A Look at Technological Advances in Video Games

Video games have come a long way since their early days of simple physics-based games (remember Pong or Tetras) to their modern day splendor with dazzling, fast-paced games that often makes one wonder if it's really a game or a piece of reality! Indeed, modern day video games offer a kind of experience that was almost unimaginable even a few years back. A video game, played on one of the sophisticated gaming consoles of today and using a large screen LCD TV or monitor, is more than just a game. It is a whole new experience on its own right.
As hardware continues to grow more powerful and yet increasingly cheaper, game makers are really pushing the limits of their imagination to bring a kind of realism and interactivity in video games that is truly amazing. The video games of today feature the kind of graphics that can be compared to some of the best blockbusters to come out of Hollywood. Higher polygon counts, advanced lighting techniques and of course, amazing artificial intelligence (A.I.) are transforming game play into a real adrenaline-pumping, heart-pounding thrill ride for gamers everywhere.
Talking of A.I., one is really amazed at how much of a difference it is making to the overall gaming experience. Gone are the days when you can choose to rush out in the open with guns blazing, blasting off enemies who just stand there with the minimum of opposition and gladly get riddled with bullets. In modern day games, they shoe an instinct to survive and dodge your attacks as much as you do. They would sneak up to you, flush you out with grenades if you go into hiding, flank you from all sides and devise all sorts of nefarious tricks to trap you, corner you and finally, win over you and porno mobile.
The Internet has many very good resources to educate you about all the latest technological advances in video games and keep you drooling for more. Technology video sites will also let you steal a sneak preview of upcoming titles or games being developed. Indeed, gamers can only look forward to an even more thrilling and immersible gaming experience in the coming months.

The other day I picked up my local Philadelphia newspaper and I read an article which stated that Pennsylvania intends to build four new prisons for 800 million dollars. Did you know that it also takes $50,000 a year to house a prisoner? When I read this I was upset that it was so easy to build four new prisons. I knew that Governor Rendell had spent 3 months trying to get the state budget passed because he refused to put education on the chopping block. The State of Pennsylvania could educate 5 children rather than put one man or women in prison. It seems like our country's priorities are all twisted. Other countries are investing in education and they are experiencing expansion while America is in a state of decline.

Pennsylvania was not the only state to assess its commitment to education. Students in California and other states are experiencing overcrowded classes and bus services have been cut. Students don't vote so they are an easy target for budget cuts. The majority of children in the United States need a better education than they are experiencing right know. Filling prisons is not the solution to our problem. Too many prisoners are high school drop out. In fact they need an education if they are to change their circumstances and not return to prison after they are released.

When is this country going to face the reality that a major solution to our economic crisis is right in our own communities? There are children who need access to better instruction and they need parents who are not in a prison cell. Too many grandparents are raising children because they have no choice. It is difficult for grandparents to provide the resources and guidance that growing teenagers need. Parents need to play an active role in their child's education at all K12 levels.

Expanding prisons is not the solution to the economic crisis. A prison my generate jobs but it does not compare to what a well educated entrepreneur can do. We need to choose business development and job creation in areas where jobs have been depleted. Why not build new schools with modern technology that will lead to more sophisticated instruction and students who are prepared to succeed in college. Many of the schools in Philadelphia are over 50 years old and the maintenance expenses are unreasonable. These old buildings are not the best places for students to learn.

It's time to make education a priority in every state. If we continue to fill our prisons with perfectly healthy young men and women we are becoming our own worst enemy. There is a tremendous amount of talent that is sitting in a cell and wasting away. Changing a young person's potential to end up in prison starts at birth. Children need to develop an early passion for reading and learning. Parents can be a major part of the solution. The future is within our grasp and we need to say no to prisons and yes to education.

The Influence of Books on Children's Music Education

Using the well-known fact that music education raises a child's IQ by up to 40 percent, we can now consider how books and reading in general can help our "musical" children.

Presently, mankind, having achieved enormous strides in the field of technology, continues to invent new means of receiving and distributing information almost daily. Radios, TVs, computers, and the Internet are now a normal way of life. Do you know that all information received doubles every year and a half due to the general acceleration of technology?

These days, we and our children do not need to go to the bookstores and libraries. We can easily find the book we are looking for on the Internet. Moreover, if we have no time to sit and read, we can record the audio version of the book and listen to it while driving, walking, or doing any other activity that doesn't require much reflection. There are also video books. Certainly, these adaptable gadgets are very convenient and we should be grateful to people who invent things to make our lives easier and help us save precious time.

Our children, looking at us, try to copy the things we do. Receiving news in the "easier" version, for example from the TV, the new generation began to read less. On one hand it is normal. But if you want your child to play music without losing interest, he has to read a lot. While reading, a child increases his vocabulary and intelligence. Your imagination automatically "turns on" when you read something exciting.

Have you ever read books in which the author describes what his protagonists see around them? For example, dark-blue skies; dewdrops on a blade of grass; dense, white fog the colour of milk above the river in the early morning, etc. Some people omit such descriptive passages in books so as not to miss a string of events, action, adventure, and learn what happens next.

Every single small detail is important for our children during reading. Just after birth, a child is like a white, blank, pure sheet of paper. The person he grows up to be will depend on the information, knowledge, skills, and abilities that we, as adults, will teach and give him. Even the child's personality and habits are literary copied from the behavior of other people. And again, books play the huge role in this. The contents of the books are imperceptibly recorded and stored somewhere deep in human subconscious.

You might agree, but you might also wonder what this has to do with music education. I will ask you another question. Have you ever heard a piece of music that has deeply touched you? This piece can amuse you, make you pensive and even make you cry...

It happens because two very important moments coincided. First, the composer, who wrote the music, managed to convey with absolute precision not only his mood during the creation of this piece, but also a picture that he had in his mind. And second, the person, who played the piece, had these images available in a databank in his brain.

A child, who doesn't read much, can not open and express the beauty of a musical piece only because he memorizes the notes. There is a unique, direct connection between reading and the expression of feelings.

If you pay attention to people who read a lot, you will notice that their speech is more beautiful and rich in comparison with those who don't read much. The same is true for a child. The more he reads, the better his understanding of social surroundings and the easier it is for him to understand emotions and feelings and to express them in a musical piece.

Education For the 21st Century AKA The Hub Proposal

Creating a Hybrid Learning Community

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

What might a 21st-century community look in which students direct their own education? In this world, the following scenario could take place: a student, engrossed in his favorite video game, puts down his gaming console and decides that he has an innovative idea for a new game of his own. From the convenience of his home computer he signs on to his profile at his school website and posts a bulletin within the "projects" section of the school's online network. His bulletin states the reasons why his video game idea is innovative and what kind of people he needs to help him bring his idea to fruition. After a few hours, seven other students have shown an interest in his idea and want to join him in the endeavor. The intended critical mass of interested parties having been reached, they must now seek out the relevant information and processes to make the project happen.

The group is assigned a teacher/mentor that will aid them in facilitating the achievement of their goal. A meeting time is set and the interested parties meet up in a conference room located at the online school's Hub complex. The Hub Complex is a state of the art building that acts as a meeting ground for the physical aspects of project based learning. In some rooms there are students working on massive science projects while in other rooms students are studying the fine arts related to current cultural topics. The video game designing student has contacted fellow classmates in the carpool list, but due to no one traveling to the Hub at the time he had to travel via public transit.

With notes scribbled on whiteboards and paper, the student's initial idea is fleshed out. It is determined that computer programming, graphic design, and physics are crucial aspects of the forthcoming project and, while the students have some experience in graphic design, their first challenge is that they lack the requisite programming skills. The group decides to sign up for a programming session where other groups are learning the tools necessary to write video game code. A student with a strong interest in the visual aspect of the project works with a student from another group to walk through an online tutorial in game graphic design. The project continues with the mentor acting as consultant, ensuring that the students are not getting overwhelmed and are finding the resources they need. When the video game is completed, the students reflect with the mentor on what was the most difficult part of the project. It may be determined that the project would have gone much more smoothly if a tutorial on some particular facet of the process had been made available to them. This would have saved some time on trial and error and unnecessary difficulties. The group works to publish documentation wherein their reflections won't just benefit their own future project endeavors, but will also serve as an available resource to future student projects and other users around the world.

How do we achieve this vision while working to simultaneously ensure that our students are well educated and allowed to pursue their passions? Perhaps the Internet is the answer public education has been looking for. Over the past decade, online schools and universities have opened at radically increasing rates while many colleges are adopting some form of hybrid online/traditional classrooms to facilitate learning. In the traditional classroom, students interact with other students and teachers, an interaction which creates a relationship that can be treasured for a lifetime. Online lectures and textbooks are still lectures and textbooks, which can be very difficult and confusing. Without another person to help us and without challenging projects that require human interaction the online classroom will be devoid of the life naturally attained within the traditional classroom. Lectures and textbook based learning is why the current form of "online schooling" will never be completely successful. Project based learning with a human face to face component must be included in this new online paradigm in order to facilitate personal and meaningful engagement of students.

One of the principles that our public education system is founded on is the idea that a well-informed citizenry remain strong, free, constantly interactive and capable of diverse thinking. Educating to diverse communication standards (both new and old) is vital to strengthening the community of a multi-cultural society. It is becoming increasingly apparent as we move further into the twenty-first century that education should dovetail with rapidly evolving practices in contemporary communications. In fact, institutional policies are reacting to this demand across the United States. (1) Public education must be flexible enough to follow communities within its structure no matter where they exist. Online education becomes inevitable in this scenario because, as it has become the popular means of mass communication, it has also begun to supplant and augment the traditional loci of communities world-wide. The modern classroom has become the Internet, and vice-versa. Because of the limitless potential of human interaction made possible by the numerous technologies we find at our disposal in the twenty-first century, communities based on instantaneous communication have formed within a new frontier that exists worldwide. Public education, if it is to stay relevant to the needs of the modern community, needs to find its place at the forefront of this frontier.

Online communities have replaced geographical ones. While many are unable to name one of their neighbors, they connect daily with hundreds or thousands of like-minded people for various reasons. These communities are in place, yet education has not effectively found a way to harness these connections for meaningful learning-even while meaningful learning is taking place within them all along! As public educators work to discern and define the function of the K-12 classroom in this new era of communication, they must strive to meet the demands brought forth by new and ever-emerging technologies while still working to create a school that will-above and beyond all things-facilitate learning for the K-12 student. But moving towards a methodology which no longer focuses strictly on the "traditional" means of communication does not mean that teachers need to abandon their basic instinct, viz. to learn we need to interact physically with one another. The traditional concept of a school as being a place where students come together to learn in the same physical environment is not a concept that should be abandoned. Rather, public educators need to change their preconceptions of how and when students come together to learn so that their education can support this new type of technology driven classroom.

Since very early in American history, educators have worked to ensure that all students are prepared and well rounded. Every year more and more people are choosing to enter a college or university; choosing to go beyond their required education in order to receive training in areas about which they are passionate. Yet, in the last couple of decades we have seen technology explode onto the scene, permanently changing the way we live, interact, and learn. While schools have worked hard to ensure that students are equipped with the tools needed in today's society, we can always ask: is technology being used its fullest extent? The above scenario, in which students utilize available technologies to the fullest extent in order to complete a complex project, outlines a possible situation in which students, rather than simply making use of technology to absorb disjointed and only marginally useful facts, employ such technology to learn and develop within a tightly-knit community.

Is it possible to envision a world where an online student body is able to complete a project that they are interested in while still obtaining the skills and facts necessary to fall in line with the National Standards of Education? How can schools stay in touch with the world if they are not part of the mainstream student communities of the 21st century? All humans have a natural inclination towards learning; whether learning to walk, read a book, or to take a car apart and put it back together again. It is the responsibility of public educational institutions to mentor these natural motivations and to encourage a productive and collaborative society. Can this be successfully achieved and supported within the confines of a hybrid school? If public educators are to rise to the challenges of our times, the answer must invariably be, "yes."

The Internet has become the unofficial 21st century method for learning. Almost anything can be learned by simply watching a YouTube video or following along on someone else's blog. News is transmitted instantaneously throughout the world creating an almost unlimited supply of information for almost any need. However, when we look in the classroom, we find information continuing to be disseminated in the same way it has been for centuries. Where information comes out of the Internet like a waterfall, students are asked to sit for eight hours a day and move through information at a trickle. This is why public education needs to follow the community, especially when the community is obviously shouting that it knows where it wants to be.

So how do we tap into those communities? If there is one thing that has truly kept the fire of learning alive, it has been the library. Imagine a super-library, a kind of K-12 learning center that has been built to be alive and able to act a resource for an online community. A place that would support a kind of project-based learning that could be facilitated anywhere there was an Internet connection. This online school Hub would be filled with teachers and experts who could be present both physically present and virtually for students to interact with no matter where they are. This place would also serve as an easy meeting place for the physically interactive parts of project-based learning that are required of its online student body.

We propose that this Hub be the school that actively engages with the 21st century community structures. This high tech Hub facility will be a place where teachers no longer become the gatekeepers of a rigid grading system, but rather start acting as mentors and facilitators within a complex hive of student activity. Why this hub would be successful as a base for an online/virtual school is because it would enable what public education has been seeking to accomplish all along - it would allow students to naturally gravitate to the school out of the want for learning. The basic idea is that human beings learn while uncomfortable, i.e. in new situations where they are forced to be alert. If students were able to first engage with a school from a comfortable place it is our theory that these students would in turn be not only motivated to come to school they will be drawn to it. A "Hey, what's going on here?" attitude will be fostered when a student is able to observe the classroom before entering it.

It is of our opinion that if a High School were to utilize new technologies to expand the classroom and support its communication between all parties involved the result would be a class that is no longer confined by the walls of one room. The classroom could then become earth and the world we live in would become the teacher. This "free from physical constraints" classroom would be populated with students who are able to communicate anywhere that they can receive Internet bandwidth. Projects could take place in the African bush or in a coffee shop in Bern, Switzerland.

As we move into the future of learning the question of how to combine truly personalized education and online learning becomes self-evident. There are many more conversations that must come up to answer this, but none can arise until we have a core understanding as a community of what we are trying to achieve and what we are trying to teach as educators.

1) For a detailed elaboration of this phenomenon, see John Watson, Butch Gemin, and Jennifer Ryan. "Keeping the Pace with K-12 Online learning: A Review of State-Level Policy and Practice." Rev. of K-12 Online Learning. Nov. 2008: 1-163.

Continuing Education Options For Busy Managers

Today's businesses require regular updating of skills, with global competition and emerging technologies on the rise. With customer demands and expectations also on the high level, businesses require their mangers to have good project management and technical skills.

For a business to remain competitive, new projects and business development must be completed on time and within budget. Here is where the importance of project management leadership crops up. Project management skills are highly sought out by businesses to keep them ahead.

So what happens if you do not have the necessary skills? Take heart. There are ways and options to learn the skills, along with your regular job, so that you and your organization or business has the cutting edge.

What are the choices available to the busy professional of today, to stay ahead of the competition? Continuing education is the option and the various forms of continuing education available makes it easy for the busy executive to learn and study along with his or her busy schedule.

The skills could include project management, technical know-how, a foreign language, management, business, finance. Just about anything.

Let us consider a few of these:

UPDATE TIME: Professional education providers can provide practicing professionals with levels of knowledge and skills comparable to those graduating today from professional schools. For example, the engineer who graduated in the 1970's has a very urgent need to close the knowledge and skills gap with today's graduate. This they are able to do updating the curriculum from professional schools.

This is done very simply where who know something teach it to those who do not know it in two or three days of intensive short courses. Such instructional systems are heavily didactic and the content of such courses is dominated by informational update.

The course is conducted by a single instructor, who lectures in a formal setting. The main aim of these short courses is to keep professionals up to date in their practice in a formal set-up.

FREE BIRD: You do not have to be confined to a classroom to continue your education or horn your skills. There are distance learning programs to help fulfill the needs of busy professionals like you. The Web, computer and other technologies are playing a large role in delivering education and training.

Teleconferencing, is a technology that allows several people to call one phone number and be connected at the same time. It can be a convenient and viable way to "attend" classes. No special equipment is required to participate in the call.

Some courses offer the online format for pursuing educational opportunities. With such online classes, lessons and homework can be done on weekends, late at night and even while traveling, thus making it convenient for the busy executive.

Mostly, all distance education programs will have a counselor or guide whom you can meet up with regularly to check your progress.

LATE BIRD: For the professional who can spare the time, there are evening classes and late sessions for continuing education held after work hours. These will have the formal set-up and regular sessions with an instructor. These are definitely more effective, if you have the time to spare.

Whatever method you choose, with the advent of technology, continuing education whether it is for career transition or career advancement or just for updating skills, need no longer be difficult to accomplish. With the plethora of continuing education choices being offered, even you, the busy executive, can learn those skills you have always wanted.x