Round 2 of presentations

Katie Shaw
Low income schools need a solution to bridge both the knowledge and access gap
Is your paper specifically on Internet usage or computer usage or both?

How are families going to help if they don’t have access to the Internet?

How are you going to graph usage specifically?

During the meetings with parents how do you specifically propose to show them how to help their students utilize computers if they aren’t computer literate themselves?

Is it really feasible to have teachers going to these types of meetings or events that you describe? There seems to be a cut in school budgets as is….Would these teachers do this for free?



Beau Yancey
Gaming – What your mother warned you about..

What kind of life changing technologies has gaming presented?

How has our culture been permanently altered by the evolution of gaming?

How is gaming a necessity due to technological advances...???

Don Tapscott ”Grown up Digital” Check this out...This book has some great examples about gaming.

I’m kind of confused as to what your specific argument is……Think Julie Cleared this up….Technology feeds off of the gaming community…



James Cavanaugh
Gaming-Symbolism Creates a better learning environment?


I’m still confused to what your specific argument is?

What types of learning does video game playing improve?

You are proposing that parents should play games with their children and talk about it? How would you justify certain games such as Modern Warfare 2 or Grand Theft Auto games in terms of child/parent interaction?

Is it really the case for all people when you say that “Symbolism becomes so strong that the game environment becomes increasingly immersive …the person playing the game legitimately cares about what‘s happening inside the fictional world.”



Hans Wellenbrock
Social Networks bridging the chasm


How is connecting the social networking communities going to bridge the divide when some don’t have access even if they know about technology?

You propose that “older people” will be able to utilize these social network cites to bridge the chasm….Have you looked at the demographic that actually utilize the social networking site?

Interestingly you say that “The value of the Internet can be directly correlated to the value of its content.” Wouldn’t it be fair to say that a lot of content isn’t worth much …..More of a Publish then filter aspect.

I liked how you described the way in which people can create more content and aspire to communicate with others…. The problem that I’m seeing with your argument is that you aren’t addressing the access issue when it comes to the digital divide.

While I understand what you are saying in your presentation, I’m a bit confused as to what your specific argument is?



Spencer Towne
Do games generate better soldiers?


Isn’t it fair to say that people are trained upon joining the military to achieve tactical performance unlike those in video games?

I like the part of your argument that utilizes stress to point out the differences in gaming and real life, the feel, weight, and fear factor are all solid points that help an argument in this case.

While video games “desensitize” us to real life war scenarios….How is this desensitization affecting people in non war scenarios?

Your presentation left me feeling that you’re doing more of a report than an argumentative paper? I think you need to figure out what your SPECIFIC argument is and use some of the information in your presentation to support it.