Leave Your Thoughts

Often people assume that playing computer games or video games is a very anti social activity, and is a solo activity which isolates an individual from the real world, cuts them off from other people and then allows them to sit on their own in a small dark room hitting keys over and over again in order to mindlessly destroy anything that moves on their screen. In fact, nothing could be very much further from the truth, and in fact those people who play computer games on their own, completely cut off from interaction with other people in any way are such a minority group it may prove hard to find anyone to actually put in to it.

Quite apart from not being a solo activity, recent research has found that over 66% of people who play computer or video games do so with their friends, either sat with them advising, or actually with a second handset competing in the same game. 30% of gamers play with their brothers or sisters and a quarter of all gamers play with either their parents or their partners. This completely goes against the argument that most people lay on their own, and shows that the majority of people play as a social game, in various combinations and ways.

Even taking in to account that there may be 20% to 30% of people who do play games without someone else being physically with them, it is still not possible to generalise isolation by suggesting that these people are cut off from any kind of social interaction. Many games these days are what is referred to as multi player, meaning that more than one person can play the game at the same time, and with a very wide number of the most popular video games being online too, this means that all players will be competing against and taking part with other real people, rather than the computer. In fact, many of these online multiplayer games have relatively little input from the computer, and far more input from the people playing the game against each other.

One of the main requirements of many of these multiplayer online games is that people group together and try to work out strategies and tactics to overcome certain obstacles, opponents and challenges. This will require great teamwork, very in depth discussions involving roles and group work, and will require people to work together as individuals and as a team. As a result, many players become part of a more stable and permanent group which means that there are people known to each other ready to take on challenges without having to start all over each time analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. These groups can become social groups, meeting outside of the game, and there are many examples where people who have met through these groups have gone on to develop meaningful friendships and relationships beyond the game.

Video games are most certainly not isolating - for many, they open doors to friendships that the real world may never have offered.

Victor Epand is an expert consultant about kids toys, dolls, and video games. You will find the best marketplace for kids toys, dolls, and used video games at these sites for toys, video games, dolls.

AP - Israel's bruising war on the Islamic militants who control Gaza has moved online, where sites like YouTube and Facebook are the new battlegrounds.

Word find puzzles (also known as "word jumbles" or "word searches") are a type of puzzle game. The objective of the game is to find words that are hidden within an array of letters. These games are not perhaps quite as difficult as some other kinds of pen and paper puzzles, but nevertheless many people enjoy solving them. Additionally, the relative ease of solving these puzzles makes them particularly attractive to children.

It should be remembered that word find puzzles can also have educational benefits, both in a K-12 environment, and for ESL (English as a Second Language) students. This is because solving these puzzles requires playing very close attention to the spelling of words.

It is possible to buy ready-made word find puzzles, but many teachers (and some parents) prefer to create their own puzzles. This allows them to tailor the difficulty of the puzzle, and the choice of words to be hidden within it, to their particular requirements.

Creating a puzzle yourself, is certainly possible, but it can require a lot of time and effort. It's quite difficult to find a way of arranging words such that have significant overlaps and intersections, especially if you are aiming to pack the puzzle into a relative small grid.

A better alternative to creating the puzzle by hand, is to get your computer to do the hard work. With the help of word find puzzle maker software, it becomes an easy task. You simply enter a list of words, click a button, and a puzzle is generated immediately. If you don't like the first puzzle design that appears, click the button again, and you can generate a new puzzle.

By S. Tanna. Get Word Find Puzzle Maker software at http://www.wordsearchprinter.com/

AP - When the first of many loud alarms sounded on the space shuttle Columbia, the seven astronauts had about a minute to live, though they didn't know it. The pilot, William McCool, pushed several buttons trying to right the ship as it tumbled out of control. He didn't know it was futile. Most of the crew were following NASA procedures, spending more time preparing the shuttle than themselves for the return to Earth.