as fully in comparison with film and literature. Computers as a technology allow us to overcome more complex tasks and obtain and utilize information more quickly than previous technologies. Often there can be the tendency to describe the new medium as radically different from the old, solely based on its technology. However, it is not necessarily the case. Video games do have new capabilities that separate them from previous storytelling media and it is these new characteristics of video games that separate them from film and literature, creating an environment of storytelling where the traditional narrative structure does not directly apply. Using narrative media as examples a lot can be discovered about video games, however, one must remember what makes them games. See more: how to start a narrative essay Looking at video games as a continuation of games in general rather than an extension of film, they hold a history dating as far back as the ancient Egyptian game of Senet (discovered in the 2686 BC tomb of Hesy-re) (Juul, Half-Real 3-4). It is these game components that must be understood before looking at games from different perspectives. Jesper Juul drew from theorists before him to present what he denotes the classic game model. Juul defines that a game is: 1. a rule-based formal system; 2. with variable and quantifiable outcomes; 3. where different outcomes are assigned different values; 4. where the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome; 5. the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome; 6. and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable (Half-Real 6-7). This model is only a barebones description of what games are and does not outline the variety of games, or what makes games enjoyable. This model is also transmedial, meaning that games are not tied to any medium, just as storytelling is not tied to any medium—there is no ideal game medium and there is no physical component common to all games, but there exists the â€Å"immaterial† component of rules that is common to all games. Rules are the base component of games. They govern how the game is played and they should be designed in a way to make it clear what is and is not allowed in playing the game. Games therefore resemble a state machine, a term used in computer science to describe a machine that consists of an initial state, accepts a number of input events, that changes the state responding to the inputs using a state transition function (in the case of this example, the game rules) and then produces outputs using an output function. Visualizing a game as such, the activity of playing a game produces a game tree that can be seen as branching off at each decision and input. Playing a game is interacting with this state machine and exploring this game tree (Juul, Half-Real 55-56). Rules, however, are seen everywhere in the world, and it is not solely the existence of rules that makes a game. The second item of the classic game model—that games must have variable and quantifiable outcomes—is a salient feature of the game. If a game exists in such a way that no matter how the player interacts with it, it always produces the exact same result, it is not a game. The variable outcomes must also have different values, with some being more desirable to attain than others. In the video game Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo 1985) the outcome of losing all of the game lives is less desirable than defeating the last stage. A player must also exert effort to influence the outcome, generally in a manner that requires more effort to realize a more desirable outcome. It is not merely enough that the player interacts with the game, they must also have a sense of agency. Agency is not simply interaction, but interaction where the player has influence (Murray 126). This separates games of pure chance and gambling as borderline cases. In a game where the player rolls a die and the result of rolling a six is considered victory, the player only exerts trivial effort to roll the die, and exhibits no agency. The player of a game must also feel emotionally attached to the outcome—if the player loses all of their lives in Super Mario Bros. , the player has achieved a negative outcome, and agrees to feel sad, while if they defeat the last stage, they have achieved a positive outcome and agree to feel happy. If the player is not emotionally attached to the outcome, they would not exert the effort to play. The sixth item of the classic game model separates games from the real world—game theorists Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman call this subset of the real world a magic circle (95). Games are a part of the world that they exist in, but the rules carve out a world separated from the real world. It is here where the consequences of outcomes are optional and negotiable—games are a voluntary activity where players can decide the consequences of the game. Soccer, as an example, is a game where in some cases players decide the consequences are simply the glory of victory, but other players, decide that the consequences are career-changing (in the case of professional soccer players). On the other hand, the rules for a political election are game-like and could be played as a game, but an actual election has decided, non-negotiable consequences and therefore is not a game. In the same manner, it could be argued that professional soccer is not a game, but soccer itself is still considered a game as it is known that soccer is played recreationally and its consequences are negotiable. The classic game model outlines games as a voluntary activity that evaluates a players performance—based on a players effort and skill in interacting with the game rules, a variable outcome with an attached value is reached, to which the player is emotionally attached. However, with the advent of the video game (as well as the pen-and-paper role-playing game), the classic game model is not all there is to games anymore. It is still a valuable definition, but the addition of the computer to games modifies the standard game definition. When it comes to rules, the computer is able to handle far more complex processes than a human, allowing for games where the player is free from enforcing the rules of the game, instead having the computer run as a referee of sort. This referee capability can operate anywhere from playing tic-tac-toe to simulating entire fictional worlds. The ability of the computer to run as a referee also allows for rules and calculations to be kept secret from the player. This ability to manage a large amount of information, as well as the ability to run it in secret allows for the computer to manage whole fictional worlds spawning a new type of game, the progression game. This now means there exists two types of games (elements of which can be combined): emergence games and progression games. Most games that have existed before video games are emergence games—games where a large variety of game variations and outcomes come from a small set of rules. Chess, soccer and Pong (Atari 1972) are examples of the emergence game. Progression games require the player to actualize a predefined sequence of events in order to beat the game. The progression game came about with the adventure game and early examples include The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo 1986) and Final Fantasy (Square 1987). Now that video games can have this progression capability and the ability to easily run fictional environments, they have expanded to include storytelling components. The study of video games, therefore, delves into not just the study of rules and interaction, but also the study of narrative as well. Narratives operate fundamentally differently than games and one cannot use the same methods of study for both. Therefore, when comparing games and narratives, just as one must understand games, the basics of narrative in comparison to games must be understood as well. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a narrative as a spoken or written account of connected events; a story. There are three traditional components of the narrative: setting, character and events (plot)—a narrative consists of a world situated in time, populated by characters that participate in action. The world is independent of the question of fictionality, as narratives can be of real as well as fictional events. They can also be split into two levels, the discourse (the telling of the story) and the story itself. Each of these levels has its own time, discourse time and story time, respectively. The story time is the time it took for the actual events to occur, and the discourse time is the time it takes for the retelling (Juul, â€Å"Games Telling Stories†). A week may pass in a story with no event, and thus the narrative could write it off in one sentence, while an action scene that lasted merely a few seconds could take much longer to explain. This means that even though the narrative may be observing events at a time, there exists an understanding that the events are not actually occurring at the moment of reading (Juul, â€Å"Games Telling Stories†). Narratives are not limited to the novel or storytelling, and can recognizably be translated between different narrative media—The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R Tolkien is recognizable as the movie of the same name. However, not everything can be transferred equally as well. For example, film is better at conveying action and movement, while the novel is better suited to producing inner thoughts. With games and narratives understood, examining the two side-by-side displays several differences. The most apparent of these is the difference in timing. The narrative has two levels, discourse and story, but when examining games in the same manner it is near impossible to distinguish between the two. In playing Super Mario Bros., when the player presses the A button on their controller, the in-game character jumps, thus synchronizing story and discourse time. It is imperative of the narrative that this separation in time exists. Not only does jumping in Super Mario Bros. place discourse and story time together, it also influences the game world. The understanding, in experiencing a narrative, that the time of the discourse is separate from the time of the events means that in some manner the events have already occurred (even if the setting is in some supposed future)—the events are unable to be influenced. The very agency that the player exercises in playing a game contradicts the idea of narrativity; it is impossible to influence an event that has already occurred (Juul, â€Å"Games Telling Stories†). Because of this contradiction, games themselves cannot be narratives, but this does not limit them from employing and producing them. The very activity of playing a game can produce a narrative, the player can tell a story of their experience in the game. Just as well, games can have stories told through them (especially progression games) as many games contain back-stories and quests that offer the player narratives alongside their play. Video games have two parts: rules (discussed earlier) and fiction. For a number of years, the arcade game was all that existed and they contained both rules and fiction, but the two were loosely connected. This led some to conclude that a games fiction is easily removable and replaceable, thus making it unimportant in relation to the rules. Juul had previously taken the stance that rules are what make a game a game, fiction is unnecessary for a game, a game with an excellent fiction can still be a terrible game, therefore fiction is unimportant in games (Half-Real 13). When looking at simple games such as Space Invaders (Taito 1978), one could remove the theme of an alien invasion and portray an advancing German front; the players spaceship could become a Russian tank. If the rules were kept the same, the player would experience no real difference between playing either, but the same sort of procedure would not perform the same if it were attempted on a progression game such as Myst (Broderbund 1993) because the game experience relies more heavily on the fiction. Juul stated that, There are, of course, many relationships between theme and structure in a game. Whether or not any of those relationships are essential, they are complex and vital enough to resist my attempt to lightly shuffle them around (Half-Real 15). If the fiction of a game is tied to its experience, what role does it play in the game and its rules? In some cases the fiction may point to the rules, as well as the other way around; in other cases the fiction serves the rules in an incoherent manner, subservient to gameplay. When it comes to the fiction component of games, one main difference from narrative media is that they do not require anthropomorphic actors/characters in order to be entertaining (Juul, Half-Real 160-161). While films and other stories are largely about humans or anthropomorphic characters that a viewer/reader identifies with on a cognitive level, games such as Tetris (Pazhitnov 1985), Pong and Missile Command (Atari 1980) exist without such. This lack of a visible actor does not make Tetris any less of a game, and makes the idea of a movie based on Tetris an unlikelihood, but it shows how games can accomplish something different, and almost completely separate, than traditional narrative media. Another main difference is the progression of time in games. Previously the difference with discourse and story time was explored, but the chronological appearance of time also varies between games and narratives. Due to the fixed, predetermined nature of a narrative the telling can jump around to various points in the story time either in flash-forwards or flash-backs. To do the same in a game becomes problematic, for predetermination precludes agency. If the player is put back in time (in the past), they are put in a situation where they must actualize a series of events that allows the game in the present to exist, thus limiting the player. The same goes for flash-forwards where the player is put in a position of what is to happen, limiting their play upon return to the present. However, even though games are not narratives, games are no longer strictly abstract. They often contain fictional components as well, leading to new types of games. Besides just viewing games as emergent and progressive, there exists five categories of games: abstract, iconic, incoherent world, coherent world and staged. Abstract games are games that does not, nor do its pieces, represent something else. The game of Go is a game that is merely rules and although there exist conventions for the size and appearance of the various game pieces, they do not mean anything. Tetris is a well known abstract video game. Iconic games are quite similar abstract games, but their individual pieces simply have iconic meaning. In a standard deck of cards there is a king, queen and jack of each of the four suits, but there is no clear explanation of their relation to the other kings, queens and jacks of the other suits. Incoherent world games are games that have a fictional world, but it either contains contradictions or events in the gameplay that cannot be explained by the fictional world. In Super Mario Bros. , Mario has multiple lives, but there exists nothing in the fiction that explains it, it only serves the rules. Chess represents two parties at war, but to explain the movement of the units one must refer to the rules as it is not apparent in the fiction. Coherent world games are games that have a fictional world that contain nothing that prevents the player from imagining them in full. Most adventure games such as the recent The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks 2012) are coherent world games. Staged games are a special type of abstract or representational game that are played inside of a larger, more elaborate world. Mario Party (Nintendo 1998) contains an overarching fictional world and game, but is largely made up of individual staged games. Another instance of the staged game is in Shenmue (Sega 1999) where the protagonist can play on in-game arcade machines. Each of these categories of games has its own place in the world of video games and it is important to be aware of the varieties that exist. Of these varieties though, there is the coherent world—the progression game. In this type of game the player must perform a predefined set of actions in a coherent world setting. This kind of game sounds very similar to the narrative, but still has variable outcomes, player effort and other game components. One example of this kind of game is The Walking Dead (Telltale Games 2012). The Walking Dead is set in Georgia during a fictional zombie apocalypse. The player plays as Lee Everett, a professor convicted of killing a man he found sleeping with his wife. Due to the zombie uprising he does not end up in prison, instead ends up caring for a little girl by the name of Clementine. The gameplay mainly revolves around conversations that the player has with other characters and occasionally the player is put in a position where they must make a critical decision. At the end of each â€Å"chapter,† the game reports out on the player’s decisions as well as the percentage of other players that either disagreed or agreed with them. It is through this method that the player is able to reflect on the cause and effect of their decisions. This sort of environment demonstrates that games are a playground where the player may experiment with things they would or could not do in a real-life setting (Juul, Half-Real 193). It is this phenomenon of player-made decisions and the reflection of them that traditional narratives cannot accomplish. In conclusion, games are made up of six components that make up the classic game model: they are rule-based systems with variable outcomes that have different assigned values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the game are optional and negotiable. With the advent of the computer, there are new capabilities available to games. There are now two main types of games, emergent and progression games, with a spectrum of combinations between them. Emergent games are made up of a set of rules that combine to produce a large set of outcomes. Progression games require the player to perform a specific set of actions in order to complete the game. With this progression capability, it is important to compare video games and narratives. A narrative is a spoken or written account of connected events. Narratives have two levels, story and discourse, each of these with their own time. Games often do not have distinction between their story and discourse time (as the events are occurring in real time), and thus are not narratives. Games, although not narratives themselves, allow for players to produce narratives through playing them; players may recount their experiences in a game. Games may not themselves be stories, but that does not mean that they do not employ them or that player’s cannot tell stories about their experiences in a game. Games offer a different experience than the narrative media before it; the player gets to experience something rather than view it and has an influence in the environment. The player of a game also gets to experiment with ideas in a sort of playground and reflect on their decisions and the effects they have. That does not, however, imply that the medium is necessarily a superior or inferior one. Films, novels and other narrative media can provide experience that games cannot, just as games provide experiences that traditional narrative media cannot. Looking forward, one can only imagine what games can accomplish in the field of entertainment that was not possible before. Works Cited Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1997. Print. Ebert, Roger. Video Games Can Never Be Art. RogerEbert. com. Ebert Digital LLC, 16 Apr. 2010. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. â€Å"Game Studies. † Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Sept. 2012. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. Game The News: The Project That Birthed a Syrian Civil War Game That’s Been Pulled from the App Store. Edge Online. Future Publishing Limited, 8 Jan. 2013. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. Juul, Jesper. â€Å"A Clash between Game and Narrative. † Thesis. University of Copenhagen, 1999. Web. 19 Sept. 2012. . â€Å"Games Telling Stories? A Brief Note on Games and Narratives. † Game Studies1. 1 (2001): n. pag. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. . Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: MIT, 2011. Print. Jenkins, Henry. Game Design as Narrative Architecture. Henry Jenkins. MIT, n. d. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge: MIT, 1997. Print. Narrative. Def. 1. Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University, n. d. Web. 28 Apr. 2013. Ryan, Marie-Laure. â€Å"Beyond Myth and Metaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital Media. † Game Studies 1. 1 (2001): n. pag. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2003. Print.

School Behaviour Policies For Children Education Essay

School Behaviour Policies For Children Education Essay Student behaviour has always been a key issue in any school. Pupils go to school primarily to interact with other pupils in an environment that is well suited for study and play. However true, pupils seem to be more motivated in the playground than in the classroom. Behaviour suffers very often when these students are not as motivated as the others. Class behaviour becomes problematic at the very worst as kids direct their attention away from the actual academic demands of being in school. Teachers and staff of schools are bent in solving such issue extending their control of student behaviour to heights that may not be beneficial to the students, as well as the school. Disciplinary actions, punitive in every sense, are the most likely to be used to correct student misbehaviour. Sir Alan Steer (2009) in his report found that in the UK, in its schools, there is no need or desire to give schools and its staff wider powers but there is a need for a dissemination strategy to be aware and to understand the existing powers in school. In his 2005 report, he proposed wider options of legitimate rewards and sanctions must be at hand, all of which properly, fairly and consistently applied by all concerned staff. Same has been suggested four years later (Steer, 2009). Findings have been remarkable in his 2009 report. He reiterated that clear rules and the consistent application of rewards and sanctions are vital. He rejects punitive solution to bad behaviour. Tough love is accept able but punitive methods are immoral and socially destructive. Several suggestions have been earmarked so as to implement the relevance of the findings. Steer (2009) reports: A reward system that is effective and tied to performance in the classroom ensures pupil engagement and better behaviour. Good behaviour needs to be learned. It is very imperative to teach kids to behave well so schools must adopt procedures and practices that will help students on how to behave. All staff must be good role models of good behaviour. Schools do have policies that reward good behaviour and good work as well. Sanctions are in place to streamline the need for better behaviour but what is left out is how to create and implement appropriate reward systems. Simple sanctions proved to be more effective than excluding the child from class. Statistical data on behaviour improvement must be at hand to trace changes and complement future actions. Praise can be used to motivate students and encourage better behaviour. Using pupil tracking system to recognise positive and negative behaviour is also efficient. Motivation and Incentives Motivation has been long considered as a very important factor in teaching. It is the precursor for successful comprehension of the students. Getting incentives from good work after a motivating discussion is highly recommended. Student motivation is the interest of students in learning or doing academic work; incentives are methods used to motivate students in learning academic materials (Slavin, 1984). Central to this researchà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢s objective is to use the motivational effects of rewards or incentives in teaching. It is long known that motivation plays a key role in student achievement. So, specific in this analysis is the role of motivation in behavioural changes of a student in a classroom setting. Self-worth and Self-Efficacy In educational psychology, it is standard operating procedure to analyse the intrapersonal behaviour of a learner. His or her perceptions of the self must be taken into consideration in order to find the appropriate solutions to behavioural problems. Self-worth is linked to the self-concept of ability in any school setting (Ames, 1990). It is how a student considers his own capacities with respect to othersà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢. Self-efficacy is expectation or belief that one can possibly carry out a task. It is task-specific or situation specific. Often, self-efficacy serves as a barometer on a childs willingness to learn, his set of options in learning and actual performance (Ames, 1990). However, age play a role in how students understand ability. Younger kids are more positive or optimistic. They have high expectations are resilient after a failure. They tend to assume effort and ability as the same. Older kids are more negative in evaluating themselves. Effort for t hem gives them higher chances to succeed but ability is a set of limits. Trying hard and failing are actually threats to their self-concept of ability (Ames, 1990). Pupils determine self-worth and self-efficacy in relation to their environment. To behave poorly means self-worth and self-efficacy are dampened by the rigidities in the classrooms setting. Otherwise, the pupils are able to cope with its demands. It is here where motivation plays its role. Giving rewards or incentives is one motivational tool. To keep on relaying good behaviour and its corresponding benefits, a repetition of good behaviour is expected to occur. This is what we call operant conditioning or response reinforcement behaviourism. It is the gratifying of a partial or random behaviour that which eventually leads to the desired behaviour (PBS, 1998; Phillips Soltis, 2004). This molds future behaviour. If a reward succeeds a response to a stimulus, then that response is likely to be repeated. Interlinking the concepts discussed, this paper plots motivation and the self-concept of students in the classroom through the use of a reward/incentive system. Changes from their behaviour, primarily their self-worth and self-efficacy will be carefully studied. Methods Based on the premise above that rewards play a role in motivating student behaviour, this research is proposing the efficacy of a reward system (that is reinforcing) in different classroom setting and student age groups. With the concepts of operant conditioning, this study is specifically poised to determine how studentà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢s self-worth and self-efficacy significantly changes (or not) when treated with rewards or incentives. The Steerà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢s reports confirm the value of applying such consistently. The research will be using questionnaires and interviews as the primary mode of data collection (Anderson, 1998). The questionnaires will both target teachers and students as its respondents. Data analysis will be primarily descriptive and correlational (Runyon et al, 2000; Kirk, 2007). Descriptive data from socio-demographics will provide the initial analysis. Correlation analysis on student and teacher information from the questionnaires will follow thereafter. The main portion of this analysis lies on the significant changes of student self-concept as changes in the reward systems are put into place. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) will do a series of significant tests on changes of perception by the students, i.e. self-worth and self-efficacy (as dependent variables) before and after a reward system is placed (Kirk, 2007). Also, the age-groups and classroom setting will be used as independent variables treated against changes in self-worth and self-efficacy.

Research Paper-Biometrics -- essays papers

Research Paper-Biometrics â€Å"Biometric technologies are defined as "automated methods of identifying or authenticating the identity of a living person based on a physical or behavioral characteristic."(Source #1) Growing up I loved to watch McGyver. He use to run around and break in and out of military compounds that were equipped with all types of security systems. Somehow he would always find the laser beams, or trick the fingerprint security, or voice activation. During that time biometrics was just beginning to come to the surface. Nowadays systems enabled with fingerprinting security, voice activation, or face recognition have come a long way and are close to fool proof. Biometrics have come even as far to be used at the Super Bowl or other huge sporting events. Cameras have been designed to monitor crowds and be able to take faces and run them through national criminal databases to see if any matches occur. Biometrics is the security of today and tomorrow. In this paper I will explain different types of biometric security systems, mainly fingerprint activation, and give a thourugh explanation of when it was created, who created it, how the product has evolved and where the product is going. Among all the biometric techniques, fingerprint based identification is the oldest and most familiar method. Fingerprints were first recognised as unique in 1684. Everyone is known to have unique, immutable fingerprints. A fingerprint is made of a series of ridges and furrows on the surface of the finger. The uniqueness of a fingerprint can be determined by this pattern of ridges and furrows. The fingerprint scanner captures an image of the fingerprint and uses complex algorithms to either convert the image into a unique "m... ...ve created is a voice activated deadbolt. Never worry about forgetting your keys or leaving them locked in your car. Simply state unlock door, the system searches its database for a match and your in. Voice Security systems have even created voice verification to access your vehicle. The most advanced creation in automobile security. No need for â€Å"the Club† or viper security systems on your vehicle. Simply install a voice verification system on your car and noone will be able to start your car unless their voice sample has been stored in the database. That diagram shows the simple structure of the deadbolt voice verification system. Overall, Biometrics have became security of the future. All three types of biometric technigques that I have explained in this paper each have their advantages and disadvantages over the others but all perform the same goal.

The Impact of the Internet on Schools :: Teaching Education Essays

The Impact of the Internet on Schools For this essay, I read an Article called: The Netgeneration: Internet as a classroom and community. After reading the article I came up with some very good points on how the internet has effected the way school are ran compared to the pre-computer and internet age. My conclusions are that the Internet has changed school classroom for the good by making information widely available and useable to even the poorest of schools. The internet has made it possible for teachers to communicate and learn what other teachers are doing in other countries by talking to colleagues in other countries and reading reports and research studies findings before they read the teaching methods books. The Internet also, gives teachers the ability to teach a class online so that their students will be able to stay on task when they are not able to come to class. The online class idea has also made it possible for the average person to get his or her degree with out having to go to a college campus physicall y. In total the Internet has not only increased the amount of learning possibilities in the classroom but it has created infinite amounts of learning opportunities for students and teachers. CLASSROOM Because of the Internet it is possible for schools to have access to books with out having them on the shelves of school libraries. New books and research studies are posted on the Internet daily for the world to read. In the past if you where from a poor school or a shelterd community that banded books from school libraries you may not be able to read some important infromantion. Making the student that had the oportunity to read and learn this new infromation better educated than a person whom did not have the same books in there school library shelves. The author of the article The internet as a classroom explains this fact when she says, "We have arrived at a new moment in history: a moment in which such terms as class, race, gender, sexuality, nationality and ideology are no longer useful" (Hendricks). This statement applies to education because information can be found on any subject on the web. If a school has a ban on reading a book a student can still find and read it online if he or she wants to. Censorship is not possible because of the technology called Internet.

The Courage and Strength in All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Mar

The Courage and Strength in All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque As I enter my last week as a twenty-year-old, I find myself nostalgically looking back on the past two decades while wondering what life has in store for me over the next two. Where will I be in twenty years? What will I have accomplished? Where will I be living? Will I be married? Have chil†¦ wait a minute, no, that one will have to wait a few more years. These questions have all passed through my mind at one point or another over the last few weeks, but I realize that they are really quite a luxury. Paul, the narrator of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, never had the opportunity to lean back from his desk and daydream about what the next twenty years of his life had in store for him. He was busy dodging bullets and artillery shells, trying to stay alive on Germany’s Western Front during World War I. Paul and I are united on the grounds of age and nothing more, yet somehow, while following him through his service in the War, I feel connected to him. After finishing the novel, I ruminated on this idea for some time and eventually came to the conclusion that the connection I feel with Paul is a mixture of empathy and envy. I empathize with him because he put down the pen and took up the rifle in service of his country, just as I would do if called upon. I envy him because he exudes the qualities of a brilliant soldier, meticulous narrator, and man of faith even in times of mortal danger, especially in times of mortal danger. In the midst of the worst bombardment he has yet to face, Paul shines his brightest by illuminating in vivid detail not only the hellish onslaught unfolding around him, but also the intr... ...helling becomes a wonderfully connected verse of one soldier’s struggle to preserve himself against all odds. What more can be said about Paul? Soldier, narrator, believer, he is the embodiment of each, and would not be complete as one or two without being the third. I do not envy his situation, but rather his ability. I hope I never have to experience the modern-day equivalent of his service, but I admire the courage and strength he pours into duty. Seeing what he went through makes me wonder if my generation would be capable of standing up to fight if we were called upon as he was. Would we persevere as he did? Would I? I believe the answer is yes and that is why I empathize with him nearly a century later: as one young man to another. Works Cited Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. Trans. A.W. Wheen. New York: Ballantine, 1982.

Performing a cable installation Essay

When performing a cable installation, there are a lot of things that you have to put into consideration. First, you want to draw up a plan. Some things that you would want to include in the plan would be: where your telecommunications rooms are located, what is the distance from your leased line to your core router, and what type of cable are you going to be using for your backbone and horizontal lines. The first thing shouldn’t be cost when you are designing a network. You want to think of the safety and how your network will function with different mediums of cable. These things are important because your network has to meet the needs of the company. You also want to make sure you have things in place like what type of fire protection your network will have. You want to make sure your racks in your telecommunication rooms are grounded properly. Without these things your network will not be very safe. You want it to be useful but you don’t want to lose everything in a telecommunications room because you failed to plan ahead for accidents that can happen. Once you have your plan intact and it has been approved you need to think about how you are going to get this cable in the building. What types of tools are you going to need? If you are going to run CAT 5e though out the building you will need several different tools; such as cable pulleys, punch downs, wire cutters, and cable strippers. You will need most of these tools to install your cable into your building. There will be a few different tools you will need if you are putting cable into a preexisting building. You may then need a fish tape or fiberglass push pole. It really depends on the type of job you are going to be doing and what type of cable or fiber you are going to be working with. This will determine what tools you will need to get the job done correctly and safely. If you are at a worksite and don’t have any wire strippers you could also use a razor blade knife to strip the jacket off the cable. It is something that will work if you don’t have any strippers handy. But of course this is not the most used method to strip cable. It will work if you need it right then. All the things that I have talked about are important because it will help  you to make sure you have a plan that covers everything. You not only need to think about cost but safety as well. Make sure you have the right tools for the right job. Also make sure your measurements are correct cause this could also make or break your network plan. Definitions: Wall plate – it is the plastic or metal plate that screws into the wall. It has some sort of connector, usually coax, rj11, rj45, duplex receptacle, or fiber optic. This is where the device plugs into the wall. Connector – a device that joins two pieces of cabling Crossover cable – A crossover cable is a type of twisted pair copper wire cable for LANs (local area network) in which the wires on the cable are crossed over so that the receive signal pins on the RJ-45 connector on one end are connected to the transmit signal pins on the RJ-45 connector on the other end. NIC – A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter, and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network HUB – An Ethernet hub, active hub, network hub, repeater hub, multiport repeater or hub is a device for connecting multiple Ethernet devices together and making them act as a single network segment. Bridge – A device used to connect two separate Ethernet networks into one extended Ethernet. Bridges only forward packets between networks that are destined for the other network. Term used by Novell to denote a computer that accepts packets at the network layer and forward them to another network Switch – A switch is a multi-port network bridge that processes and forwards data at the data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI model. Some switches have additional features, including the ability to route packets. These switches are commonly known as layer-3 or multilayer switches. Router – A router is a networking device that forwards data packets between computer networks, commonly specialized hardware. This creates an overlay internetwork, as a router is connected to two or more data lines from different networks. Infrared (IR) – Infrared (IR) is a wireless mobile technology used for device communication over short ranges. Radio Frequency – RF is any frequency within the electromagnetic spectrum associated with radio wave propagation. When an RF current is supplied to an antenna, an  electromagnetic field is created that then is able to propagate through space. Many wireless technologies are based on RF field propagation. Microwave – A series of microwave repeaters, spaced up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) apart, which relay messages over long distances using highly directional microwave beams.

Deterioration of a Relationship Essay

Throughout the play, we can see the titular character’s, Juno Boyle and Jack Boyle, relationship deteriorate , and how dramatic events in their lives and the lives of their children, Johnny and Mary, cause the entire family to collapse. The play is set closely following the signing of the treaty dividing Ireland into sections and features the resulting conflict between the diehards who want a united, free Ireland, and the free-staters, who support the treaty, with this conflict representing the clash of fanatical nationalism and practicality, of idealism and a recognition that what the people truly wanted was peace. The play also explores some of the relevant ideas of the time, including the poverty of the working class in Dublin in the 1920‘s, and how this poverty affected the communities that lived within the tenements of Dublin at this time. In the first act we see a great deal of conflict between Juno and Boyle. The root of this conflict lies in Boyles inability to accept responsibility for supporting his family, as he refuses to seek work and spends his days drinking with his manipulative, scrounging friend Joxer. Juno is forced to act as wife, mother and sole source of income for the family, the prime motivation for this character being to keep her ragged family unit together â€Å"Who has kep th’ home together for the past few years – only me† This introduces us very early on to the theme of poverty in the play. The tension in the relationship is directly linked to poverty throughout the play, Boyle’s lack of responsibility causing conflict between him and Juno when their financial situation is bad. â€Å"Your poor wife slavin to keep the bit in your mouth†¦Ã¢â‚¬  We can see O’Casey present both the positive and negative aspects he perceives in poverty. We see him contrast the strength and ability that destitution can invoke through the character of Juno, and the pettiness and selfishness that only serves to further the poverty and drive apart the sense of community that collective poverty can create through the character of Boyle. However, the converse of this is also true. When, in the second act, the Boyles become apparently more affluent, we can see a greater degree of affection come to the fore of the relationship. The windfall of the will causes Juno to treat Boyle less as a child who must be nagged and scolded to perform any useful, or at least less detrimental, role in the family she holds so dear, and more as the head of his family, a role she previously fulfilled. This change in attitude is regarded by Boyle as him merely him finally getting the respect he believes he deserves. â€Å"I’m masther now, an’ I’m goin to remain masther† This period of happiness is quickly dispelled when it is revealed that Boyle has deceived the family, allowing them to continue to spend money that he knows they do not have and are never going to get. This demonstrates to us his inability to accept any form of responsibility and signals the end of the period of good luck for the Boyles and the culmination of the intertwining storylines of the play. In the third act the affection that marks Boyle and Juno’s relationship I the second act is dispelled entirely, only to be replaced by bitter conflict and the eventual dissolution of their entire family. Throughout the play, Juno’s main purpose is to support and hold together her family but in this final act all her efforts are worthless as the actions and attitudes of the other members of her family and those around them drag the family incontrovertibly apart. The first factor in this dissolution is Mary’s pregnancy. This in itself would have a bad effect on the family, with another family member to feed, clothe and house placing further strain on their finances, but it is Johnny and Boyle’s attitude to this pregnancy that does the most damage. She should be dhriven from the house she’s brought so much shame upon† Instead of trying to support his daughter through this difficult and emotionally strained situation, he instead seeks to drive her from the house and from the family. This anger’s Juno, and leads her to threaten Boyle that if Mary leaves the family then Juno will follow her, as he is attempting to destroy that which she holds to be the most valuable thing, her family, purely in order to protect his own reputation However, the final thing that convinces Juno the family is irreparably torn apart is Johnny’s death at the hands of his former comrades. This cements Juno’s decision to leave, she feel’s justified in leaving with Mary in order to help her raise her child (abortion not being an option at this time in such a heavily catholic country) as she is the only part of her family that is salvageable, with Johnny dead and her convinced that Boyle is beyond salvation. â€Å"Let your father furrage for himself now; I’ve done all I could an’ it was all no use – he’ll be hopeless till the end of his days. This is the final collapse of the relationship, and we see the final outcome of it. Boyle is left unchanged, as the closing scene of the play showing him sitting drunk with Joxer, oblivious to all the dramatic changes in his life,. Juno, on the other hand, is resolute in her changes, she has finally been given the strength to leave Boyle behind and move on, she is able to recognise him for what he is, not a child, as she appears to view him in act one, because a child has promise of maturing, but as a waster who will never change and will never do anything but hold her back.