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As billions and millions of dollars go into police training, there is still obstacles that officers and military face that they cannot prepare for before it happens in the line of duty when it matters. I have done research on how interacting with virtual reality can have similar effects of real life experiences and therefore correlate as training to police and military personnel, to enhance their understanding of how to handle intense situations. Using virtual reality can be cost efficient for funding and can be effective alongside of the use of real person to person training. Police and military may still use force in certain scenarios, however, through virtual reality they can be taught how much force to use and when it is necessary. My Final Essay link is here .

For my final essay, I chose to look at video games. I wanted to be specific in the area of video games I chose, so I selected to analyze and argue about game narratives and why we play them. When I was about halfway through my paper, I noticed I was arguing two points. One being the existence of narratives in video games, while the other was that we play games to have control over something. I ended up incorporating the two as one large point which actually helped argue the two points. My essay, titled  Open Narratives in Video Games and Why We Play Them  explores these two topics by looking at what philosophers of games studies say, and discussing such things as our psychological needs to help show my thesis. -Robert Hager

Digital Humanities is what we as humans make of different forms of literature through various mediums of electronic devices. We have started to digitize and archive items that may have gone extinct to them originally being composed on paper or film, or items that can deteriorate and never be physically available to remember. Also throughout the class we have discussed authorship and who receives credibility or recognition for their work or contribution to another piece of work. As a final project we have been asked to do a research paper on one of the discussed topics of Digital Humanities that intrigued us. Alongside of the research paper we had 'Essay Exhibits', which were in-class presentations from each student, and gave a general insight to their research on that digital humanity topic that they planned to write their essay on. Of the many students presentations I found one by the Hash Slinging Hackers tribe mate, Kevin, to be very interesting and informational. He expl

For our final in-class assignment, we presented our essay exhibits to our classmates. The purpose of these presentations was to share an outline and general overview of the topics we were researching for our papers. Over the course of the week, I saw many interesting topics that showed my classmates grasp of Digital Humanities. The topics ranged from video games, to social media. Many of the topics looked at their topics impact on society, a different way to interpret their topics meaning, or an in-depth look as to what they perceive their topic to actually mean. Many of the students used past readings and concepts from class to show all this.  One such exhibit that was present was the impact of gaming and its incorporation with social media. The student looked into the gaming industry and saw how big of a market it was. He looked at some of the key individuals in the gaming community to show the impact and incorporation of social media. He further told me he would look at the strea

For the last week of class, we were able to introduce our final essays to our peers during essay exhibits.  It is interesting to see topics that stood out and to which topics other's chose to learn more about.  Four classmates and projects that I found interesting were Hayley W's " Is Social Media Destructive? ", Ryan B's " Games as Art, " Rob H's " Video Games as Digital Narratives " and Connor C's " Virtual Reality: Modern Training ."   Coca-Cola ad from the 1890's "Is social media destructive? " Hayley's topic is clear from the beginning.  She seems to have a focused understanding of the concepts she is covering.  She points out that there are both positive and negative aspects which social media has on humanity.  She will discuss how advertising is used on social media platforms and compare it to historically relevant forms of advertising.  She will also discuss how self identity is related

Convergence is not a new concept, but it is being is being implemented in a new way.  Convergences is a process of two or more things coming together.  In relation to media, convergence , can be the merging of different medias as a result of digitization.  It can also be media and digitization with computer networking come together from an economic strategy.  Analog forms of media have existed for a much greater amount of time than digital media.  These analog medias include books, newspapers and radio.  Before digitization of these medias, they were each consumed as separate products.  After the internet and computers became more accessible, these media types were being made in digital formats.  Digitization allowed each of these medias to be more easily shared and consumed around the world.  With the internet, the whole process of information sharing has been going at a faster pace.  Information can be shared with the world in a few clicks. Some convergence has cause controversy