Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates. The Great Gatsby. Out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and mut. The Great Gatsby Summary. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald captures the ideals of a society obsessed with wealth and status. Set in the 1920s during prohibition, the story is narrated by a young man named Nick Carraway. Nick meets Gatsby, whose real name is James Gatz, at Gatsby's elaborate mansion in West Egg. Veteran high school English teacher David Dowling demonstrates how teachers can help students connect The Great Gatsby to the value systems of the twenty-first century, offering active reading and thinking strategies designed to enhance higher-level thinking and personal responses to fiction. The Great Gatsby. Out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who.
For me, the issue that resonates the most concerning the possible negative effects of technology is gaming. As someone who has owned several gaming platforms, subscribed to at least two different gaming magazines for several years, and spent countless hours with friends named Zelda and Mario as a child, I understand the draw that these type of games have on a young person. Having worked at a boarding academy for 8 years, I know that it has only become more difficult for young people, especially young men, to turn these games off.
In my own experience video games were always around in my childhood. I can still remember unwrapping the Nintendo Entertainment System that Christmas so long ago. It was exciting and like some kind of super candy. I was hooked from the get go. It wasn't until I was working and finished with college though, that I realized that video games could be an addiction for me. I once spent 26 hrs straight playing a game called Knights of the Round, and it makes me sad just to admit that. I remember that as I played the game I kept telling myself 'Oh, it's okay, I'll just play for one more hour.' Then I would end up playing for 12 more hours. I remember when I finally quit playing I was astounded that I had utterly wasted more than a day. I vowed to never do that again. It reminds me of the article 'When Games Stop Being Fun' by David Becker. In the article Becker quotes a Dr. Timothy Miller who '...cites two defining characteristics of addiction: The person regularly engages in activity for much longer than originally planned and '(continues) doing it in spite of adverse consequences.' I was lucky; I recognized my addiction and I quit.In my life today, I see this kind of gaming addiction all the time, especially in my freshmen boys. At first we could control this issue because we don't allow TVs in the dorms and that was really the end of it. Nowadays, with laptops in every pair of hands and the ultimate accessibility technology provides, it's become really hard to turn kids off of these games. I know how attractive and time consuming some games can still seem to me (and I'm 32 years old!), and I think how much more attractive these games must seem to the young men their being created for.
When I think about the reality of gaming addictions I have two very strong examples that come to mind. First, I have a 20 year-old family member who almost never leaves the house instead he chooses to 'live' out his life in front of a computer screen. If he reads, it's on fanfiction.net, if he watches TV, it's on hulu.com, but more than anything he's playing games. The closest he comes to exercise is playing Wii sports. The rest of the family tries very hard to get him to experience real life, but he seems stuck and uninterested in changing. His human interaction is so limited and his interest in real life is minimal. For instance, he recently flunked out of college (where he was starting to make real friendships) because instead of doing homework, he was too busy playing games. This is very scary to the rest of us in the family because this addiction to gaming is having real negative effects on his life. Now if only he could see it that way.
Great Gatsby Digital Bookmr. Becker's Classrooms
The second example I can think of isn't a student, but the father of one of my current students. I was amazed and saddened to hear this student talk about her father. Like the examples in Becker's article and an article called 'The Quest to End Game Addiction' by Julia Scheeres, this student's father spends countless hours playing Everquest every week. She says that every night he gets home and goes straight to the office and plays online. She says that her uncles and other relatives also play and that every family function is dominated by the game. She told me she finds this embarrassing and sad and it makes her worry about her parents' marriage. According to the aforementioned articles, she has plenty of reason to worry. 
