Thursday 30 August 2012

Plan

people to interview: 20-50 random students. How: survey or asking directly.

IRS S1-06 group D Justification

SAMPLE RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION YEAR ONE INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH STUDIES

 Research Topic: Gaming addiction Chosen Area of Focus: Computer gaming addiction in SST secondary 1 students

 1. Framing our research topic Our chosen area of focus is “Computer gaming addiction in SST secondary 1 students”. We have chosen this topic as most of us do play game. Our parents or teachers sometimes say that we are spending too much time on the computer playing games when our grades drop in our tests or examinations. And we can’t help but agree sometimes as we use up time that could have been used for more purposeful activities. It has been found that quite a lot of students “who play a lot of computer games spent less time studying and scored lower grades than those who were not busy playing with their friends online”. Possible reasons for problems related to computer gaming addiction are spending too much time in front of the computer playing games that are popular, that are sometimes online or on severs.  The disadvantage are that they lack sleep and/or rest, thus it affects their performance at school. They may be causing their health to deteriorate, for example their eyesight may suffer, their physically well being due to sitting in front of the computer all day long.

 2. Reasons for choice of topic a. We have chosen this topic, as we want to find out more about how excessive computer gaming can affect our studies and why do we spend lots of time on gaming.
 b. This allows us to fulfill the requirements of the project task as the project task looks at excessive computer gaming from a bad point of view, as it is, which is also what we will be doing.
 c. This topic benefits the students as people will know the limit and will know when they play computer games and students know how to game while limiting themselves while still dealing with work at the same time.

3. Feasibility of the research
 a. There is a need for our research, as many people do not know when to stop the moment they start playing computer games, especially students. Hence, our research can help to let these people know when to stop.
 b. It is possible to carry out and complete the project, as there are many students in the school that we can survey on and interview.
c. The proposed course of action is logical and realistic as it can be completed with the help of some students who would be willing to do a survey and with our hard work and group effort.
d. The research provides sufficient opportunity for generation of ideas, as we will constantly have to think of ways to do certain things in the project. As for analysis and evaluation of ideas, we will certainly have many opportunities to analyze information and evaluate ideas on how to go about deciding what to do next and the solution to the problem.

 4. Manageability of the research
a. The timeline for the different components of the project will be decided later based on the situation then. But overall, the project will be done as quickly and carefully as we can, trying our best not to go out of point and staying as close to the topic as possible.
 b. This research provides sufficient opportunity for group work as we will need to discuss a lot of matters regarding the project, for example who will be assigned to do what component of the project and we will have to work together.
 c. We do anticipate some difficulties along the way, such as students not cooperating with us and lack of data. We intend to cope with these difficulties by trying to get the group to go and share their findings with each other and their part of the project.

 5. Accessibility of the information required
a. Information/knowledge that will be relevant to our research would be the amount of time people usually spend gaming on average each day.
b. We will be obtaining this information from SST secondary 1 sources, and hopefully they will give us reliable and useful information.
 c. Some problems we anticipate while gathering out information and data would be that the information that we can find is not entirely true as we think that no one would admit that they are addicted to playing computer games.

Thursday 23 August 2012

Controversial cases of gaming addiction


On November 22, 1997, thirteen-year-old Noah Wilson died when his friend Yancy stabbed him in the chest with a kitchen knife. The mother of Noah, Andrea Wilson, alleged that her son was stabbed to death because of an obsession with the game Mortal Kombat. She alleged that Yancy S. was so obsessed with the game that he believed himself to be the character Cyrax. This character purportedly uses a finishing move which involves getting the opponent in a headlock and stabbing them in the chest.

On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher in the Columbine High School Massacre. The two were allegedly obsessed with the video game “Doom”. Harris also created mods for the game, and created a large mod named "Tier" which he called his "life's work".

In April 2000, 16-year-old Spanish teenager José Rabadán Pardo murdered his father, mother and his sister with a katana, proclaiming that he was on an "avenging mission" by Squall Leonhart, the main Character of the video game Final Fantasy VIII.

In February 2003, 16-year-old American Dustin Lynch was charged with aggravated murder and made an insanity defense that he was "obsessed" with GTA III.

On June 7, 2003, 18-year-old American Devin Moore shot and killed two policemen and a dispatcher after grabbing one of the officers' weapons following an arrest for the possession of a stolen vehicle. At trial, the defense claimed that Moore had been inspired by the video game GTA: Vice City.

On June 25, 2003, two American step brothers, Joshua and William Buckner, aged 14 and 16, respectively, used a rifle to fire at vehicles on in Tennessee, killing a 45-year-old man and wounding a 19-year-old woman. The two shooters told investigators they had been inspired by GTA III.

In October 2004, a 41-year-old Chinese man named Qiu Chengwei stabbed 26-year-old Zhu Caoyuan to death over a dispute regarding the sale of a virtual weapon the two had jointly won in the game “The Legend of Mir”.

On December 27, 2004, 13-year-old Xiao Yi committed suicide by jumping from a twenty-four story building in Tianjan, China, as a result of the effects of his addiction, hoping to be "reunited" with his fellow gamers in the afterlife, according to his suicide notes. Prior to his death, he had spent 36 consecutive hours playing Warcraft III.

In June 2007, 22-year-old Alejandro Garcia from Texas shot his cousin dead after arguing over whose turn it was to play the game Scarface:The world is yours. He pleaded guilty for murder at his trial on April 6, 2011, and will serve 15 to 30 years in prison.

In December 2007, 17-year-old Lamar Roberts and 16-year-old Heather Trujillo were accused of beating a seven-year-old girl to death. They are said to have been imitating the moves taken from the game "Mortal Kombat".

In December 2007, a Russian man was beaten to death over an argument in the MMORPG Lineage 2. The man was killed when his guild and a rival one challenged each other to a real-life brawl.


In June 2008, four teens allegedly obsessed with GTA IV went on a crime spree after being in New Hyde Park, New York. They first robbed a man, knocking his teeth out and then they stopped a woman driving a black BMW and stole her car and her cigarettes.

On August 2, 2008, Polwat Chinno, a 19-year-old Thai teenager, stabbed a Bangkok taxi driver to death during an attempt to steal the driver's cab in order to obtain money to buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV. A police official said that the teen was trying to copy a similar act in the game.

On October 13, 2008, the Disappearance of Brandon Crisp
and his subsequent death involving, according to his parents, obsessive playing of Call of duty 4: Modern Warfare has been referenced in discussions about video game obsession.

In January 2010, Gary Alcock punched, slapped and pinched his partner's 15-month-old daughter in the three weeks leading up to her death before he delivered a fatal blow to the stomach which tore her internal organs because she interrupted him playing his Xbox. She died from internal bleeding after suffering 35 separate injuries including multiple bruises, rib fractures and brain damage, which were comparable to injuries suffered in a car crash. Alcock was jailed for life and must serve at least 21 years.
In May 2010, French gamer Julien Barreaux located and stabbed a fellow player who had stabbed Barreaux on the game Counter-Strike. The judge at his trial called him "a menace to society."

On November 29, 2010 in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 16-year-old boy Kendall Anderson bludgeoned his mother to death in her sleep with a claw hammer after she took away his Playstation.

On April 9, 2011 in Alphen Aan Den Rijn, The Netherlands, 24-year-old Tristan van der Vlis opened fire in a shopping mall, releasing more than a hundred bullets with a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun, killing 6 people and wounding 17 others, after which he also killed himself. A fair amount of attention was given to the fact that Van Der Vlis had been playing Call of duty: Modern Warfare 2 and to the alleged similarities between the events in Alphen a/d Rijn and the controversial  in the game (also known as the 'Airport Massacre') where the player can choose to (or choose not to) partake in the killing of a large group of innocent people inside an airport terminal.

Press reports in November 2005 state that Greg J. Kleinmark, 24, pleaded "guilty to two counts of "involuntary manslaughter". He "left fraternal twins Drew and Bryn Kleinmark unattended in a bathtub for 30 minutes, in order to go three rooms away and play on his "Game Boy Advance" while "in the mean time, the two ten-months old kids drowned"

 Darisabel Baez, the 2-year-old daughter to 19-year-old Neida E. Baez, was beaten to death with a video game controller by Neida’s then boyfriend, Harve L. Johnson, in April of last year. Bizarrely, the girl was brought to her mother unconscious and soaking wet because Howard had tried to revive her in the bathtub.  He refused to tell police his reason for the murder.

Tyrone Spellman, 27, played long hours on his Xbox, So when his 17 month year old daughter pulled on some cords and tipped the Xbox to the ground, breaking it. He became completely enraged.He struck her with such force that it cracked her skull several times. The autopsy too, revealed a broken arm that was at least two weeks old which social workers had failed to identify previously.

In 2007, A 13-year-old boy named Dinh killed an 81-year-old woman and stole her money in order to fund an online gaming addiction.  Vietnamese police report that Dinh strangled the woman with a piece of rope, then buried her in a pile of sand in front of his house.  Owing to his age, he was not sent to prison, but to a reeducation camp from which he will be released after for good behavior.

Thursday 16 August 2012

IRS PROPOSAL

STUDENT NAME(S):
Markus Chin
Ding Ruoqian
Ng Yu Yang
Daniel Gabe Saynes Ibeas

SCHOOL/TEAM
SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, SINGAPORE

MENTOR
MR TAN HOE TECK

PROGRAMME / INSTITUTION
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH STUDIES

TITLE OF PROJECT
An investigation of the computer gaming addiction of the secondary one students of School of Science and Technology, Singapore.

CATEGORY
Cyber-space

PURPOSE OF RESEARCH
(including Hypothesis/Problem/Engineering Goals)

Hypothesis / Hypotheses
(a) How many computer game addicts are in SST secondary 1
(b) How can we help them quit?

Independent variable
Factors include:
(a) Average time of computer usage of an SST sec 1 population
(b) Gender of Gamers
(c) Range of student interviewed
(d) The factors of being addicted( example: number of hours, attitude, mood, focus, well being, etc. )


Dependent variable

The performance refers to:

(a) Range of the rocket

Constants
We will keep the water bottle to 1.25 Litre Coca-cola PET bottle as the constant

SCOPE OF RESEARCH
The "scope" section is where you list what you are doing. The "bounds" section is where you set the
boundaries and you list some thing explicitly that you are not doing because they are outside the bounds of
the project.

The scope of our research.

METHODOLOGY
 Procedures
:

IRS Statistics


Thursday 19 July 2012

Computer gaming addiction!

Gaming can be good as long as you don't let it overwhelm you. Computer games addiction is extreme use of computer games that interferes with daily life. Instances have been reported in which users play compulsively, isolating themselves from family and friends or from other forms of social contact, and focus almost entirely on in-game achievements rather than other life events, and exhibit lack of imagination and mood swings. Excessive use of computer games may have some or all of the symptoms of drug addiction or other proposed psychological addictions. Some players become more concerned with their interactions in the game than in their broader lives. Players may play many hours per day, neglect personal hygiene, gain or lose significant weight due to playing, disrupt sleep patterns to play resulting in sleep deprivation, play at work, find themselves in the middle of nowhere looking into space for a considerable amount of time, avoid phone calls from friends, or lie about how much time they spend playing video games. In one extreme instance, it was reported that a seventeen year old boy would play for periods of up to 15 hours, skipping meals and only stopping when he blacked out.

Thursday 12 July 2012

health in singapore

Singapore’s well-established healthcare system comprises a total of 13 private hospitals, 10 public (government) hospitals and several specialist clinics, each specializing in and catering to different patient needs, at varying costs.
Patients are free to choose the providers within the government or private healthcare delivery system and can walk in for a consultation at any private clinic or any government polyclinic. For emergency services, patients can go at any time to the 24-hour Accident & Emergency Departments located in the government hospitals.
Singapore's medical facilities are among the finest in the world, with well qualified doctors and dentists, many trained overseas.
Singapore has a Medical savings account system known as Medisave.

The Singapore General Hospital is the largest and oldest hospital in Singapore, of which the foundation of its first building was laid in 1821.
The Tan Tock Seng is the second largest hospital in Singapore after the Singapore General Hospital, but its accident and emergency department is the busiest in the country largely due to its geographically centralized location. Set up in 1844 by an entrepreneur and philanthropist, Tan Tock Seng, the hospital came into the international spotlight when it was designated as the sole treatment centre for the SARS epidemic which struck the country in 2003.
In the 1990s, all public hospitals were "restructured" which means that they have been operated as government-owned corporations rather than the typical model of Public hospitals in other countries. There are two major healthcare groups operating restructured hospitals: SingHealth and the National Healthcare Group (NHG). There is also a smaller group linked to the National University of Singapore called the National University Health System (NUHS).

Tuesday 26 June 2012

First questions

1) What is research to me to me?

2) Why do I think research is important in our studies?

3) What I want to learn in IRS this Semester…

4)In your opinion, what are the roles and responsibilities for the Leader, Blog Manager, Schedule Manager and Rublic Relations Manager? Why?