A Reflection on Blogging

Almost five years ago, I began my first blog. It wasn't anything like this one, however; it was about a middle schooler's interest in Pokemon. After a while, I realized that updating it required too much effort and stopped blogging. In high school, I was reintroduced to blogging, but it was of a different form: academic and structured.

Although my experience with blogging is limited, I am getting a feel for the usefulness of blogging, especially in an English class. Blogging has been a useful medium through which I was able to reconcile my creativity with the structure that English class often requires. It allowed me to express my thoughts and the way my mind works in a manner that is both personal and professional.

In that sense, I realized that blogging is a blend of both the private and public sphere. Although I control the content of my blog posts, the content is directed toward a public audience, who can contribute their own opinions through comments. I noticed that this combination of the private and public realms tends to foster the kind of critical thinking we do in English.

Interestingly enough, although we Academy students are blogging in a public space, we are still having some of our most personal interactions. Blogging has been a useful public forum where we can express our well-formulated opinions that we have thought about for some time. But although our blogs are public, they are not read by many others outside of our classroom. In essence, our blogs are simply extensions of our English class to a slightly more public sphere.

Reflecting on my past posts, I have noticed that most of them were inspired by a moment of interest in a topic I felt I wanted to explore. For example, I had always been curious as to "what we (in America) are lacking." Given the technology-focused nature of this blog, I felt that I should discuss how technology has altered our lives, and thus my first non-introductory blog post was "The Opportunity Cost of Technology."

Similarly, as I enjoy playing games, when I stumbled upon a blog post on Kotaku, a video game blog, discussing gaming for charity, I began to consider the impact of games on society. "How could gaming be helpful?" I asked myself. "What do I feel I gain by playing games? Is it stress-relieving? What can I compare this to?" Of course, I did my research as well. But the critical thinking that was fostered by brooding over these questions over an extended period, which is often unavailable in the short time frame of our English class, was beneficial. In a way, each blog post was like a thought experiment.

Speaking of thought experiments, The Happiness Project has been an inspiration for my blog. Gretchen Rubin focuses on a topic that everyone has everyone has considered at least once: how can I be happy? Beyond that, though, I am also impressed by the name Rubin has made for herself through the blogging community; she is not only an influential blogger, but also a writer and a speaker. Finally, she updates almost daily and manages to keep her posts personal, relevant, and interesting. To put it simply, she exhibits the aspects of a good blogger, such as catering both to herself and her intended audience.

Although Academy blogs may not be comparable to The Happiness Project, it's definitely interesting to read them and get a feel for what my classmates are thinking. For example, sometimes Ethan and I are blogging about the same topic, because both of our blogs focus on humans and their interactions with technology. Because our themes are similar, I think that furthers our contributions to each other's blogs when we comment our own ideas and why we agree or disagree with the original post.

Most importantly, I learned that blogging is a lot more work than it at first seems. The number of things a blogger has to juggle has really changed my opinion of bloggers in general, especially those that update daily or even weekly. Between contributing their own opinions, reading others' blogs, finding relevant links, and making the blog post discussion-inducing, bloggers spend a lot of work doing what they love. In the future, I hope to make my blog more professional, while at the same time, infusing my posts with more voice.

Word Count: 730

The Impact of Games: An Introduction & Part One

Today, while surfing the web for interesting stories on games, I stumbled upon this post about "Awesome Games Done Quick 2014" on Kotaku, a well-known video game blog. The title says it all: "Gamers Are Racing Through Your Favorite Games For Charity." Essentially, gamers are blazing through old favorites like Castlevania, Megaman, Paper Mario, and Pokemon--games that would normally take countless hours. 

Although I was amazed at how skilled these players were, I was more impressed by the donations they have raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. This event, which began on January 5th at 11 a.m., has raised $1,007,636.61. In a week, there have been over 27,000 donations to raise over a million dollars (this may or may not include bids). 

Of course, this isn't the only instance of charity events hosted by game enthusiasts. Siv, a streamer on Twitch, raised over $100,000 for Save the Children in a mere 13 hours. So why am I writing about this? One reason is that I simply wanted to bring these spectacular deeds to your attention. The other was that I felt the urge to discuss the influence and role of games in our society. 

The rest of this post will be spent discussing the positive societal consequences of gaming. For those that hate games with a passion, part two or three of this post series will discuss the negative consequences. 

Much of the malice toward games, other than their addicting nature, is actually quite unwarranted. There are a number of valuable skills video games can teach and improve, and games can sometimes even teach lessons that can't be taught in the classroom. For example, it can teach hand-eye coordination. One of the games that I frequently play, League of Legends, requires understanding, patience, and almost perfect hand-eye coordination to become an exceptional player. Whether I am playing table tennis or League, my coordination is definitely improving.

In fact, that very hand-eye coordination from games has been proven to help surgeons in surgeries, which are becoming increasingly dependent on robotic tools. You can read more about that here.

Another positive effect of gaming is improving critical thinking and decision-making. Especially true of action games, video games force kids to think quickly. To use another League of Legends example, in higher level play, fractions of a second can be the deciding factor in the outcome of a game. In the seconds leading up to that moment in which the game can be decided, a player has to draw tons of information from the game. Is my team here? What spells and items do they have? Is anyone out of position? When will dragon respawn (an important objective in the game)? Beyond these questions, there are countless other factors that must be taken into account. With such importance placed on making quick, educated choices based on given information in these games, children are likely to become better at decision-making in general.

To read more on the benefits of playing video games, check out these links below.
Positive Effects of Video Games on Children
The Benefits of Playing Video Games

Part two of this series can be found here.