Journal 4 American Dream

February 19 2013 I listened to a man’s story about his life, his American dream.  Mauricio Garcia’s lecture focused on the area’s we all have trouble with in our life.  Mr. MO is just an ordinary person like me and you, however unlike most people MO followed his dream and did whatever it took for him to live the life he thought he wanted.  He was on the path to being a veterinarian until he met his maker, a class he had to pass for that degree. MO took the class two times failing it both times before he realized that his dream of being a veterinarian was going to have to be just that, a dream. This is where his story really got interesting to me because most people would simply give up and settle for the next thing that came up. MO realized at that point he had to make a change, a change that he wasn’t comfortable making he had to step out of his comfort zone something that we are hardwired not to do. He got more involved in school and the opportunities seemed to be endless at every turn he had another door to open and with every door he opened and walked through something better came from it. Mauricio Garcia is now a very successful person doing something he loves to do and getting paid for it. His story is very inspirational as every obstacle he faced are the same obstacles we all face while going through life. Most of us take the easy way and end up with a job we hate living a life that we don’t want to live, as MO said it takes more than just the minimum if you really want to have the life you dreamed of. MO gave me a lot of things to think about and was very helpful , it’s not every day you meet someone who is actually doing the things they want to be doing but when you do it’s nice to be reminded by them that the life you want is closer then you think. 

Digital Media Essay

Digital Media: A problem in our youth.

            Every day millions of people around the world log onto a computer as there day starts.

Some of these people are logging on to start their day at work while others are using them to log

 on to start there day of school. Many of our schools have turned to the use of digital media as a

 tool for teaching rather than text books. Some educators believe that using a computer rather

than a book helps keep the students more connected and interested in what they are learning and

they are starting to introduce students to computers at a very early age. This might sound like a

good idea as everything in today’s society is digital related, but educators should reevaluate this

and think about the problems the come along with it. Personally I think putting students in front

 of computers with access to the internet is a very poor way to keep their attention as you can’t

monitor everything each one of them are doing at the same time. Rather than doing their work

they have the tendancy to wonder off of their work and start doing other things. Studies have

shown that it also takes more brain power to do school work using a computer over using a book

and I also think it gives students the ability to take short cuts on there school work. It also

teaches them how to navigate there way around the computer which gives them the ability to see

things they shouldn’t see at that age. I think its becoming a problem of our youth.

            To me a part that I don’t like is that the teachers are not able to see what the students are

doing while tucked behind a computer screen. It is human nature to abuse things and take a mile

when given an inch, allowing students to do their work on computers does not exclude this.

Instead of doing what they are suppose to be doing they can be on face book or sending emails to

each other or even watching videos on you tube. I understand that these computers are monitored

 by someone and that they have settings which block most of these sites, however kids of today

know how to get around these blocks and restrictions without being caught and they are able to

 browse the net freely as if they were at home. It also gives them the mind set that since they are

on a computer all day at school why not be on one while at home especially when they have

homework that’s done on them. To me this takes away the teacher being in control of the class

and what the students are doing, this allows teachers to sit back and browse the internet as well

while the class is suppose to be working instead of teaching.

In addition to students doing things they are not suppose to do, computers in the

class room also requires the students to multitask while working. Studies have

shown that while searching the internet your using more brain power than while reading a

book.The studies have concluded that students who study the traditional way are getting more

from it then those using the computer and internet to study. In the film ‘Digital Nation’ they take

a group of college students who consider them selves to be excellent at multitasking and conduct

 a study of brain activity. Those students were far slower at it then they thought, they also

concluded in the study that it is affecting the students ability’s of rational thoughts.

Furthermore the digital era that we are in has enabled students to take short cuts

on work and they are getting far less from school then those a decade ago.

Students attending college are finding them selves not ready and unprepared and I

think that a lot of this comes from them using computers and other media devices

to learn. There are websites such as ‘SparkNotes’ that allow students to read a

book in a matter of pages rather than a few days if they were to read the book.

This takes away from the student in the aspect that they no longer have to

remember important things they can just look them up and by being able to read

the book in a matter or minutes they seem to put off the work until the last minute.

Although using computers in our schools allows students to do many other things

than their work. Educators still promote this by saying that schools with

computers instead of books have students that learn more. However I still think

that allowing computers in the class needs to be re assed as in my opinion it has

more negative values to the students then positive. I do agree that in todays

society everyone needs to know how to use a computer but I don’t think they

should be using them in normal K-12 schools.

Digital Nation

After watching the film ‘Digital Nation’ you realize just how much the digital era in compasses everything we do. In the film they go from teaching kids in the second grade how to use a computer the same time a kid is learning, the addiction of online gaming to even training the military. To me I think a kid in the second grade using a computer in school is completely unacceptable, I think having a computer instead of a text book encourages kids to take short cuts and just look up answeres instead of having to read and search for them. Then they also go into the problems of the youth getting addicted to online games and the health issuses it can cause. I was blown away watching this part of the film, it’s hard to believe that kids can get this wrapped up in a virtual world and completely forget the real world ( the one that matters). I understand that these types of virtual worlds allow people to escape their real life and be whoever they want to be and do whatever they want, however instead of it being a hobby it becomes them and how they actually live their life. People get so tied to this stuff that their real life suffers from school grades to performance at work. As for the part of the film they discuss using a virtual world to train the army for combat is a complete joke, I spent two deployments in Iraq I was army infantry. I actually used that program to train before both deployments and it does absolutely nothing to train you for the real thing, if anything that simulator gives you a false sense because there is no adrenalin rush you get when your actually getting shot at or having to shoot someone. Although I think the combat portion of the army simulator is a joke, the ability for them to use UAV has helped out tremendously and saved countless lives including my own. As stated in the video the pilots of these UAV aircrafts are not physically there so they do not see what the bomb they drop actually does so the mental part of war is not the same as the infantry on the ground. I am not completely against the digital era as there has been a lot of good come from it.  Medical treatment has advance because of this, training for jobs and even school. To me the ability to take online classes is the only way im able to further my education as I work sixty plus hours a week and have a wife and two kids. Without online classes I would never be able to attend college and get my degree. There are pros and cons to the virtual worlds the digital era has made and even though I have been sucked into this world just as the rest of us, I think we as parents can see the negative and positive effects of it and try our best to steer our kids in the right direction, whatever direction that may be.

Reality TV

Reality TV is yet another drain on society and in my opinion one of the biggest ones. Millions of viewers turn on their TV every night to watch these shows we call reality TV, to me there is nothing real about any of these shows as they all have scripts and their days planned for them. They play it off as that is their life and they do what they want to do but nothing in those shows is actually real. These shows do nothing but fool people mostly the younger kids of our society into thinking they themselves can have a life like this. If you go and look back and look at some of the shows that were the founders of the reality tv such as Jackass, you can see how much things have changed since then. However that show im sure sent more kids to the ER from trying to do the stuff they see than any other show out there. Then you go onto shows such as Jersey Shore which in my opinion is just a complete joke. They do nothing but promote going out and getting drunk and making a complete fool of themselves every time they step foot in front of the camera. To me its shows like Jersey Shore that hinder our youth and give them a complete false sense of being an adult, not to mention the show Teen Mom and how that show promotes teen pregnancy. There is always two ways to look at something and just by their ratings it shows that more people like this kind of television than don’t but these are my views on the subject.