12/11/04

I have plan out what i'm going to type today. Its gonna be a long one, so behold! haha. Firstly I'm gonna say, alas! a break from books tomorrow. Because I'm going to attend a birthday party tomorrow, and I have kindly excuse myself from books tomorrow. Really.... Finally.... after 4 days of books marathon hee. I'm going to see how it feels to go to ktv with a big group of friends, never try that before. And... I don't know most of the people haha.

Ah I'm going to be an educator of games today heee. For my friends who read this, you will learn about the terminology of the categories of games. Previously, I have also posted something regarding the danger of getting aggressive after playing games, but today, I'm going to post the benefits of playing games.

Games

First of all, the categories of games. Well let me list them out first. There are Fighting, Role-playing (rpg), shooting, puzzle, sports, driving, strategy, adventure, and many other small categories.

Fighting- where two person just fight their hearts out

Role-playing- where you take on a role and explore the story. You need to spend time levelling chracters. Will be directed to another screen for battles.

Shooting- Planes shoot shoot. dodge bullets.

puzzle- triggers your brain, needs alot of thinking

sports- needs no explaination, sports loh

Driving- mostly racing here

strategy- requires planning and sometimes building a kingdom. War games and turn based games falls in this category.

Adventure- control a character but is different from RPG in the way they engage in fighting.

I guess thats about those categories. If you are those who likes excitement, you might want to try shooting, driving or even puzzle games. These kind of games allow you to practice your reactions and increase your spatial skills. Since the consoles (game sets) are so advance, most games would be in 3 Dimension, so its really like the real thing when you are playing the games. For example, driving games are so realistic that you would feel like you are actually driving it yourself, except you are using a controller to control the vehicle.

If you like story, you will like RPG games. Some are really very nice, like the Final Fantasy series. Square Soft (creator of FF series) really does a very good job in creating nice stories, superb battling system, innovative levelling system, heart warming sound tracks, and "living" characters. These games will let you immerse into the virtual world and feel what is really in that world.

Strategy games are for those who likes planning, building and having pride in what you do. These games need quite a level of thinking and foreseeing future events in the game. Computer (the enemies in the games) are quite dumb actually, if you can grasp their pattern, you will be able to win no matter what.

No one knows how games can be soooo attractive to guys. Girls usually wonder what is in those games that can hypnotize guys haha. Actually it has to do with the innate nature of guys. We are often interested in things that will challenge our spatial and thinking skills. I didn't say that. Researchers say that. In the prehistoric time, men already started to find activities to challenge themselves. After all day of hunting, they would sit in a round circle of fire and challenge one another in all sorts of activities.

Today, men no longer need to hunt anymore, we got so much energy, therefore we need a place to work our spatial skills. If not, we might just rot haha. Actually playing games allow you to train different aspects in a human. For example, alertness, quick response, planning skills, finger dexterity, linguistic skills (from rpg), creativity. We are living in a world where there are little chance to train those attributes. Let games do their magic!! :)

Slice of Life

"Self Esteem (Part 5)

Instead of preoccupying ourselves with what's wrong with us, why not preoccupy ourselves with what's wonderful about the world? There's much more to life than counting calories, worrying about our cellulite accumulation, and agonising over our bank accounts, our thinning hair, our cheap wardrobes.

Sometimes, the options seem frightfully limited because we've allowed ourselves to believe that the world is this small box we live in. The world is a fascinating place, brimming with interesting people, undiscovered treasures, new tastes and experiences, and little miracles. Constantly learn about the world around you, and you'll find the experience endlessly rewarding.

In addition to having a healthy state of mind, a healthy sense of self-esteem also requires a healthy body. You don't have to become a health freak or a fitness fanatic; being health-conscious doesn't mean restricting yourself to the point where you deny yourself little indulgences and worry constantly about your muscle tone. Life was not meant to be spent assessing sodium and fat content.

Slow down your pace. Know when you should be working on overdrive, and when you deserve a break. If you devote yourself entirely to work for an extended period of time, neglecting yourself, friends and family, life can quickly become meaningless.

One can also get caught up in trying to meet the idealistic and perfectionist demands of society. This means struggling constantly to be the person society wants you to be and running away from the person you are. Get off the treadmill and realise that you are good enough, you are deserving of happiness, you are capable, and you are lovable.

Society is not always right, so don't allow it to dictate who you should be. You know yourself best, so find out what works for you, what makes you happy, and follow your heart. Don't let society tell you that you're a misfit, an outcast, an anomaly. You may be made to feel like a square trying to fit into the social circle, but realise that there are people out there who understand you, and will love you for who you are."

Self Esteem vs Self Efficacy

I think the Self Esteem series has ended. I promised to add in something during my last posting hee, and here I am. Well, after we know what self esteem is, and how we can improve them, there is another aspect that is important as well, that is Self Efficacy. People usually have a problem in differentiating both of them, and what are the ways to improve the different aspect.

We have already learnt that self esteem is actually a personal selfworth. Self Efficacy is actually one's belief that he can fulfill a task successfully given the amount of effort he put in. So here, one is a internal feeling, the other is actually a believe leading to action. Self esteem can be built by believing in yourself, but self efficacy cannot be increased by just believing in yourself. You need something more.

For one to be able to complete a task well, we need to have the skills, knowledge and ability to do it. Therefore, to increase our self efficacy, we need actually to do things, rather than just think about things. It is often that you would need another person to help you in this aspect. An educational school of thought founded by Vygotsky says that if a person is put to complete a task that is out of his Zone of Proximal Development, that person would require scaffolding from another person. This means that if a task is seen to be too difficult to complete by a person, he would need someone to help him, guide him on. We can't just throw what ever task to a person and just ask him to complete it himself.

There are actually a few different aspects in self efficacy. Firstly its the skills and knowledge that he needs, next is that those skills will lead him to perform the way he should perform, and lastly the outcome that has resulted from that action. If all the aspects can be predicted by the person, then he would have a high efficacy.

From this, we can see that after we have self esteem, we would also need self efficacy to transform a belief into actions and fulfill that action.

Ops blog toooo long. Next time.