Below you'll see 03 links taken from www.ted.com/talks - a wonderful site to get different speakers on a diverse range of topics.
For our April discussion, I chose Technology and Entertainment...but you can see by watching the lectures that other diciplines can be integrated. You'll have 03 videos to choose from. Feel free to choose the one that goes with your temperament.
The level is advanced, but the basic students who love technology can perfectly participate by giving your opinion on the videos - since images many times can save a thousand words (LOL!)
The first purpose of this posting is to answer the questions proposed in the title. However, you can feel free to approach the way your thinking style leads you to.
So, let's have fun and learn with English.
TED Talk - Learning from the Gheko's Tail
and for your interest in researching on WorldWarcraft game go to:
Hope to see your participation here.
Cheerio!
Flávia
Hello,
ResponderExcluirI'm Pedro (Electrical Enginner)
A good thing about playing games and on line games is that they give children the possibility to develop their problem-solving skills. Moreover, the games enable quick thinking and reflex. However, they damage family relations since children prefer to stay in front of the computer to talk with their parents or to play whith their friends outside.
Due to a high percentage of violent games in the market, they put children in contact with a series of crimes, wars, and bad situations which can generate psychological disturbance.
What do you think about?
Regards,
Pedro.
Hello!
ResponderExcluirFor those who didn’t watch, the first film talks about an original discovery: how the gecko’s skills can help to develop robots and other engineering products.
The speaker is the biologist Robert Full, who starts his explanation about “Biomutualism”, meaning an association between Biology and another discipline. In this way, Engineering can be inspired by Biology. He shows how the gecko’s toes, legs and tail move to climb up and even float. The same principles were used for the development of a dry adhesive, successfully tested by a professional climber. Later, a robot was constructed and it climbed up the wall using the same general principles. And the video goes on.
In my opinion, it´s a great advance to mix different disciplines with Biology in order to get new technologies. In the past, the most important scientists and artists used nature as basis for their experiences. Leonardo da Vinci is an example. Today, we can more properly observe the phenomena and have greater technologies so that we are able to do wonderful things.
I'd like to share more opinions on this video.
Kisses to everybody,
Vanessa
(USP Telemedicine journalist)
Hi, Pedro.
ResponderExcluirI agree with you when you said about relationship problems between parents and children who spend much time in front of a computer. On the other hand, I also see positive aspects when playing games, as you can see in my comments below:
There are some interesting aspects in Jane McGonigal´s understanding of a better world through a massive multiplayer online gamers.
According to her, this collective intelligence could solve problems and also improve humans´ life quality. Of course some kinds of games can make some people feel more confident, can give the impression of living in a real society, getting friends with the same interests. But what is real and what is virtual? It depends on judgment and maturity of the gamer.
On the other hand, an ex-game addict said that the challenge nowadays is to teach kids how to manage real life and not to create more games that simulate a wonderful fictional world. I do agree with him, mainly considering that this guy had his life hindered by the time spent on gaming.
I would like to see more opinions on this issue.
Best regards to all,
Lígia
(Cunningham Lindsay)
Who could possibly think that games cannot make the difference in the abnormal world we lived? Babies are born with a joystick in their hands and by the time they are 5 years old, they start to ask you if you have an ORKUT. However, can you imagine what those kids are capable of doing around 12 years old?
ResponderExcluirSo again my answer is yes, games can really make a difference.
I really enjoyed the lecture about “Gaming Can make a better world”, in fact that´s how I think about the games in education. Despite of everybody thinks about this video, I wrote some topics about why I think like that.
Everybody can be an epic character:
1. Because we are better at video games than in real life,
2. We have the option of playing up to solve our problems,
3. We can achieve things impossible in real life (cannot),
4. We may be several characters who really care and want to save the world,
5. The games have tools we can use in the real world,
6. We can make a world we imagine and we can play the game we want.
Silvia Caporrino
USP Telemedicine Educator
Hi, here’s Diogo from Telemedicine/FMUSP.
ResponderExcluirI would like to comment one thing about what Pedro said and one thing about what Ligia said.
I partly agree with both. When Pedro talks about problem-solving skills, quick thinking and reflex, it’s impossible to me not to think about sports practice. Some of the reasons to have sports classes in elementary school, for example, are exactly the same. On the other hand, we have a single distinction: kids must feel more stimulated to tell their parents about a great score on the soccer match or an incredible point on the basketball match, than if they break a score record on the videogame. I think this should solve the problem about family relations, what do you think?
Ligia also highlighted some interesting points in Jane McGonigal´s speech. When she says that distinguishing between what is real and what is virtual depends on the maturity of the gamers, I would also include that the final objective could be a solution.
There is a factory of table games in Brazil named Origem, which is dedicated to rebuild classical games from many cultures and nationalities. They build beautiful pieces with wood or chamois boards and pieces made of iron and wood too. Each game comes with an explanation about its origin (that’s where the factory’s name comes from) and why it was made for. It’s like to know that chess, for example, was designed to study battles strategies or that the great-grandfather of the famous game War, was a board game named Viking, where the people with the same name used to predict sea battles.
What I’m trying to say is that if the main objective of virtual or real games could be something useful, then it may not be a problem at all. Not to mention the Wii videogame, which combines virtual and physical games. Would that be a solution?
Regards,
Diogo
Hi Ligia,
ResponderExcluirWe are in a class with three students from Telemedicine and one aggregated from Planeta Magazine. We are going to post comments together. So, let´s start:
Renata (Telemedicine 01) thinks that this game stuff turns kids into zombies. In all the family meetings her nephews and niece keep playing their Nintendo DS during the whole day. According to her, even a bomb can explode across the street and they wouldn’t even notice. In order to speak with them, you have to insist and even block their view. One day, she left her earrings on the table and they mysteriously vanished. Despite her despair asking them if they had seen the earrings… she had no answer. When she finally found them under the couch, she demanded them to leave the couch, so that she could pick the earrings up. Then her niece said “Oh! That´s right! My brother said that he had accidentally kicked them and asked me to pick them up. But I forgot…” Have you ever seen something like that?
On the other hand, Leticia (Telemedicine 02) thinks that kids pay attention to what they are interested in. It’s a matter of concentration. It can be a videogame, a TV Show or even a Gammon match. The same things happen with adults. They can be working in something important for them and disregard what is important to the kids, for example. Your kid may be asking you for attention, ice cream or playing ball, and you are concentrated on the 9 PM TV show “Viver a vida”. Moreover, it’s a matter of discipline: kids have to understand that the TV show or work is very important for you, while you have to understand that the achievement of that “epic win” (to break a record, for example) is important to them, and, therefore, as Jane McGonigal said, in order to improve other skills too.
Spend more time with the kids, understand what is important for them and encourage them to spend more time with you, so that they can understand what is important for you, as Renata’s earrings, for example. But I’m just a daughter… and you parents, what do you think?
Maíra (the aggregated classmate ) agrees with Letícia when she says about interests and with Renata when she talks about zombies. She thinks it is a matter of importance in somenone's life and of frequency you spend on these activities. Everything can become an addiction if not played with some discipline. Everybody has to have some leisure activity, otherwise he or she will become too stressed and, finally, too crazy.
ResponderExcluirDespite being a child-like activity, she thinks that World of Warcraft kind of game is also important to adults. She remembers that movie Spy Kids 3, when the grandpa said he liked to be in online world because he could be a super-hero (actually, he uses a wheelchair). It is a matter of fantasy and a matter of knowing some kind of potential inside you.
Maíra also agrees with the speaker. The achievements in online games are as amazing as making friends. And what Jane says about redirecting the problem solving potential to real world is very important.
However, Maíra does not see how it could be possible because of the fantasy issue, the feeling of running away from reality. A game about solving global warming problem is not as popular as the war games.
Hi,
ResponderExcluirHere is Diogo (3), from Telemedicine/FMUSP.
About the ghecko video, I believe the best thing about it is to show how Nature has the primal answers to many issues we can have about many things. I think the ghecko study was just a successful example of how it works in practice. For many years, mankind has tried to fly like the birds and, of course, tried to do it by hard studying their flying movements. I can’t precisely say how many people must have died trying to flap wings, but I believe it’s a lot. Sometime in history, someone decided to look closely into the birds flying anatomy and realized the flap of wings was just the push or the power. The real secret to flying was in the sky gliding and that changes everything. This is just another example of how nature has the answer and how we just have to look out and find it.
Unlike Vanessa, I believe that the greater discovery about the ghecko is not the climbing “technology”, but the importance of the tail. As they showed in the video, we are one of the few animals who don’t have tails, and this is a disadvantage. Tails can be useful to balance, anatomy, sky gliding, body control or even to help us to always fall standing as the cats… or the gheckos.
I would like to have a tail. How many of you would also like one?
Hello folks!
ResponderExcluirI finally watched the last video which is on Flavia ‘s blog. It´s about a Dutch artist, Theo Jansen, and his invention. He has created walking sculptures made of electricity tubes that are moved by wind. In my opinion, it´s an interesting experiment because the “thing” uses mechanical principles (I think) and doesn`t use fuel or light. So, the invention should be used in other applications in order to facilitate people's daily lives without damaging the environment. As the invention runs only on wind power, it`s cheap, practical and sustainable.
The creatures names given by the artist are very curious: animals, beasts, herds…The creatures have scientific names, genetical codes, new generations. Furthermore, they “eat” and “survive”. It´s very funny!
Dear colleagues, I think that the creatures can be applied to create new kinds of peoples and objects transports. Do you see other applications for this kind of invention?
I see you soon
Vanessa