Jessi Miller presented to our class on the complexities of the digital world. He addressed the how dangerous the online world can be to professionals but also how useful it can be.

This was a good reminder of the importance of maintaining a professional presence on social media. I am going to be a roll model and I will curate my facebook accordingly. It was also frightening to hear that it is impossible to fully remove things from facebook.

Jessi also spent a lot of time encouraging the use of video games even in the classroom. Gaming and tech are not my worlds. I came into this class sceptical of their necessity in the classroom, but curious about what I didn’t know. Of course, over the course of the course, I’ve been getting excited about all the cool apps out there for learning. Jessi didn’t help, in fact his over aggressive plugging of video games made me want to push back.

Jessi referenced to a study claiming that perpetrators of mass shootings are rarely gamers. He implied this meant there was no connection between violent video games and real world violence. This is a divided issue, but briefly looking into it, he seems to be correct. The connection between video games and violence was built off of fear associated with the Columbine massacre. Studies seem to confirm that there is no link between video games and violence.

Jessi claimed video games were sports. His main argument was that they have spectators and your heart rate is up during video games. To me gaming doesn’t replace so many things that a traditional sport provides. The three main things that contribute to my personal health are friends, physical and mental stimulation, and the outdoors. Jessi argued that you could get friends across the world through video games, but I don’t want to replace real world friends and interactions with online ones. He also argued that it elevated you heart rate so it’s physically similar to something like soccer. Heart rate is one component of fitness, which i doubt really reaches what a soccer match does. When was the last time you saw your friend out of breath from gaming, or say “I would have got that headshot if my cardio was better”.  What he left out which often comes along with sports is the outdoors. For myself being outside is powerfully therapeutic and vital to my personal health.

As a whole Jessi was a good reminder to be careful with social media, and of the passion people can have for tech.