TLP Reflections

I liked some things but disliked some about the Teen Life Project. I didn't like doing the research because it was boring too write so much with so little information. Because there was so little information it was very hard to research and to write about my topic. One thing I liked about doing the research is that I learned a lot about my topic. One thing I liked about the teen life project is that we learned how to use wiki pages and to research more easily. I don't think I am going to use a wiki again in my life except for wikipedia. The part that I liked the most about the teen life project was doing the documentary. I really liked it because my topic was video games so we had a lot of fun filming us while we played video games and talking. One problem that everyone has and I noticed it on the documentary of everyone and in movies is that when they are filming any little thing happens and you laugh. At the beginning you laugh but then you sometimes get mad.

When Mr.Hide talked to us the first time about the teen life project no one was interested in it, I thought, oh no, another boring, non-sense project about nothing. Then, when we started doing all those weeks of research everyone got even more bored. Finally, came the big part, documentary. Everyone learned a lot from those documentaries, "Spell Bound," "Super Size Me," and some more documentaries we watched. We started doing the documentaries. Everyone with their different topic about today's issues. Nobody cared how other documentaries were doing, they only cared about theirs. All the students with the cameras and all that filming and recording. When it was the day before giving the documentary, almost all projects were not complete, so there was a lot of nervousness.

In conclusion doing the teen life project was a great experience were you can learn a lot of new things and you can have fun doing the documentary. I hope we don't have to do another project like that because it is to long, but I liked it.

Music Imagination

I imagine a beach in Cuba and a drug dealer walking with a bag full of money. I also imagine an old lady playing the organ. Another thing I imagine is a sad thing like a funeral and there are many people around one person. I imagine a very nice and expensive Mercedez-Benz passing through a dark street very slowly. An assassin is about to kill a person. A ballet parker picks a car and steals it from the hotel. Then, he takes it to an old house in a mountain where he hides many months from the police. Many weeks later a jet picks him up and he goes to Miami and makes a big robbery of a bank with some of his friends. Then many police officers search him and pursue him until they get him. The ballet parker is taken to jail and escapes.

Fat and little people drinking beer in Ireland and dancing like the Irish when they make sound with their shoes. The hobbits from Lord of the Rings playing the banjo and singing. An old man saying old stories to his grandchildren.

Some bald Chinese men with long beards smoking and singing. A fat Chinese man who is drunk yelling to a child on the street. Many people gathering around jumping, dancing, and singing around a fire while eating meat.

The Positive Aspects of Technology

(Sorry, I tryied to serch for the topic I was supposed to talk about but I did not find info about it.)

Technology. How would we live without it? Have you ever thought about it? No, you simply say: it has only bad things and it only takes away our time. Is that true? No, studies in universities and hospitals show that technology and video games have more good effects on people than bad effects. Imagine yourself at midnight in a library and you find what you are looking for. With technology, simply turn on your PC, go into internet, into Google and type what your looking for and you'll find out much more than you were looking for. Video games have a similar effect. I read about it in an article called "Dream Machines" by Will Wright, producer of many famous games such as The Sims, at a page called Wired.

The human imagination is an amazing thing. As children, we spend much of our time in imaginary worlds, substituting toys and make-believe for the real surroundings that we are just beginning to explore and understand. As we play, we learn. And as we grow, our play gets more complicated. We add rules and goals. The result is something we call games.

Will Wright wrote this great words summarizing what he wrote in the article. When a kid receives a video game they don't read the manual, they simply play the game and understand it with the mistakes they make. When a child plays a video game his or her memory become better, they never forget how to play the game. Children take video games as a new form of learning and they learn how to become creative, how to take decisions, such as what way to choose. People take the world as a place for creativity.

People who have never played a video game only say that video games are bad because they take away children's time and they teach bad things, but if they had played they would notice the contrary, the positive aspects of video games such as creativity, community, self-esteem, problem-solving, agility, and self-confidence. Video games also make children have more imagination. For instance, today you ask a child to do a story about heroes and they will possibly do it with their favorite video game characters and new characters that were made by the child because of the video game's effect on the child's imagination.

If you have never thought about this, think about how some technologies helping our bodies. For example, cars help our legs and reaction, TV our senses, and video games our agility and hand-mind coordination.

With the graphics of video games, video gamers and each time feeling closer to the place on the TV. For example, you play a game in which you are in an African city and you need to escape from a war. You would get to know how these people live and how is the place in which they live. The majority of the people say that action and shooting games are the worst. Really, when children play a game of the World War II they will learn about what made the war start, who won, and the names of the famous people.

Video games are also a way to express ourselves. In many games you can create a character and make it how you want. Just like music, you can reflect your lifestyle with what games you have and which ones are the ones you play the most.

I think that technology is have much more good effects than bad effects. For me, I think video games are cool and I have learned a lot thhrough them. Video games are becoming a lifestyle.

What Makes Teenagers Like Video Games and How Can They Affect Their Social Lives?

In recent years, the video gaming industry has grown a lot and it is having a very strong influence on people. The target buyers for the people who make video games are children. The video gaming industries are studying what makes children play video games. I found interesting information in a PBS page and it was an article called Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked and it was written by Henry Jerkins a MIT professor. The article talks about what influences teenagers to play video games and how it can affect their social and family life. The article also talks about the effect video games have on children and teenagers but I already talked about that on the last post I wrote.

Some things that make children and teenagers play video games are stress from school, depression, being bored, and pressure from friends and families. Teenagers also play video games to pass time and to become creative for something because video games stimulate the creativity of children and teenagers. When teenagers are starting to have problems at school such as homework, they start having stress. Some teenagers think that playing video games takes away their stress but it only takes it away while they are playing. Also, many times when children are sad or bored and they have nothing to do they play video games. If the children always play video games when they are bored they get used to play them at all times. Another reason for children to play video games is that sometimes friends have a videogame and they show it to you and to other people just for you to feel jellous. Because of this the teenagers and children feel pressure of buying the videogame so they dont feel bad. Also children play lots of video games because they like to play them with their friends. When children go to their friend's houses and play video games, they usually like the games so they buy them. Some publicity that video games producers use is that they use some children playing video games and with their faces they are "saying" buy this video game or you are stupid or something like that.

The military uses some video games of shooting to train soldiers to kill and some military psychologists say that the video games children play have the same impact on them. Some times games can make children brutal and more agressive. When the children know that the military uses video games they buy them just to feel like if they were in the military.

Some psychologists think that video games can be really good to children in many positive ways. Henry Jerkins wrote this very useful paragraph about positive things video games have:

The military uses games as part of a specific curriculum, with clearly defined goals, in a context where students actively want to learn and have a need for the information being transmitted. There are consequences for not mastering those skills. That being said, a growing body of research does suggest that games can enhance learning. In his recent book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, James Gee describes game players as active problem solvers who do not see mistakes as errors, but as opportunities for improvement. Players search for newer, better solutions to problems and challenges, he says. And they are encouraged to constantly form and test hypotheses. This research points to a fundamentally different model of how and what players learn from games.

I think that video games can be very fun but when you play them to much it can get really boring. Sometimes I play video games because I am bored but never because of some reasons that Henry Jerkins talks about in the article I read.

In my next post I will like to write about some problems that video games can generate in adult's lifes.

Impact of Video Games on Teenagers

I was searching some information of the impact of video games on teens and I found this page that has a lot of information. The page talks about some studies that universities and hospitals have done. The general result shows that when teens play bloody and violent they can behave like if they were that person in the game. Many children reveal to their parents and teachers if they say that video games are bad because they are vicious about them. But not all the video games are bad for people, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) shows that some games help people with computer reading, solving problems, and motricity. The ESRB rates video games according to their content. The rating method is: Early childhood (3 and more years), everyone (6 and more years), teen (13 and more), mature (17 and older), and adults only (18 and older depending on where the game is sold). One of the major causes of increasing teen violence is that there are more violent games and more children allowed to play them a lot. More studies about the subject have said that boys play more videogames weekly than girls. The author of the article said:

Video games also encourage players to identify with and role play their favorite characters. This is referred to as a "first-person" video game (Anderson & Dill, 2000, p. 788) because players are able to make decisions affecting the actions of the character they are imitating. After a limited amount of time playing a violent video game, a player can "automatically prime aggressive thoughts" (Bushman & Anderson, 2002, p. 1680). The researchers concluded that players who had prior experience playing violent video games
responded with an increased level of aggression when they encountered confrontation (Bushman & Anderson, 2002).

The worst part of the violence in video games is that sometimes the children stay violent forever. It is easier that small children are influenced from this violent than teenagers or adults. The children of today can become violent by watching their older brothers and sisters play violent video games that are not proper for small children. Some times the industries that make video games make campaigns to promote their video games, and many children see that and they would like to have them.

When children and teens have video games and they play them a lot, it will be very difficult to take the video games away from them. This are some tips for parents worried about their children playing too much video games or not proper games for them:

• Know what is the game about and if it can affect your children.


• Watch your children playing the game and think if it is good for your son or daughter.


• Talk with other parents to talk about video games.

I think that parents should never take away their children's video games because it will cause the child to become very sad, and they will be very bored. I also think that there is a good part of video games that can be better than the worst parts. The games can bring motricity to children and use of technology in their lives and that is important in these days in which to get a good work it is very useful to have a good control over technology and not the tech controls you. I think that not all games are bad. Some games have other languages or mathematics or something like that that the children can learn at school and playing the game.

I would like to learn about what things can influence children and teenagers to play video games.

.::Technology::.

I've been thinking of the topic I would choose on my Teen Life Project, and my first issue to choose is technology. I found an article called "Technology Gives Teens Myriad Ways to Torment" and it talks about how technology can cause stress for teens. The major topic of this article is how technology takes away time from teens and how it makes them stress. It talks a lot about internet bulling and how sometimes teens give their personal information on internet. The major cause for internet bulling is that some persons cant solve their problems in real person so they do it on the internet.

"People are too wussie to stand up to the person in real life, so they decide to
go on the computer and send mean, nasty messages," said Colleen Harris, 16, who
said she has been the target of an online assault. "They're trying to be mean
and vicious, but they're ignorant. ... When they were calling me names, it
didn't faze me at all, but I could see how other kids could be hurt by it."

This is what Maria Elena Baca, the writer of the article said about internet bulling. The police can't do a thing about this problem because it is illegal to prevent teenagers from expressing their selves. Many studies have said that 7% of children who use the internet have been targets of internet bulling and many have received rude comments or messages. Many universities and organisations have been creating anti cyber bulling programs. Most of these programs teach teenagers how to prevent cyber bulling to occur to stop the problem. The worst part is that the majority of the bullies are teenagers because many adults don't know how to use internet. There has been cases in which bullies put comments on web pages that say that some one uses drugs, or something like that. Some of the affected people of the problem go on with their lives, but many don't. A student in Canada had to leave school because o the offends his classmates caused him on a web page that said he consumed drugs and that he was in groups of robbers. The older teenagers have been able to solve the problem and they only laugh about it, but the youngest ones have been stressed and scared. Many of this teenagers do not report their problem so it becomes greater each time they go into the red. Many of the times cyber bulling is only a joke but it can end really bad, like the boy in Canada who had to leave the school.
I really think that cyber bulling is a big problem that can affect student's life's at schools and in their houses. I think that children should make some things to stop the problem, those things are:

• Teach teens how to block bad messages.
• Don't respond to bad messages they send you.
• Never reveal personal information.
• If you are going to share your password make sure you only share it with your parents.

I think that all the teen agers should be aware of cyber bulling. Always be aware of bad messages you see on the internet and always say no if some one asks you for personal information and never chat with unknown people.

Internet bulling can cause children and teenagers have more time being on internet and less time doing homework.

I'm interesting in finding out how can video games affect teenagers life at school and at home.

Answers to Some TLP Questions

How much technology do you have in your place?

Here in Colombia the majority of people are poor, because of that technology is not important for a lot of parts in Colombia. Only in the most important cities of Colombia you can find the latest technology, but here in Cartagena you can find the new technology very little and expensive. For example, the Nintendo Wii was released in October in the United States, and here in Cartagena it was released a week before the 24th of December, and it's price was more than twice than in the United States. I would like that here you could find the latest technology in many places and much less expensive.

Is poverty a big issue in your place?

Colombia is one of the poorest countries in America. I think that more than 70 percent of the country is poor. About one million people live in Cartagena, and eight hundred thousand are poor. The government says that they are helping, but nothing has changed for the poor people, instead, they are having more kids and less food and money to live. Poverty is one of the biggest problems that Colombia is facing right now. Some causes of poverty are that when people are poor, they rob or kill to have something to live with, so the crime in our country grows along poverty. In Bogota, a major named Antanas Mocus made really good things, he reduced the assasinations in Bogota from 30 death for every 1000 people to 5 dead for every 1000 people.

What would you change about your community?

Some things I would change to my community are poverty, technology, and security. The first change I would make to my community is poverty. I would make that every poor person has a good job, so they could have food and commodities. This change would make better in many ways, such as reducing crime. The second change I would make would be adding more security. To do this Cartagena would need more police men, that would produce more jobs, with more jobs there would be less poverty, and with less poverty there could be less crime. With a better security people from all the world would visit Cartagena, that would bring a lot of money. Also people would be more secure about making stores and stuff like that. Security and less poverty would make Cartagena a much better place to live and to visit. The last change I would make to my community, Cartagena, would be to add more technology. I would add skycrapers, malls with technology stores, and many things. I would like that all the new technology arrived in Colombia at the same time they arrived in the United States. I would also like that everything was less expensive. Oh, I forgot, another change I would make to Cartagena would be to add better transportation. I would make bigger streets, and all the busses I would sell them and get new ones with air conditioner. Also, I would add a subway to get easy transportation all arround Cartagena. At least the goverment is making a project called TransCaribe, which is like trains but they are busses, and they are adding water taxis which are taxis that you take on the sea. Those are all the changes I would make to my community although I like my city a lot.

Daniel's Life in Cartagena

Hi, my name is Daniel T., and I study at the Colegio Jorge Washington, by the sea in Cartagena, Colombia. I'm thirteen years old, and I like my school a lot. I have a normal life in this beautiful city that has many colonial things such as castles, old churches, and very long walls. I use to play soccer with my friends all weekends at the Campito, which is a soccer court with artificial grass. Also, I go to McDonald's and to El Corral which is a Colombian McDonald. A place that I visit a lot is the cinema. The last movie I saw was Eragon, which was very cool. I really like the place I live because it is close to my friend's house and it is on front of the beach. When I am home alone I use to play the Nintendo Wii that I was given on Christmas. I have two brothers, Andres and Edgardo. Edgardo is the older one, but Andres is already married and will have a daughter called Isabella.

In the teen life project, I will be talking about one of these themes: Ecology, Technology, Poverty or a Career. Ecology will concern us in the future if we don't care about it. There can be a greenhouse effect cause because of global warming. To stop this problem we can start using electric cars, we can put the garbage in the trash can, and stop polluting the atmosphere.

Technology is affecting our lives today. The schools are using computers in almost every class, so it is very important to know about technology. In the future, new technology and inventions will take away some jobs, but it would generate such jobs such as selling and manufacturing.

One of the themes that concern the most teens is getting a good job. Everyone likes a job that is easy and you get well paid. This kind of jobs are only easy if you where a good student in school and in university.

Poverty is one of the major concerns of the world. Many poor people die of hunger and on the streets. This problem makes people think of joining some groups such as narcotrafic groups or FARC (Colombian Armed Revolutionary Forces) or others. Many people die in wars becuase of this, and of drug use. The United States of America are helping a lot Colombia. They are sending money for the poor and people to stop the FARC and drug problem. Everyone knows that Colombia is famous for drugs and wars, but we hope that in the future, everyone would think of Colombia as a beautiful and safe place.

There are many more issues that can concern us in the world such as sickness, terrorism, drugs and alcohol, crime, and security. Most of these have to do with Colombia, like wars and terrorism.

In my teen life project, I will talk about one of the issues I talked about or the ones in the last paragraph. My favorite issue is technology because I like it.