Definition – Senpai Pio

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Senpai Pio

What is a Research Paper?

The purpose of a research paper is for the student to take time researching the ins and outs over a specific topic. Then, using the findings, put together a well-written paper explaining what they found to either explain or persuade their audience. On the outside, that does not seem too bad. The student is able to learn about something new, and it can show the teacher how much they have learned throughout the course of the class. However, that overlooks a large majority of truly what gets put into a research paper. Not only is countless hours put into a singular assignment, the amount of stress for the student and the teacher, and the negative impact it could have on a students future school work could ultimately contradict the entire purpose for the research paper. 

One of the most important parts of the research paper is the number of hours that goes into the paper. Between planning, researching, organizing, and actually writing, the amount of hours spent on the paper is astronomical. The amount of hours spent on school in general has a negative impact on all aspects of a students life. Nadya M. Kouzma and Gerald A. Kennedy of Victoria University worked on a study to see how the numbers of hours spent on homework impacted the students mental health, “Table 2 shows that the number of hours spent on homework was positively related to scores for stress, Depression-Dejection, Tension-Anxiety, Fatigue-Jnertia, Confusion-Bedderment , Anger-Hostility, Vigor-Activity, and Mood Disturbance. Also stress was positively correlated with rated Depression-Dejection, Tension-Anxiety, Fatigue-Inertia, Confusion-Bewilderment, Anger-Hostility, Vigor-Activity, and Mood Disturbance.” The long hours of working on a research paper can be extremely detrimental to their mental health. As stated in the article, there is a correlation between working long hours on schoolwork and stress which would make sense in the paper done by Human Psychiatry Human Dev, “Toero et al. [7] argued that there is a strong link between the pressure to excel in school and suicidal behaviors among children and adolescents. In their study, Toero et al. [7] showed that the number of suicide cases in a year usually peaked during examination periods where children and adolescents experienced a high level of stress in school.” Using the fact that there was a correlation between school work and stress, it seems there is a correlation between school work and suicide rates. This is often overlooked while dealing with research papers. Since that is not the purpose of the paper, people do not think about the side effects. Although research papers are not meant to do that, it seems they can lead to an increase in suicide rates.

While the student is extremely important, the teacher’s mental health cannot be ignored. Similarly to how an overload of work impacts a students mental health, it can detriment a teachers. According to an article going over teach burnout, written by Willy Lens and Saul Neves De Jesus, “Teachers have consistently cited work overload as a major stressor in their job; important factors include excessive paperwork, oversize classes comprising students of heterogeneous academic abilities, imposed time constraints, and the need to teach courses that are outside their particular skill area.” Often overlooked, the amount of school work given can affect the teacher’s stress levels. Someone has to grade the assignments, give feedback, and help out the students in any way. Teachers arguably have a significantly larger workload than the students. Like previously said, there is a link between stress levels and suicide rates which cannot be ignored. 

An issue currently going through many high schools and colleges is dealing with burnout. Burnout can happen for many reasons, but it ultimately prevents the student from the ability of doing any of their work. From an article by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health,  “A chronic exposure to academic stress can result in school burnout, defined as an emotional state of exhaustion, cynicism and depersonalization.” As seen as before, stress can greatly negatively impact the student. This time, it is burning out the student from being able to complete their school work. Due to the large workload provided by a research paper, it can lead to stress which will burn out the student. 

While burnout does mean an increase of stress, it also can explain the droppage of grades in the student’s future. Written by Daniel J. Madigan and Thomas Curran, they explain, “ Aligned with our hypotheses, burnout did indeed emerge as a significant negative predictor of achievement (exams, grades, GPA). In this regard, total burnout and all three burnout symptoms predicted worse academic achievement. There was also evidence that the instrument used to measure burnout (MBI, SBI) moderated the relationship between the reduced efficacy dimension of burnout and academic achievement.” Caused by burnout, in their study there was a drop in GPA, grades, and exams. This not only explains why burnout can be detrimental to a student, but it also explains the impact it may have on the student’s career. From the workload presented by a research paper, the future of the student can be impacted due to the burnout as a result of the paper.

While research papers are generally thought to help out a student, the majority of people truly do not know what is involved when writing a research paper. Since research papers have an extremely large workload, it often negatively impacts the students. Working on a research paper almost always ends up becoming an increase of stress, anxiety, depression, and many other negative emotions. These emotions lead to impacting the student in many easy such as burnout, a decrease in happiness, and possibly even suicide. Not only does this impact the student, the same emotions can be felt from the teacher’s perspective. With the increase in work for them, the same effects of a research paper can be seen. Maybe research papers should not be seen as helpful like they are. It seems the negatives extremely outweigh the pros that can come from one.

References

KOUZMA, Nadya M, and Gerald A KENNEDY. “P.rybological Reporis.” HOMEWORK, STRESS, AND MOOD DISTURBANCE IN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ‘ .

Meylan, Nicolas, et al. “What Types of Educational Practices Impact School Burnout Levels in Adolescents?” International Jounral of Enviornmental Research and Public Health, 12 Feb. 2020.

Tetzlaff, Leonard, et al. “Developing Personalized Education: A Dynamic Framework – Educational Psychology Review.” SpringerLink, Springer US, 29 Oct. 2020, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-020-09570-w.Tipd, Upt. “Smart Lib: Smart Library.” SMARTLIB, smartlib.umri.ac.id/.

Posted in Definition, SenpaiPio | Leave a comment

Rebuttal – Water

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Water

Yes, but NO

What if facial recognition actually worked and could properly record or relay information without it being able to misidentify what’s in front of the camera. Would this be beneficial or would nothing change? Facial recognition has a constant problem of not being able to make out what it’s looking at, so when it tries to give an answer it tends to give a response that is not accurate to what the person may go by. One could make the claim that facial recognition in fact is pretty stable and could be reliable and safe, famous companies such as Amazon support this idea.

Amazon has a subsection dedicated to facial recognition. It talks about how it works, and the use of the programs or devices, on its website they state “Facial recognition algorithms have near-perfect accuracy in ideal conditions. There is a higher success rate in controlled settings but generally a lower performance rate in the real world. It is difficult to accurately predict the success rate of this technology, as no single measure provides a complete picture.” There’s a flaw with this statement, not only did they make the claim facial recognition has near-perfect accuracy they then disprove their claim by saying it has a low-performance rate in the real world. Does this imply that it only works in certain locations and could be a liability if used in the real world. For example if used on security cameras and they were used to find anyone who either went past the speed limit or involved in a crime would it just be a blur due to the lighting and resolutions being bad or will it be able to have a clear picture of the person. A flaw like this really defeats the purpose of having facial recognition, I mean it could really be something incredible for the future but if a simple problem such as poor lighting or understanding facial features can be detrimental for safety or data collecting.

Developers say that they have made changes and improvements to these kinds of programs, but could they be lying or just simply trying to impress those companies who use the program. According to an article from Innovatrics titled “How the accuracy of facial recognition technology has improved over time” in this article they claim, “The first is “education” – the better the dataset that the neural network is trained on, the better are the results. To help the machine learn better, the datasets have to be labeled correctly and checked for mistakes. The other avenue is to rely on improving computing power. Neural networks can be more precise and their outputs can be tested repeatedly to find and repair their blind spots.” This makes sense to a certain degree. If you add more diverse pictures about people from all parts of the world and store them in a dataset, they mention education but they didn’t include what groups or other forms of information they would add to strengthen the accuracy. One main problem of facial recognition and trying to identify a person is they don’t have groups that involve societal changes such as people part of the LGBTQ or other respected groups. To be accurate must mean you have to include everything, inclusion presents external problems such as gender or racial bias, which have been proven to be an issue for these datasets as some had pictures with those of similar features and no diversity. It has even brought up the talk of either banning these kinds of programs.

Activists have been demanding lawmakers put a ban on facial recognition. The reason why they feel like Facial recognition should be removed is that they claim that photo-matching technology is inaccurate with respect to photos of women and minorities. The argumentative article by the security industry association titled “What Science Really Says About Facial Recognition Accuracy and Bias Concerns” tried to disprove a paper published by a grad student researcher at MIT Media Lab in 2018 who would disprove the function of facial recognition and misidentifies mainly people of color. The article tries to disprove their claim by saying, “the paper is frequently cited as showing that facial recognition software “misidentifies’ ‘ dark-skinned women nearly 35% of the time. But there’s a problem: Gender Shades evaluated demographic-labeling algorithms, not facial recognition.” Race has as much to do with facial recognition, facial recognition can’t go off facial features they have to base them off skin color because people could have similar shades of skin color but they could be from any part of the world, information such as region is crucial when determining one’s identity. Identity isn’t just gender or height, it’s everything used to categorize one, this includes sex, race, orientation and more.

Furthermore, in the article, the author tries to provide more information regarding facial recognition improvement as a whole and how the research paper had flaws regarding the experiment run on the accuracy of the software program.The American Civil Liberties Union conducted a test on amazon’s recognition program on the people of congress back in 2018 it was stated, “it created a database of 25,000 publicly available images and ran a search against official photos of the 535 members of Congress, returning “false matches” for 28 of them. The ACLU claimed that since 11 of these matches, or 40%, were people of color, and only 20% of Congress overall are people of color, this is evidence of racial bias in facial recognition systems” this proves facial recognition is unreliable in some instance but after the publishment of the experiment amazon reran the test but this time they had 850,000 images to run for matches and they found zero “false matches”. This simply means that with more images they could be able to pinpoint an accurate match.

Finally, in the year 2019, statistics regarding facial recognition came out and the stats were different compared to before. In the statistics, it declared that “According to data from the most recent evaluation from June 28, each of the top 150 algorithms are over 99% accurate across Black male, white male, Black female and white female demographics. For the top 20 algorithms, the accuracy of the highest performing demographic versus the lowest varies only between 99.7% and 99.8%” This would be interesting to see but if you think about it, they never included or mentioned other groups. They failed to mention how people from Asia or South America compare when out into these facial recognition programs. Overall leaving with the idea that facial recognition could be something if they either had more information or it could just be that facial recognition isn’t trusting and has too many flaws to correct.  

Sources

Amazon | What is Facial Recognition? | published online | Amazon

Innovatrics | How the accuracy of facial recognition technology has improved over time | Author: Barbara Rusnáková | Published online

Jake P., Senior Director, Government Relations, SIA, and David R., Chief Operating Officer & General Counsel, Rank One Computing| What Science Really Says About Facial Recognition Accuracy and Bias Concerns | July 23, 2022 | Security Industry Association

Posted in Waterdrop | 3 Comments

Stone Money-GoodMusician440

Posted on April 10, 2023 by goodmusician440

Is Money a Valuable Asset?

Money is something that is brought up a lot in America. It is an important in many people’s personal lives. People use it for everything. They use it for many things such as buying, selling, trading, getting access to things, and many other things. Money is also represented in many ways such as green paper bills, coins, cyptocurrency, and others. Money is used so much by people for everything in their lives and represente in many forms. Money can also change over time as far as worth goes in situations such as inflation, bubbles, and crashes. As a result, many people value money really highly, and they make money a really important asset in their lives. However, is money actually a valuable asset to our lives, or is it just a made up concept that we make seem like it is valuable?

When I read the article “The Island of Stone Money” by Milton Friedman, I saw a lot of interesting things that I haven’t really thought of before reading this. The people on the island of Yap used stones as their currency rather than what we normally call currency, which is of course green papers and coins. This made question a lot of things, such as what even is currency? What we call currency is literally just green papers and coins with tons of symbols and people’s heads on them, and we have the nerve to call them “valuable”. The people on the island also have really good memory and they can just identify which stone is more valuable than the other, which I think is very fascinating. The people also didn’t have to move the stones at all to trade them. All they had to do was to leave markings on the rocks when an offer was made. This is cool because by simply marking on the rocks, it shows that the rock has a worth for a person.

I also listened to the NPR Broadcast “The Invention of Money”  to see what they would say, and they said a lot of interesting things. The broadcast clearly stands by the viewpoint that money is not really a real thing, but rather an idea that was come up by people. For instance, back then, the United States used to use gold as its main source of currency. It was very valuable back then, especially in areas that were really country. However, later on, the United States decided to switch to paper, specifically, the green papers that we have today. Now, we have tons of types of currency to chose from, specifically, green papers and coins as well as online money and cryptocurrency, I think this is really interesting that this is, and has been, happening because it almost seems like that the definition of value is kind of changing as history goes on because we choose to use something else for currency that we see as more valuable than the former. The broadcast also touched up a lot on Brazil and its interesting experience with money and inflation. In 1990, Brazil was having quite an interesting financial crisis. It was experiencing an immense amount of inflation, and as a result, prices started to skyrocket ridiculously high. This, as a result, caused shoppers to try to be careful financially. They tried to shop early so that they could get products at good deals or even reasonable deals. 

I also read “The bubble burtsts on e-currency Bitcoin” because this is the latest kind of currency to really take off and take the world by storm. This is also a currency that people reallt see as super valuable. When this article was released a while ago, there was a huge bubble that had formed for bitcoin, and there tons and tons of crazy prices skyrocketing at bitcoin that week. However, a while after that huge rise, Bitcoin had suffered its first true crash. When huge price swings happen for a company or any product for that matter, that is not a good thing because the actual overall value of the company or the product is completely wishy washy, and its true value remains very unclear. Sometimes, when things like this happen, it can take a few years for the crash to go back to the state it was before the crash. The crash itself took three days to get to its lowest point, which is really fast given the statistics and the type of company we are talking about. The exact amount of money it was in those three days was from 266 dollars to 54 dollars. Money is extremely diverse in many forms, and that makes it easy for value to fluctuate a lot. That is another reason to prove that money isn’t an actual real thing, but rather an idea cause by people. Something so valuable like money or different people’s kind’s of currency shouldn’t have to change value so quickly. If there has to be any changes, it is in my opinion that the changes should be minimal and that I think the value should be fairly consistent. 

From reading and listening to all these articles and broadcasts, I have had a lot of thoughts and revelations. I really don’t think now that money is a real thing, but instead, I definitely think now that money is merely an idea that people made up for themselves in order to make themselves feel more important and valuable. If something has to be so valuable, such as gold, then why is it that It is possible for the value to switch to a different object? Also, the ideas of inflation and crashes are definitely interesting in the sense that they either raise the value of something or decrease the value of something relative to how the market is doing right now. It almost seems like that the people deliberately transferred the value from one thing or another just to either be relevant to today or even to make things a little more portable. 

FIX YOUR FORMATTING FOR BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES.

References

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html

https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/215061/full

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money

Posted in GoodMusician, Stone Money | 1 Comment

Rebuttal Rewrite – Sunflower

Posted on April 10, 2023 by sunflower0311

Exergaming: The True Benefits

Exergaming is a relatively new idea so it is natural that there would be some speculation regarding the effectiveness of exergaming and whether or not it truly has any positive effects at all. Even noted exercise researchers Nan Zeng and Zao Gao, who promote the benefits of exergaming as part of a school based physical education program, are not ready to confirm the long-term benefits of exergaming versus more traditional team sports. In an article called “Exergaming and Obesity in Youth: Current Perspectives” Zeng and Gao worry that “… the evidence regarding its effectiveness on health-related outcomes… remains unclear.” But despite those reservations, there is actually plenty of evidence that exergaming is extremely effective in improving health.

Exergaming without a doubt increases the physical activity of kids who play them compared to other games. Typical videogames are sedentary and cause kids to sit on the couch and watch a screen for hours on end. This plays a part in kids continuously missing the recommended sixty minutes of physical activity they are supposed to get each day. The numbers are shown in the article, “Impact of exergaming on young children’s School Day Energy expenditure and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity levels” which said, “research indicated only 42% of U.S. children aged 6–11 years and 8% of adolescents participated in the recommended 60 min of MVPA per day”. While this shows some kids are able to reach this benchmark it is concerning that more than fifty percent of children do not. Exergaming however can easily remedy this. Exergaming combines the technology kids love while forcing them to get off the couch and be physically active in order to progress in the game. Unlike typical videogames, exergames requires kids to actually move around in order for the character on the screen to move and earn points. Utilizing this technology in school will dramatically increase the amount of physical activity kids get each day and help them reach that sixty-minute mark.

Exergaming appeals to the children of today’s world. While the typical outdoor games of tag or manhunt would have appealed to past generations this generation tends to prefer video games that include physical activity such as Just Dance or the Kinect games for Xbox. These games incorporate the physical activity kids need in order to stay healthy and the video gaming aspect that they enjoy. Exergames make kids be physically active by moving their arms, legs and moving and jumping around in order to advance through the game. These types of games are more motivating to today’s children because of the challenges that are present and ever changing within the game and the ability to always increase your scores. Motivation is an important factor when it comes to exercising and being physically active and a study was conducted on what causes people to stick to an exercise regimen or physical activity. The article based on that study entitled “Intrinsic Motivation and Exercise Adherence” said, “… competence and enjoyment motives were predictive of greater adherence and attendance to one’s chosen activity.” So, for kids they find video games and technology to be enjoyable and motivating. Those things are easily incorporated into exergaming meaning that since the kids find it enjoyable, they are motivated and more likely to stick with exergaming causing them to continue to be physically active. It is important to remember that the best form of physical activity for kids is the one they are willing to actually stick to.

The physical activity children get through exergaming has just as many health benefits as a more typical form of physical activity has. Exergaming allows kids to participate in light physical activity. We have a preconceived notion that the only form of physical activity that has any real health benefits would be heavy physical activity however a study done by Minghui Quan, Zachary Pope and Zan Gao proved otherwise, “… LPA is independently and positively associated with improved health outcomes in children and adolescents, including reduced total body fat mass, some cardiometabolic risk factors, and improved body bone health, in addition to cognitive function improvements…” The amount of health benefits exergaming has can be surprising to many of us however exergaming really is not much different than the physical activity kids would typically get. A surprising benefit is the fact that exergames help improve cognition. This improvement will help students in school because their brains will be more ready and open to learning. In addition, being physically active has been proven to improve brain function and kids who are often physically active have better grades and overall school performance.

It is understandable when you first think of exergaming it comes off as an odd or even unconventional way of combating childhood obesity however perhaps we should take a look at some of the unconventional things us adults do to reduce inactivity. Since many of us are stuck working at desks we often incorporate things such as standing desks, bike desks and yoga ball chairs to help reduce our sedentary lifestyles. When you really think about it, each and every one of those things is unconventional and has less proof of their benefits than there is for the benefits of exergaming. Overall exergaming solves the problem of childhood obesity while also being fun and enjoyable to the kids playing the games. It has obviously been proven without a doubt that exergaming would be a perfect activity to help kids increase their daily physical activity.

References

Gao, Z., Pope, Z., Eun Lee, J., Stodden, D., Roncesvalles, N., Pasco, D., Huang, C. C., & Feng, D. (2016, November 24). Impact of exergaming on young children’s School Day Energy expenditure and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity levels. Journal of Sport and Health Science. Retrieved March 7, 2023

Quan, M., Pope, Z., & Gao, Z. (2018, September 25). Examining young children’s physical activity and sedentary behaviors in an exergaming program using accelerometry. MDPI. Retrieved March 7, 2023

Ryan, R. M., Frederick, C. M., Lepes, D., Rubio, N., & Sheldon, K. M. (n.d.). Intrinsic Motivation and Exercise Adherence. Retrieved April 8, 2023

Zeng, N., & Gao, Z. (2022, November 23). Exergaming and obesity in youth: Current perspectives. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved April 11, 2023

Posted in Portfolio Sunflower, Rebuttal Rewrite, Sunflower | 12 Comments

Rebuttal – Sunflower

Posted on April 10, 2023 by sunflower0311

Exergaming: The True Benefits

Exergaming is a relatively new idea so it is natural that there would be some speculation regarding the effectiveness of exergaming and whether or not it truly has any positive effects at all. Afterall when thinking about video games and obesity we unconsciously link the two in the sense that video games cause obesity. However, it was made clear that video games actually are not the cause of obesity and can actually help fight obesity. In an article called Exergaming and Obesity in Youth: Current Perspectives by Nan Zeng and Zan Gao they claim that “… the evidence regarding its effectiveness on health-related outcomes… remains unclear.” While this claim is understandable for someone to think is true there is actually plenty of evidence that proves exergaming is extremely effective when it comes to improving health.

Before video games really became a major part of everyday life children were more than happy to play outside all day long or participate in the typical games played in a typical physical education class. It is recommended for kids to get at least sixty minutes of physical activity each day which with the rapid growth of technology kids have continuously missed this sixty-minute mark. This was evident in the article, Impact of exergaming on young children’s School Day Energy expenditure and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity levels which said, “research indicated only 42% of U.S. children aged 6–11 years and 8% of adolescents participated in the recommended 60 min of MVPA per day”. The lack of physical activity is highly concerning, and it is extremely easy to take video games and blame it on all of our problems. The bottom line is that these kids are not growing up in the same world you and I grew up in because of this it is important to take into consideration what is available and enjoyed by kids today and solve the problems based on that and not our outdated version of how things should be. One of the best ways to ensure that kids get the recommended sixty minutes of physical activity is by incorporating physical activity into the videogames they enjoy playing. It is far better to incorporate what is good for kids into something they already thoroughly enjoy. This is where exergaming comes in.

Exergaming appeals to the children of today’s world. While the typical outdoor games of tag or manhunt would have appealed to past generations this generation tends to prefer video games that include physical activity such as Just Dance or the Kinect games for Xbox. These games incorporate the physical activity kids need in order to stay healthy and the video gaming aspect that they enjoy. Exergames make kids be physically active by moving their arms, legs and moving and jumping around in order to advance through the game. These types of games are more motivating to today’s children because of the challenges that are present and ever changing within the game and the ability to always increase your scores. In addition, these games are playable and enjoyable for kids of all different skill levels.

In addition, the physical activity that children get through exergaming has the exact same benefits as a more typical form of physical activity has. The article entitled Examining Young Children’s Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviors in an Exergaming Program using Accelerometry said that exergaming showed,”…improvements in physiological and cognitive outcomes, such as body composition, cardiorespiratory fitness, bone health, cognition, and academic achievement.” All of these benefits can be found in playing the typical sports such as soccer or basketball so it is incredibly amazing that the same effects can be seen from participating in an exergame. These findings are incredibly important when speaking about the effectiveness of exergaming and clearly shows that there are benefits. The main thing we are trying to solve when implementing exergaming is to combat the unhealthy and sedentary lifestyles that are increasing among children.

In addition to physical benefits that exergaming can provide it can also provide benefits in cognition and academic performance. In the article Enhancing Physical Education with Exergames and Wearable Technology they prove this point by saying “Previous research indicates that exergames may improve the fitness and motivation of players, as well as their cognitive and academic performance.” Exergames are not just about physical activity, they also include challenging puzzles that children have to solve in order to finish the game. This is a great way to improve children’s cognition because they do not necessarily realize that they are learning from these games because they just view them as being fun. Having improved cognition will also help these students in school because their brains will be more ready and open to learning. In addition, being physically active has been proven to improve brain function and kids who are often physically active have better grades and school performance.

As you can clearly see, the benefits of exergaming have been proven again and again by reputable studies. Exergaming clearly helps kids become more active in this ever-changing world that more often than not promotes sedentary lifestyles. The increase in videogames, television shows, movies and other sedentary activities exergaming gives kids the opportunity to be physically active while including the activities that appeal to them. In addition, exergaming also has numerous benefits to kids’ health, cognition and academic performance. Overall, the problem we are trying to solve by using exergaming is to make sure kids can be physically active and healthy and exergaming clearly solves this problem. With all of these facts it is obvious that exergaming has been proven to be an effective form of physical activity for children to participate in.

Reference

Gao, Z., Pope, Z., Eun Lee, J., Stodden, D., Roncesvalles, N., Pasco, D., Huang, C. C., & Feng, D. (2016, November 24). Impact of exergaming on young children’s School Day Energy expenditure and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity levels. Journal of Sport and Health Science. Retrieved March 7, 2023, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095254616301181

Quan, M., Pope, Z., & Gao, Z. (2018, September 25). Examining young children’s physical activity and sedentary behaviors in an exergaming program using accelerometry. MDPI. Retrieved March 7, 2023, from https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/7/10/302

R. Lindberg, J. Seo and T. H. Laine, “Enhancing Physical Education with Exergames and Wearable Technology,” in IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 328-341, 1 Oct.-Dec. 2016, doi: 10.1109/TLT.2016.2556671.

Zeng, N., & Gao, Z. (2022, November 23). Exergaming and obesity in youth: Current perspectives. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved April 11, 2023, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2147/IJGM.S99025

Posted in Portfolio Sunflower, Rebuttal Argument, Sunflower | Leave a comment

Visual Rewrite – Fulcrum66

Posted on April 9, 2023 by fulcrum66

0:00-0:01 The beginning shot shows a family of four walking away from a brick building that could possibly be their home. The two older individuals who could be the parents have their hands filled with childcare items. The man is carrying a stroller and some bags while the women carry bags and her child.

0:01-0:02 We see more of a house structure form behind them when the camera frame expands. The family continues to walk away from the building and their faces contain joyful expressions as they all look at one another.

0:02-0:03 The camera zooms in on the women’s face as she makes a happy facial expression. Her black hair flows in the wind as she walks still holding her child and bags. Her eyes are wide open, and she has a calming grin on her face.

0:04 The video frame expands back out to all of the family members walking away from the building. All of their still have not changed and all of them still seem content with the situation they are in.

0:05–0:06 Suddenly the video frame zooms in to the little girl who is walking next to the man. She begins to yank on a link of plastic rings which is connected to the bag the man is carrying. This incident causes the bag to pull towards the little girl which causes the man to lose balance of the items he’s holding, and the stroller falls from his back. The little girl smiles at her father’s suffering and probably finds it funny.

0:07 We see the women’s reaction to the stroller falling the stroller falling when the camera zooms in and her eyes widen and mouth drops. Unlike her daughter she feels bad for the man’s suffering.

0:08-0:09 As they continue to walk more chaos follows with the women having to fix her hold on the child she is carrying. As she fixes her grip, she has a distressed facial expression, and the child seems on fazed but the quick change. The then loses hold of what he is carrying and slowly loses his grip on the bags he is holding. Both man and women originally had happy facial expressions but now they seem distressed.

0:10-0:12 The man and women continue to walk with the children and seeming happy after almost dropping all of their belongings. The man continues to be getting pulled by the little girl and even tries navigating eating while being pulled. He is now in a state of distress when all he wants to do is finish eating.

0:13 The camera zooms in on the shoes of the man which are brown leather shoes. His feet shuffle and this might be due to the load he is carrying.

0:14 Due to the load he is carrying the man falls behind and the rest of the group continues forward. He looks at them for help, but they keep walking forward.

0:15-0:16 This frame shows the group walking up to a car and proceed to get into the car with all of their belongings. Before getting into the car the women place her drink on top of the car to make it easier to place the child, she was holding into the car.

0:17 The man is one side of the car and helps the little girl into the car and on the other side the women do the same thing with the child she is holding.

0:18-0:20 The man assists the little girl with buckling her seat after helping her get into the car. She smiles and holds a little bowl with what seems to be some form of cereal. Then we get a zoom in of the man clicking the seat belt together.

0:21–0:22 All of a sudden, the little girl erupts and starts throwing around the bowl of cereal as the man is helping her. He has a terrified expression on his face due to the confusion and chaos of the event. As the little girl throws around the cereal, she finds amusement from it and smiles wide.

0:23-0:24 On the other side the women have an a seemingly easy time buckling the child and does not show any signs of being distressed.

0:25-0:30 The video concludes with no more actual visuals of the family. A screen then appears with a blue background with symbols of different kinds of cars seats and how the seat belt works on them. The name NHTSA is displayed on the bottom of the screen, and this is the company that created this advertisement.

Posted in Fulcrum, Portfolio Fulcrum, Portfolio SP23, Tasks, Visual Rewrite | Leave a comment

Open Strong- Queen Random

Posted on April 9, 2023 by queenrandom04

Rebuttal Essay

The police cannot continue to exist. They were created on irredeemable values and goals. Like reenslaving escaped slaves and enforcing unnecessary terror and violence within communities. Slaves no longer exist but the system of keeping people incarcerated with no autonomy is one the police continue to create and support through the prison system.  Support for the police stems from the fear of crime. The belief is that when the police are present crime will decrease. But, the places with the highest police presence also have the highest crime rates. If supporters of the police support law enforcement believe that police presence decreases crime it is simply not true. When the police are present crime doesn’t cease to exist, where can we continue to find justification for their presence? Admitting that the police don’t prevent crime means we as a society must admit to ourselves there is a bigger reason we are so reluctant to let go of this branch of government that continues to abuse its citizens.

Posted in Open Strong, QueenRandom | 2 Comments

Purposeful Summary-Queen Random

Posted on April 9, 2023 by queenrandom04

What are the ethics of a three parent child 

I think it’s counterintuitive to put the embryo through the risk of death or extreme disability for the purpose of preventing a disease from developing in the first place. The scientific discovery of using the DNA of three parents to prevent the child from having complications is unethical. If there’s potential for an embryo to be born I believe that being alive should be enough of a requirement for it. Children have been born with disabilities forever and in the modern day pose no immediate risk of being disabled impeding their ability to be born. Mitochondrial defects do pose real threats, but known threats people are able to recognize and deal with. “Some efforts done in human embryos, but no 9 month pregnancy has been brought to term,” This is an experiment done with a real human life, a person that will exist until they die, and these scientists don’t have enough wherewithal to consider the consequences.  

Fabienne Cherisma

I think it’s counterintuitive that the goal of realistic photography is to gain sympathy when the act of capturing these inhumane acts are inherently unsympathetic. This picture of a little girl shot in the street is sickening, you’re looking at a picture of a child who could literally still be alive in the last moments of her life. There was no call for help, no offering of comfort to this child that is dying. The photographers see her as an opportunity to get money. By commodifying these inhumane acts of the world in attempts to raise awareness we create the issue of the photographers now committing one last act of cruelty to the subject of their photos. 

It’s counterintuitive, do we prioritize the people in other countries, who don’t know this is happening; or the subjects of the photograph, who are dead. Do these people lose autonomy because they are dead? Is their humanity or dignity less valuable than say, mine or yours? Why because they were born in a country of turmoil? These photographs prove that intent is not as important as reality. The goal of realistic photography is to gain sympathy but all it’s turned into is another case of dehumanizing its subjects. The photograph of the little girl reminds me of the photograph of Emmet Till’s dead body. It’s grotesque, it’s shocking, and it is not sympathy-inducing. It makes you question who the photograph was taken for. If Realistic Photography is to help, who are the people we claim to be helping? 

Prozac: What’s Race Got to Do With It?

It’s counterintuitive that the people mainly persecuted by the police for the opioid epidemic are communities of color when the majority of people prescribed an opioid are white. These patients have the same symptoms yet because of ‘unknown reasons’ they are less likely to get the medicine proven to help the illness they are sick with. It’s counterintuitive that the communities of color are being persecuted for trying to get the medicine the traditional forms of medical help have made inaccessible. Where 11% of white people diagnosed with depression are properly medicated with Prozac only 4% of blacks and Hispanics get the same prescriptions. They are given outdated medicine that does not solve the issues they face. So of course they’d go to the streets to receive what white people get within doctors’ offices.

Posted in Assignments, Purposeful Summary, QueenRandom | Leave a comment

Visual – Fulcrum66

Posted on April 7, 2023 by fulcrum66

0:00-0:01 The beginning shot shows a family of four walking away from a brick building that could possibly be their home. The two older individuals who could be the parents have their hands filled with childcare items. The man is carrying a stroller and some bags while the women carry bags and her child.

0:01-0:02 We see more of a house structure form behind them when the camera frame expands. The family continues to walk away from the building and their faces contain joyful expressions as they all look at one another.

0:02-0:03 The camera zooms in on the women’s face as she makes a happy facial expression. Her black hair flows in the wind as she walks still holding her child and bags. Her eyes are wide open, and she has a calming grin on her face.

0:04 The video frame expands back out to all of the family members walking away from the building. All of their still have not changed and all of them still seem content with the situation they are in.

0:05–0:06 Suddenly the video frame zooms in to the little girl who is walking next to the man. She begins to yank on a link of plastic rings which is connected to the bag the man is carrying. This incident causes the bag to pull towards the little girl which causes the man to lose balance of the items he’s holding, and the stroller falls from his back. The little girl smiles at her father’s suffering and probably finds it funny.

0:07 We see the women’s reaction to the stroller falling the stroller falling when the camera zooms in and her eyes widen and mouth drops. Unlike her daughter she feels bad for the man’s suffering.

0:08-0:09 As they continue to walk more chaos follows with the women having to fix her hold on the child she is carrying. As she fixes her grip, she has a distressed facial expression, and the child seems on fazed but the quick change. The then loses hold of what he is carrying and slowly loses his grip on the bags he is holding. Both man and women originally had happy facial expressions but now they seem distressed.

0:10-0:12 The man and women continue to walk with the children and seeming happy after almost dropping all of their belongings. The man continues to be getting pulled by the little girl and even tries navigating eating while being pulled. He is now in a state of distress when all he wants to do is finish eating.

0:13 The camera zooms in on the shoes of the man which are brown leather shoes. His feet shuffle and this might be due to the load he is carrying.

0:14 Due to the load he is carrying the man falls behind and the rest of the group continues forward. He looks at them for help, but they keep walking forward.

0:15-0:16 This frame shows the group walking up to a car and proceed to get into the car with all of their belongings. Before getting into the car the women place her drink on top of the car to make it easier to place the child, she was holding into the car.

0:17 The man is one side of the car and helps the little girl into the car and on the other side the women do the same thing with the child she is holding.

0:18-0:20 The man assists the little girl with buckling her seat after helping her get into the car. She smiles and holds a little bowl with what seems to be some form of cereal. Then we get a zoom in of the man clicking the seat belt together.

0:21–0:22 All of a sudden, the little girl erupts and starts throwing around the bowl of cereal as the man is helping her. He has a terrified expression on his face due to the confusion and chaos of the event. As the little girl throws around the cereal, she finds amusement from it and smiles wide.

0:23-0:24 On the other side the women have an a seemingly easy time buckling the child and does not show any signs of being distressed.

0:25-0:30 The video concludes with no more actual visuals of the family. A screen then appears with a blue background with symbols of different kinds of cars seats and how the seat belt works on them. The name NHTSA is displayed on the bottom of the screen, and this is the company that created this advertisement.

Posted in Fulcrum, Visual Rewrite, Visual Rhetoric | 1 Comment

Visual Rewrite–SinatraMan17

Posted on April 6, 2023 by adamreim

Not Camping Day | Drug-Impaired Driving PSA

00:00-00:01 The opening shot of this PSA is at an extremely low angle (almost ground level), and the camera is static. In the foreground we see an early-mid-30s black man on the floor rolling up what looks to be a yoga mat of some sort. The room is within a suburban or rural home, due to the lush green trees seen out the window. There is also an Ikea-looking shelf in the room, and an exotic plant in the corner– this is an upscale living space.

The most eye-catching element within this frame is the plume of smoke coming out of the man’s mouth, brilliantly illuminated by the sunlight coming from the window. This is likely marijuana smoke.

00:01-00:01 This shot contains a quick pan down of the camera, front face to hands, of a new subject: A white man, also in his 30s, wearing a flannel shirt. The man is preparing a large duffle bag of sorts on the floor. The home decor looks very reminiscent of that in the first man’s room. The filmmakers may be telling us that this is the same upper-class suburban home.

The filmmakers cut from the previous shot of the other man to this shot to show us that these two guys are both preparing and packing for something. The closeness of cuts tells us it is likely the same thing.

00:02-00:04 Hard cut to a low angle, seemingly down the stairs looking up. The same white man is now seen walking down the steps with the yellow duffle bag around his shoulder from before. 

Illuminated by sunlight is a familiar plume of smoke coming from the man’s mouth. 

00:04-00:05 Cut to a black woman, around the same age as the other guys, walking up to what looks like a glass door. We can tell that this is a porch from the white columns seen just on the edge of the frame. 

The shot was composed in a way that could possibly be a POV from INSIDE the house, looking out the door window. This tells us that someone may be about to answer the door and let this woman in.

Most notably, the woman lets out a puff of smoke just as all the other subjects did. It seems the filmmakers are showing us that each character so far has engaged in some sort of drug activity.

00:05-00:06 A shot now from over the woman’s shoulder as the white man from the stairs shot stands in the doorway and greets her. His face shows us that he was definitely expecting her arrival and is pleased to see her. He steps down from the doorway and we catch a glimpse of the orange duffel bag he was carrying down the steps.

00:06-00:06 We get a quick, yet very insightful, insert shot of the orange duffel bag being thrown in the trunk of an SUV.

The filmmakers chose to have the trunk filled to the brim with supplies such as a cooler, blankets, sleeping bags, etc., to show us that this is a group camping trip. 

00:06-00:08 Cut to a tracking shot of both men from before, the black guy and white guy, carrying more bags to the back of the trunk. Seeing them walking together for the first time shows us they were likely getting ready in the same house, possibly roommates.

 The exterior background confirms that we are indeed in an upper-class suburban town. The cars and houses behind the subjects look to be expensive. 

00:09-00:10 Here we get introduced to a brand new character, a white girl in her 30s who has now joined the group in the loading up of the SUV outside. She walks across the yard centered in the frame with the camera moving and shaking with her. 

The sun magnificently illuminates a puff of smoke coming out of her mouth as she walks. The filmmakers are obviously illustrating to the audience that each and every one of these characters has recently been smoking, presumably marijuana.   

00:10-00:11 Quick insert shots of the trunk being closed and all 4 doors shutting, with the characters all inside– this tells us the SUV is packed and the group is ready to leave on their trip.

00:11-00:24 The longest shot in the PSA is filmed from the car-windshield POV.

We see that the black man is sitting up front in the passenger seat, and the rest of the three are sitting in the back seats. The driver’s seat is empty.

The man up front gestures to the man in the back, curious about something. The man in the back seat then passes the curiosity to the woman next to him, and after she shakes her head she passes a look of curiosity onto the final woman in the backseat. She shakes her head, and they all look around at each other with confusion and concern. It’s assumed that since none of them are sober from smoking, none of them want to dive.

The man up front then faces forward, and his confusion turns slowly to a grin. The characters in the back also lighten up at this same time.

The filmmakers directed their cast to do this to convey how the group was definitely inconvenienced by this, yet they found it humorous right away and no one got angry. 

The people then grab the handles for their car doors and take off their seat belts. 

00:24-00:26 The group, now all outside the car again, opens up the trunk of the SUV. They are all smiling.

00:26-00:30 Cut forward in time a lot, the group has unpacked all of their belongings from the SUV and has made a makeshift campsite out of the front lawn of this house.

The characters are all happy and content. The filmmakers are showing us how we can adapt and make compromises in situations instead of making bad decisions- such as driving while under the influence, which each of these people was shown to be. 

The shot is static, and above the characters sitting and enjoying themselves appears a text graphic: “If you feel different, you drive different.”

Rhetoric

I believe the filmmakers behind this PSA executed perfectly this anti-high-driving script. Their use of fast-paced cuts going from character to character, showing each of them smoking, relays to the audience that without a doubt each of these people has just used drugs. The warm and flowing cinematography makes this scene feel natural and not staged, furthering the idea that this should simply be the natural reaction any group has to this situation; it’s not staged.

Aristotelian Divisions

Ethos: The credibility is established in this PSA through the ages of the characters, and their average-person qualities of living. These seem like normal adult people which broad audiences can relate to, and this connection makes the characters’ decision against driving high seem more like something EVERYONE should do, including me the viewer.

Logos: The logical appeal expressed by the filmmakers is especially present in the interior car scene. When the characters are going around trying to decide who will drive and find that everyone is under the influence, they IMMEDIATELY decide against anyone taking the wheel. There is no contemplation, no hesitation, and the decision is made naturally. This communicates to the audience that this should be part of our common sense and is completely logical and without dispute.

Pathos: The Pathos of this piece is the strongest communicator in my opinion. The emotions the characters express are consistently positive even when faced with a troubling problem. I believe when trying to change someone’s ideas, and also preventing their minds from feeling attacked, positive emotions often trump negative ones. When the 4 characters decided against driving, their reactions were not of disappointment or anger, but acceptance and continued happiness. They adapted from the problem and responded to it in a positive way: making a campsite in their own front yard. The audience sees how accepting an unfortunate truth (we’re all intoxicated, no one can drive) doesn’t have to be a cause for negativity.

Soundtrack: Improves/Weakens Effectiveness

The soundtrack definitely adds to the piece. In the first half, it remains mostly unnoticed, with just minor sound effects and light background music. However in the second half, where the characters are in the car debating whether any of them should drive, hearing the dialogue definitely adds to the comprehension of what’s going on.

Posted in Portfolio SinatraMan, SinatraMan, Visual Rewrite | 5 Comments