I believe if one is going to present choices or issues in games as ethical, those choices have to matter in the game world. But I get antsy when games present me with choices that clearly open one door while closing another, as I want to see all of the game’s content, since I’m unlikely to go through it multiple times.
“The Internet is a great place to spread a message, no matter how silly it is,” Mr. Gates said, adding that although his goal was to get 1,000 comments, the response was “way more than I figured would actually review milk.” Marguerite Copel, a spokeswoman for Dean Foods, which owns the Tuscan milk brand, said it was impossible to be offended by the lampoon. “Milk is an important part of Americana,” she said, “and if people can have fun with it, why not?”
Some academics and educators on Twitter have and often advocate for account separation, maintaining personal/professional identities on Twitter in addition to accounts for each course taught in a given semester. Reasons for this separation are myriad. For instance, if there is a great diversity of subject matter and focus in a semester, a Twitter account for each course could prevent miscommunication and misunderstanding. Such an account could provide an initial focus for students, too, acting as a kind of localizing agent and guide for who else is in the course and thus should follow. Some also educators have a strong desire for some degree of anonymity online, to keep personal and professional interests apart. Maintaining a private personal account and a public professional account on Twitter is one way to exercise that anonymity.
There are also third-party applications, like Seesmic and TweetDeck, that make it easier to manage multiple Twitter accounts for multiple purposes, but I remain resistant to such differentiation. The accessibility and openness of Twitter make it difficult to keep alternate facets of one’s identity hidden, even if maintaining an invitation-only account. Furthermore, I have a sustained interest in my Twitter use fostering an identity that serves as a model to students of what is possible in terms of appropriate academic engagement within that 140-character limit. Rather than Shaquille O’Neal or Kim Kardashian being the first examples of Twitter use that students encounter, I want students to be witness to the ways in which I take advantage of this microblogging service. I want students to see the diversity in my status updates as well as in those I choose to follow on Twitter. In addition to @betajames, contextual hashtags and Twitter lists are localizing agents for students in the courses I guide.
Open course material on the Internet may be free, but getting it there definitely isn’t. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the principal financial backer of the open educational movement, has spent more than $110 million over the past eight years, with more than $14 million going to M.I.T. The cost of re-creating the educational experience is high. Only 33 of the 1,975 courses posted by M.I.T. have videos of lectures. Another hundred or so contain multimedia material like simulations and animations. The rest is simply text: syllabuses, class notes, reading lists, problem sets, homework assignments.
In the light of economic reality, nothing is free. Someone — be it an advertiser, an administrator, an investor or an entrepreneur — is footing the bill for every one and zero that’s electronically transmitted across this great Internet of ours. And at some point, most of those folks expect to see a return on their investment.
And just as we’ve grown used to paying for music through apps such as iTunes and getting cheap access to films online through Netflix, it’s about time we suck it up as consumers and start paying for the bandwidth we use, from web hosting to online storage to site creation and maintenance. As we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
We would stroke their steel dolphin-like bodies in museums and honour them as symbols of a daunting technical intelligence and a prodigious wealth.
We would admire them like small boys do, and adults no longer dare, for fear of seeming uncynical and unvigilant towards their crimes against our world.
Since fall 2009, Larson has been using the Amazon Kindle in her work with a pair of second-graders. The e-reader has features that make the text audible, increase or decrease font size and let readers make notes about the book.
"It's interesting to see the kinds of things these kids have been able to do," Larson said.
She said sometimes they make comments summarizing the plot, therefore reinforcing their understanding of the book. Other times they ponder character development, jotting down things like "If I were him, I'd say no way!"
DeMarco said hate speech has been a problem for years. Game makers, despite some serious efforts, can only seek to limit the amount.
"A lot of the problem lies within the players themselves," DeMarco said.
The widespread use of the slurs is partly fueled by the same anonymity that provides cover for abuse throughout cyberspace. Players can compete with people thousands of miles away, and know them only by the fictional "gamertags" they use to identify themselves.
After years of tolerating abusive players, gamers have become more diligent about noting the gametags of abusive players and reporting them to game companies. Abusive players can be punished or even banned, but the process is slow.