Kyle and his Academic Views

As a student, Studying is probably one of the hardest activities when it comes to university. Semester long courses usually run for 12 weeks, with 3 hours each week of learning. With this allotted time, there is a lot of course material that is taught to students that usually make us feel like this at the end of the semester. This picture does not only describe how we feel due to all the information learned within the semester, but the review that comes with it. This is because during the 12 weeks, students have a midterm around week 6, and then a final exam after week 12 during the exam schedule. With this being said, there's a breakdown on how some professors go about these midterms and exams. There are some beauty professors that make the midterm and exam separate, therefore any material covered on the during the period before the midterm, will only be on the midterm and not the final exam. Any material covered after the midterm will only be on the final exam. This makes studying easier. But, and this is a very big but, there are some professors who make the midterm and final about everything. Now thats ultimate stress. There's so much material to cover, recall on, and potentially memorize if a midterm and final are basically all multiple choice.

In a blog post done a few weeks ago, I covered the application of Duolingo. This is a web based platform that allows users to learn a different language, a little each day. Since I tried out Duolingo and blogged about it, I’ve been doing my 10 minute lessons each day while I commute to campus, which passes the time in a way where I’m learning something new and not catching up on sleep on the GO Train. So when it comes to the task of developing a new idea for a study tool, I believe a tool that mimics Duolingo for university students would ultimately be beneficial.

A name I would like to call this platform is “New Review - Studying made Easier”. Just to lay out the functionalities of the platform: Professors will take important concepts from each class which they may use for the midterm and final, and input it into the program. After each class, students will have the choice to use this platform, and take 10-20 minutes out of their week to review the concepts covered. When students take part in this, they’ll earn bonus marks because it's not required, but they’re taking the extra mile to recall, and review what was learned within their weekly classes. The questions will be released after the class via email reminder, and students will have a week before the next class to complete the questions. Only students that complete the weekly reviews, will receive all the questions and answers when the professor releases the exam review. Students will get a daily reminder to complete these questions via email as well. When it comes to finals time, based on whatever week reviews students completed, they will gain access to the questions again to recall for the exam and midterm. This will engage all students to participate weekly in the reviews for both the bonus marks and access to the reviews. This also gives students a thorough review for the midterm and exam. Due to the fact that they completed weekly reviews, they will experience an easier time with the midterm and exam review due to Spaced Repetition.

This will directly impact how students learn with the course.

In relation to EID 100 I’ll give example questions for weeks 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.

Week 7: What is incremental innovation

Innovation that is incremental

When information, products, and services improve little by little over time

The progression of Apple iOS

Week 8: What is MVP

Most Valuable Player

Multivariable Platform

Minimum Viable Product

Week 9: An Example of Skeuomorphism is:

Sound mixing software

iOS initial app design

Apps, showing physical things in a digital space

Week 10: HTML is:

The High Text Mediated Language

The structure and description of content when coding

The way we learn to Hop To More Locomotives

Week 11: Machine learning is:

Machine Learning things

Having your login information ready on Facebook

A subset of Artificial Intelligence

Students will receive questions like these on a weekly basis in reference to terminology used within their weekly classes. This will inevitably help students remember easier, and help professors create questions for the midterm and exam. Just simply create the questions on a week to week basis then compile and choose for the midterm and exam.

But this is just my take on how review and studying could be made easier.

For myself, I do not qualify as someone who is all knowing about computers. My dad takes this title in our family. That's because he knows all about network platforms, programming, servers and all that tech talk my mom deems “geek talk”. I remember looking at my dad's several monitors which were linked up to several servers and all I saw was words upon words upon words. But it wasn’t the words that I understood. It was a whole different type of language to me that I could not comprehend. Therefore I would just watch as his screen got bigger with letters and characters which I knew nothing about.

Later on in life, I found out that this “new language” was called coding, and that it’s been around for quite some time. Fast Forward even more to my EID 100 course where our instructor gave us modules to try new things out related to the course and one of those modules was learning how to code. I thought that this would be the hardest process ever. Due to the fact that I’m in university, I’ve met software programmers and coders, and they always look stressed out. One of my good coder friends explained that when, “ we look stressed, it's usually because we want everything to be simple and easy because we’re lazy. Therefore we make codes to make everything simple and easy. Usually the codes don’t work the first time, therefore we need to de-bug the codes to make it work, making us stressed.” - He will remain unknown due to his fairly stereotypical description of who coders and programmers are. But because he’s a coder, doesn’t that mean he’s exempt from being picked apart…?

Well that train of thought was quite long to get me to the beef of todays journal which is me trying out codecademy.com to start learning. All in all, it was a great experience but troublesome at times. An overview of Codecademy, is essentially a website with gamification to teach users the basics of coding. Starting out with HTML Elements going all the way to CSS and JavaScript. From this, almost anyone can gain a basic understanding of how to code.

My experience with this platform was pretty seamless. This tweet will give you context as to what the tasks are on Codecademy. The information given about what you’re learning to do, along side with the tasks provided for the user to complete equate to a full rounded learning experience for the user. Therefore solidifying concepts in the learner's mind to recall in future coding tasks within the platform.

It was all sunshine and rainbows until I got to lesson 2, Common HTML Elements. In this lesson, exercise 9 was teaching about the alt attribute which helps with an “<img>” element. This alt tag helps with providing a description for the image. The coding is supposed to be, “ <img src=”#” alt=”description of picture” /> “ and that should be embedded within the image link. The image link is supposed to look like this,

<img

src=”link of image” />

It said that we were supposed to add the alt descriptor to the image segment but it totally messed the image up. I honestly tried troubleshooting but due to the time constraints I have and all the other assignments I still need to complete, I must tend to those…

Ever since I was a kid, my mom would want to immerse me with different languages through television shows. That first sentence was written to spice up the fact that, if my mom would want me to be quiet for a few hours, she would plop me in front of the tv and put on DVD sets of Dora the Explorer. All those hours of consumption made me have an interest in learning Spanish as another show off trick to impress people. Sadly that interest went away with time, due to life giving me a big slap of reality and prioritization of time. Years have passed since I've last shouted AZUL at a tv screen when Dora would ask me “what colour is this” ** Disclaimer, the colour was blue - Azul = Blue** fast forward many years to the current time where I am in a relationship with someone of Peruvian and Brazilian background and the first time I heard that person talk in Spanish to his family. I swear to god, I've gained a new respect for the language. It sounds so romantic, more-so than French in my opinion. It also comes off as endearing and it captivated me. At that point in time, I knew I needed to revisit my childhood years and the amount of learning I had in relation to speaking Spanish. However, I can't deal with the updated version of Dora because it's ruining my memories of childhood. Thank god I have the opportunity to complete a module for Duolingo.

Duolingo is a computer based application that allows you to learn a language a little bit each day. If you click on this link, you’ll be able to see some of the screens I’ll be touching on in terms of this platform. I find it quite easy to commit time towards learning a new language when it's only 10-20 minutes per day. Another thing that I enjoy initially with this platform is the cost… There is none. On a user point of view, this is highly adaptable rather than using other, more costly methods like using Rosetta Stone. After choosing what language and how many minutes a day you would like to commit, it sends an allowance to your browser. I was using Google at the time so it made an allowance to send me notifications for when I need to return and complete my lessons per day. So in comparison to many platforms out there, this one is free, with adaptable/realistic commitment levels and reminds you to go through the lessons. Already I'm feeling confident that this platform will boost me beyond Dora, Boots, and Swiper.

Now going into the lesson. At first it has a description of a saying. For example “I’m a man” and then there are 3 pictures below with Spanish descriptions of each picture. You match the English description with a picture displaying the image along with the Spanish translation at the bottom of the picture description. You click the icon that best matches the English description, and then it repeats the description back to you in Spanish. So, “I’m a man” is translated back to you as “Soy un hombre”. After the icon segment is done, you go into a typing exercise by looking at the Spanish phrase, and typing it out in English. If you forget what some of the words mean, you can click on each word, and the platforms repeats the word with the addition of a drop down bar with different connotations of the word. This then gives you a better understanding of what each word can mean with the right conjugation. So niña can mean girl, child or kid, but that specific word is directed to the feminine conjugation of child and kid. The platform would then ask a question referring the the masculine term which is niño.

Once all these exercises are done, you’ve completed your first session and gain XP points which equate to experience points. This added gamification makes it more enjoyable to come back and learn more. In addition, Duolingo comes in a mobile compatible form for both Android and iPhone.

One aspect of the platform as a whole that I'm fairly impressed with is the access component by allowing people to learn a new language with no cost associated with the actual platform. The only prerequisites to use the platform is to possess a mobile or computer device with connection to a network. Due to the fact that there is an increasing amount of people who possess such prerequisites, there should be way more individuals on this platform. During the initial setup process, it shows how many people you're learning the language with, and for Spanish it’s currently 71.3 million users.

To say the least, I’m impressed. To explain my full thoughts, I do think I’ll use this more. I enjoy the learning techniques used to easily teach concepts in an amount of time that's suitable to my schedule. I feel like this is a platform could also be put forth to many different platforms like the education system. In other countries around the world, students in elementary and grade school are given so much homework that that they get stressed. My brother and sister are 13, and 11 and they’re coming home with 2+ hours of homework each night on top of their weekly activities like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu almost every single day. If the education system could formulate a way to adopt the processed involved with this platform, and implement it to their education system, and their curriculums as individual subjects, kids could sit down for 30 minutes to an hour to finish homework on a laptop, tablet or cellphone. Yes, teachers have adopted to online assignments and homework, but these strides have not been fully implemented within the lower grade education system. Especially within my siblings catholic school where they do not allow the use of devices for homework unless its a calculator or a word processor for a final essay.

If only the education system could just adopt Doras methodology of saying words and repeating them back… Learning things would be more enjoyable with cartoons and yelling at a screen don’t you think?

The one thing people are surprised about is my job. Yes, I’m funny, quirky, and spontaneous. I get people asking if I do event planning, aspire to open a chain of restaurants, or the classic “You should own a salon, you would be amazing in that industry”. Yes, all of those suggestions are nice, but that’s not the path for me. You see, my dad is an entrepreneur and he’s always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Adding that spirit and the background in Network platforms, and you know a tech start-up will eventually be birthed from his mind, somehow, some way. So fast-forward a couple of years and my dad comes up with an application that provides Customer Engagement solutions for small to medium sized businesses. This app is all about mobile marketing directly to your customers.

For myself, I’ve been involved with everything “marketing” from market research, content marketing, and understanding our competitors. One of the major competitors that we’re competing with is google due to the analytics tool that they provide customers that we’re targeting; small to medium sized businesses.

Therefore, when it came to deciding on what to blog about in terms of analytics platforms, it was a pretty easy decision to choose Google Analytics. To be a bit granular, I’ll be touching on the pros and cons relating on tracking customers via this platform.

In terms of Google Analytics, it provides Small to Medium sized businesses with customer analytics based on the customer generated online traffic. The biggest factor that we’re competing with Google Analytics on, is their customer tracking. The analytics provided may be useful for determining what works/doesn't work based on what you’re offering online. One of the features google provides with their analytics is Online Custom Campaign Tracking. A feature similar to ours. However there has been a lot of chat on how this feature isn’t living up to its expected potential. Here's where we’re trying to implement the 10x rule often applied with entrepreneurial aspects.

Google's “Custom Campaign Tracking” provides business owners with information relating to how traffic arrives to their sites. Using this data, business owners can understand more effective ways to attract customer base to their site.

The downfall is that in order for this to be tracked, there is a few things that business owners do not complete when setting up their campaigns, thus giving them faulty information which inevitably leads to faulty conclusions or no conclusions what so ever. From not covering all aspects of the setup process, their information will not have any quality that they can turn into knowledge in terms of the DIKW acronym.

Most of the solutions involve a business owner to understand a bit of code, to implement a solid solution to this mishap of mis-understanding and faulty set-up.

With setting up the Campaign Analytics, there are options to set parameters within the online campaign like Campaign source (where is it being seen → Google?) which is mandatory, Campaign Medium (How is it being seen→ banner ads?) another mandatory component, Campaign Terms (Key Payed words within the campaign → kind of like SEO for the ad) optional but recommended, and Campaign Field (Is this a promo code, product, or slogan).

Commonly, these fields are filled in, incorrectly or not filled in at all. This misleads business owners for conclusions on how effective their campaigns are.

For our Customer Engagement platform, it’s solely based on mobile devices (iOS and Android) therefore making it a native application, constantly storing data on the consumer to our cloud database, just like Googles. In terms of Campaign set up, It’s a lot easier to complete due to the fact that we have already programmed all the criteria google required the merchant to input. For the merchant, all they need to do it fill out what the Campaign is promoting to their customers, what they’ll earn when they redeem the campaign promotion, and how far the customer needs to receive the offer. In more context to that last point, our campaigns rely on geo-location, frequency of shopping at a certain store, and if the customer subscribes to a stores promotion. With all this information formatted into our system, it allows our database to learn with the customer as they shop, which provides business owners with more solidified information which is qualitative, and can definitely be turned into knowledge for the business to apply to their future campaigns.

With this small problem in such a successful platform, we were able to find a better solution and tweak it to fit out platforms needs which will be appreciated by future paying customers.

This blog post was a bit more analytical, and full of business jargon, so lets lighten the mood by ending with a good meme shall we?

Since it's right around the corner to Halloween, I thought I should touch on a topic that is taking the twittersphere by storm. I’m not talking about the iconic return of Halloween Town to our TV screens, but the infamous clown spottings. It’s a spooky time of year, and the fact that these incidences just started happening ‘all of a sudden’ has everyone riled up and scared. This has gone so far, to the point that my brother and sister need to walk home in a group, because the board is scared about these ‘clowns’ harming the students.

To give you a little background on the scenario, I found this report from Global News giving a thorough explanation as to when these clown sightings started and why everyone's talking about. I also found another interesting article via my TweetDeck search, explaining why we get scared of clowns. It’s just like we’re all in a movie now, and we’re all that cliche white person trying to figure out where the noise is coming from, and then *BOOM* a clown pops out of nowhere, and you’re running for your life. This is the case for many people. They’ll see a clown, throw on their iPhone camera and hit the record button. This is probably the cause for people to continuously dress up like clowns. It’s spreadable media that provides viewers with a shock factor that entices them to find out more.

Personally, I haven’t looked into this topic too much because I’m currently 6 feet deep in midterm woes. Thankfully, I needed to write a blog post on the functionality of TweetDeck, and what better topic to use the platform for than to search the Twittersphere for posts about Clown Spottings. If you want to use TweetDeck, you can use it both as an online or application platform thats downloadable to your devices (Macs, PC’s).

In TweetDeck, you’re able to use 4 or more columns for curating content and to view what you want. So initially, they set you up with you News Feed, Notifications, DM, and another column based on what your followers are liking and viewing. I deleted all columns except for the news feed, and then started my quest on gaining more knowledge on the phenomena of Clown Spottings. So I simply go to the search bar and type in clown sightings. Then all information in regards to clown spottings is put into this column and you can geo-fence the column to narrow the search results to give you information that is specific to your area. So I find a tweet about clown sightings happening in Quebec, so I add another column for ‘Clown Spottings Quebec’ and all tweets regarding that search title and location are curated for me. This is where everything goes downhill.

In the curation of content, they also include videos as well. Also, so everyone understands, I haven’t payed enough attention to these clown sightings, so I haven't watched any of the videos… Until today. I swear that these videos are something that shouldn't be happening. This is some scary sh*t that people are allowing to happen. So after seeing some results on both the main search and the Quebec search, I decided to allow this scare to reach more of a home note. I add the final column to my investigation and search “Clown Spottings Ontario” and this is when I stopped because of what I saw. This is the tweet that I saw a video from, and looking at it a few times, I realized something. The park shown that these kids are recording in looked very familiar.

Digging deeper into this video, I looked at the comments on YouTube and everyone was commenting that this video was shot near the Meadowvale area. The fact that this is a place where I used to live by, and a place where my boyfriend lives near too, is creepy as hell. To know that incidences like these clown spottings, are happening so close to places we live, used to live, or close to places where people we know reside makes me worried for my own safety but more-so my younger siblings or my mom.

Also, the fact that an application like TweetDeck could accumulate information and allow me to dig deep into topics while having all this information organized based on topic really helped my train of thought. If only they had an application like this, but for Google, or RULA to help me with my research projects!

To be fairly honest, I have my grandpa's cane in my car that's completely steel so if a Clown wants to run up, they’ll be running into the force at which I wreck them with my late grandpas walking stick…. Thank you grandpa, your helping to prevent me from getting toyed by strangers who think it’s okay to dress up as clowns and scare the living Jesus out of people during the night. I would also like to acknowledge that I own two very large dogs (Rottweiler and an Italian Mastiff) which I walk each night… They also happen to have a very vicious bite, so I dare someone to try me, more specifically i dare any clown to clown around with me… they’ll instantly regret it.

From this point on, the only clown spotting that I’m comfortable with seeing, is this one.

If you would like to add to my collection of clown spotting knowledge, tweet me at my twitter!

Memes have grown as a medium in the past few years as a way for people to express their emotions on a deeper level through social media, and messaging apps. According to the trusty wiki, Memes are defined as, “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture” There are many memes floating around the internet like Pepe, Dat Boi, and Grumpy Cat, but in terms of the cultural aspect, Popular Culture celebrities like the Kardashian family have been turned into memes too.

In this day and age, I feel as if the Kardashians have taken over almost everything. This meaning that they’re classified under popular culture in which people consume on a daily basis. Due to the fact that they are included in this classification of culture, they can have memes created of them. For this instance with celebrities, it’s usually screen captured moments of them expressing themselves during shows, out in public etc. When deciding who to write this blog post about, I was thinking about focusing on Blac Chyna and her memes, because of the new show that she stars in alongside her fiance, Rob Kardashian. There are many memes of her rolling around the twitter-sphere currently. Yes, these memes may be newer and more relevant, but if you want memes that have timeless effects of portraying what emotion you need to get across on twitter DM’s or in a plain text, the Kardashian memes are the way to go.

If you found something funny, ya got this one. Something petty, tweet this, but something super petty, you can tweet this. Theres some twitter drama and you want to tweet something, but you don’t wanna write anything? Just @ whoever is causing drama and send them this. If someone spilt the tea, and it’s just divine, you don’t need to use your words, just tweet this gem.

The thing about these memes, it that it captures the Kardashian women who are idolized as the essence of beauty for many individuals, but shows them in a different light. They’re not posing for any high-fashion editorial shoot or walking the red carpet. They’re just going through emotions like any other human which is shocking to even think that these individuals even experience any emotions at all. These idolized celebrities are caught in their rawest emotions which we find hilarious due to their facial expressions. These people are supposed to be the definitions of beauty, and for them to have an ugly crying face, posted up not giving any f***s in the club, to looking at your phone while the front camera is on and you didn’t even realize it, the images are fairly caught off guard.

The absurdity of these moments entices us to use them to express our feelings because it’s a turn on pop-culture, turning those who are in pop culture that are idolized, into images which creates common ground with their audience. This common ground allows them to be more in the lime-light for both their idolized images, and the caught off guard meme moments that make them relatable to our own daily lives.

Diving into the topic even more, Kim Kardashian realized this boom in the consumption of her iconic “Kim Kardashian Crying Face” meme that she capitalized on the image, and created merchandise on the meme, now participating in the culture of her “caught off guard” moment turned meme.

Moreover, she used memes created of her, her husband Kanye and daughter North West, and included them in her Kimoji Keyboard add on, which her fans can purchase on iTunes.

Memes are used almost every single day, and the fact that celebrities can take action on capitalizing on a popular culture moment with selling merchandize of their meme to all of their loyal fans truly captures the essence of a meme. They’re powerful images within popular culture that can spread like wildfire. Its up to celebrities to grasp hold of this wildfire by engaging and capitalizing on a form of media that has power of grabbing the attention of an audience that do and don’t engage with your main brand.

If you have any examples of Memes that I could put into my current Rolodex, tweet them to me @kylechaudhry​ and I’ll for sure use them!

As a child, my parents always wanted to keep tabs on where I am, what I was doing, who I was with etc. So when I got my first cellphone, they were so happy that they were able to track me with ease and practicality. But when I got my first iPhone, I felt like all my privacy went away. With features like FaceTime, Find My iPhone and the ability to see if a person read your iMessages, my parents giggled with laughter when they gave me the phone.

I feel like we’re in a day and age where tracking people is easier with the advancement of technology raising the veil of security and privacy. With new features added everyday to network platforms, applications and technology in general, I feel like there's no real definition of privacy. With that being said, there are so many platforms in which we disclose private information on, post videos and pictures to, and so on and so forth and to be quite honest, no one knows if their information is totally safe and secure.

Just a few weeks ago, one of my friends got into trouble due to her parents hacking into her snapchat to see her at a party with a bunch of friends when she was supposed to be helping her family with some stuff around the house and hosting a dinner with her grandparents. She said that she had a major essay due and that she was going to work with some friends and she may be there late. I was very curious as to how they hacked into her snapchat, so I went to the “database of how-to’s”; Google. I found this blog post and it was catered to exactly what the parents motives were. I still do not know exactly how they went through hacking into their daughters snapchat… but they did.

This leads me to a task I went through for this blog post. Our professor instructed us to use Lightbeam on Mozilla Firefox to see what it tracks in relation to our internet footprint. So I downloaded Firefox because I’m an avid user of the spectacular Google Chrome, and then went through all the privacy terms of not linking it or syncing it to any other browsers that I have on my computer. I also made sure that I didn’t allow it to sync with all my passwords, due to the fact that I don’t think I’ll be using Firefox that much and it takes up some prime real estate on my computer, so Firefox won’t be making it onto the Varsity MacBook Pro memory team.

So once I got through all the processes, terms and conditions, I downloaded Lightbeam and started to browse. I had a few assignments that I needed to do research for, so I was accessing some publications from the web, and the RULA database. I also needed a bit of a break so I took to YouTube to indulge in my guilty pleasure, Wendy Williams Hot Topics.

I lost track of time and when I realized what time it was, an hour passed and I went over the said “Browse for 20 minutes and then look at the results”. But here is the graph that Lightbeam provides to show your browsing history.

Going through the functionality of Lightbeam, you have a graph representation of all the sites that you’ve visited and the connection to other entities that that site may have. The prominent sites that I spent the majority of my time on were Huffington Post, Youtube and Google. On the right hand side of the pictures, you can see that there are other sites that these pages are linked to.

Personally, I didn’t even know that sites that I went on were connected to other sites too. On a bigger note, the fact that there is software that I can download that tracks what sites I visit, and shows me the sites that those sites are linked to makes me want to pour myself a cocktail. The internet is such a complex medium where almost anything is accessible. This scares me.

I don’t enjoy the fact that someone could potentially hack my snapchat, view my sites visited, have those sites linked to other sites, not know if those sites are accessing information that I would not want them to access.

If I were to use Firefox more, I would definitely want to have Lightbeam on in the background while I browse, to monitor what sites I’m looking at and see what external sites they’re connected to. However, because I’m such a busy university student I don’t think I have the time to use a different browser because everything on Chrome is just easy to me…

But as my university professor said, “people who are adaptable to new browsers are better in the job market because they are accepting of change…” so I gotta change my ways now before I’m out of university and jobless.

In some final thoughts; if you’re reading this still, I strongly recommend you to download Firefox and try Lightbeam! It’s a highly interesting application and it’s cool to see what your favourite sites are connected to! If you do try Lightbeam, post your result board and tag me in the tweet using my twitter handle @kylechaudhry!

When I was a kid, probably around the ages of 1-10, I thought that the cloud was a word that meant the little white fluffy things in the sky, that play with the sun. Buts as I got older, that term changed for me. You see, my dad's a real big geek. You may not come to that assumption when you see him, but he's the biggest geek I know and love. He's obsessed with the Internet, computers, and devices that create networks within the world. He got his first computer at the age of 10, and from then on his knowledge about computers, servers, networks platforms and everything else grew. To me, he's simply the "All Knowing One" when it comes to anything tech.

When it came time, I asked him, " Daddy, what's the cloud" and his face immediately lit up with excitement because he knew, now that he could talk tech with me. He explained to me that the cloud was basically not in the air, but in many different places all around the world, and it helps people have access to certain online documents, photos, files etc. from anywhere in the world.

Fast forward 19 years to me, sitting in a lecture room at 3:00pm on a Tuesday, listening to my professor explain what the cloud is. It made me think of that exact moment with my dad and I when I was younger. The only difference was, my dad made it easier for me to understand 'The Cloud' by not touching on all the points that encompasses what the cloud is. My professor on the other hand did not hold back. He gave all 90 students a full description of what the cloud is, followed by a cheeky rap video that one of the students from the same course created a few years back.

Therefore, my new and current understanding of the cloud is that youtube video my professor showed my class, Hit It!

Currently, the only reason why I vigorously use the cloud, is  for the software that allows me to collaborate with others in terms of creating documents. The software I'm referring to is Google Drive, and more specifically google docs, Google spreadsheet and Google present. This software is commonly used by many, especially students in high school and university. This software is great because it gives students like myself, the ability to collaborate on projects, wherever we may be. I find that Google Docs is a crucial piece of software for people to utilize in university, because there are so many projects where students are out into groups to create their final deliverable for their professors.

With group projects, I enjoy Google docs a lot. Other than breaking down the location barrier when it comes to engaging in group work, Google docs provides so much more, to fully maximize on productivity, fairness, and total collaboration within the group.

I enjoy taking leader positions when participating in group projects, and I always enforce that there will be equal work all through the project. With Google docs, I can see who did what within the document, and any revisions within the document too. This allows easy grading when group marking is to be done, because I can easily tell who was a slacker, and who wasn’t.

I also appreciate that we can stay connected, and all know the same information when completing group projects. In communications classes at Ryerson, Group projects are always expected, and group members are to be expected to create deliverables, a presentation about the deliverables, a report on why the deliverables are effective, and that same information must be in the presentation or else you’ll lose marks for in-consistency. In summary of this point, there are so many things going on in group projects when in Professional communications, and I enjoy that Google docs simplifies the ability for everyone to be on the same page. If there are updates to anything, people will always be aware of those updates so everyone understand and communicate the same message once all the deliverables are created for the final submission.

Yes, there are so many upsides to google docs, but there are downsides to the platform as well. Due to the fact that academia works in mysterious ways, sometimes you will be put into groups, and not have the ability to pick for yourself. This allows for anyone to screw with you. I want to draw back to a memory from first semester in University. I was included in a group where we were revamping a University Groups Social Media presence. This was a big deal and worth a big chunk of my final mark. Not to mention, the whole class did terrible on the mid-term and this was my time for GPA redemption. There was this one guy in our group of all stars that didn’t shine like the rest of us; he was more of a dim lit black hole, looking to destroy everything in his path, including our group project.

This guy was given clear instructions as to what we needed him to do, but with people like Trump in the world, the agenda of life won’t always work in your favour. Instead of working on the section that he was assigned to work on, he went and revised everyone's work.

The word livid couldn’t even describe my full emotions at that point in time. Did I forget to mention that he did all of this, the night before we were to hand in a full report, and a present our findings to the class and professor, followed by screen shot deliverables of our social media campaign?

So yes, livid could not describe my full emotions at that time.

Thank the lord, Beysus Christ, that google drive allows you to *un-do* revisions that people have made to documents that you share.

Even though, it took a lot of clicks, typing, and cups of coffee to file not only mine, but my other group members all nighters to fix the mistakes an ignorant numskull “revised”, we got the highest mark in the class.

The real person to thank however, is the cloud technology behind Google Docs that allowed servers to save all the revisions done on the document, and save all the intellectual progress that my group made together without the ignoramus, we were able to revert, and enhance our document which, evidently let us all get our GPA redemption.

Thanks Google Docs and the Cloud, I owe you a drink the next time we hit up a bar!

If you have an experience like mine, or if you want to give me your own stories on bad experiences with the Cloud, tweet me @kylechaudhry​

In a country as innovative as Canada, you would think that we, as a nation would be progressive in making sure that everyone adapts to the new technology that gets introduced to the public on a literal daily basis. A world filled with WiFi, Laptops, iPhones, Samsung Galaxies, and LG3’s, certain people need some type of guidance. Not in terms of the younger generation such as millennials who grew up with this tech, but for the older generations, moreover those who did not grow up with technology.

This discussion is pretty hefty in terms of the digital divide. Whatis.targettech.com explain the digital divide as, “Digital divide is a term that refers to the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology, and those that don't or have restricted access. This technology can include the telephone, television, personal computers and the Internet.” When looking at this definition, it’s hard to think that this deprivation could happen in places where technology is so prominent in everyday life. Just standing in Young and Dundas Square in Toronto On, you can just stop and see so many people utilizing technology. Whether they are using their mobile devices, tablets, wearables, viewing all the digital billboards etc; technology alone in that location captivates the attention of so many individuals.

Almost everyone I know, understands how to use a phone, laptop, Fibe tv and everything else under a technology standpoint. Almost everyone I surround myself with, grew up where technology was ever evolving, and we were all fortunate enough to be able to interact, learn and grow with the technology.

Did you notice that in the second sentence above, I said almost everyone instead of everyone? That is because I do surround myself with people such as my grandparents. My grandparents, bless their cute souls, don’t know or can even comprehend how to work an iPhone 6s because it’s so out of their league in terms of understanding the uses of the technology. This is a prime example of the ever ongoing digital divide.

In Canada, a study by CIRA was completed in 2014, which presented information like, “while 95 per cent of Canadians in the highest income quartile are connected, just 62 per cent in the lowest income quartile have internet access.” Also, at that point in time, Canada was ranked 16th in the world in terms of internet penetration rates.

Fast forward to Thursday September 15th 2016 when I was trying to look for articles that displayed experiences of older aged individuals having problems within Canada due to the digital divide, and luckily, I found an article that is spot on. The Huffington Post put an article in 2014 which explained Mr. Yuji Toyozato’s experience with technology. While reading this whole article, I could immediately relate to his experience in terms of helping my grandparents adapt to technology. These older individuals are definitely having a harder time adapting to the new and ever present technological age of today.

Mr. Toyozato is both an immigrant with a background in poverty living on the streets of Toronto for numerous years, and is of the growing aging population in Canada. My grandparents, in comparison are immigrants to Canada, they add to the aging population as well, but they have established themselves economically. Moreover, both Mr. Toyozato and my grandparents are of the same generation, therefore they didn’t grow up with the access to technology like I did growing up in Ontario, Canada. In terms of access, Mr. Toyozato had less probability, in having access to the evolving technology that the majority of individuals are using today. My grandparents, had a higher likelihood of accessing technology because they can afford it to a certain degree.

In the article, journalist Angelina Champlin discusses the digital divide in terms of economic access to internet, and how CBC describes this service as a “Human Right and a Universal service”. Almost everyone I know has access to internet service, because it allows you to connect with people, collaborate with people, and aids the completion of our ever-growing list of To-Do’s when it comes to homework. Without the aid of the internet, I would have to go to a library to conduct research about this topic. But instead, I can conduct my google searches from the comfort of my memory foam mattress as I drink my chai tea, listening to apple music. In the beginning of the article, it explains how Mr. Toyozato would go to the Library late at night, just so he could get a grasp, and learn the functionalities of a computer. This was a clear indication on how the digital divide is separated due to the economic variable in society. 

In the case of Mr. Toyozato and my grandparents, the cost of internet, and the devices that are used with it, cost a pretty penny. In order to adapt to the times, Mr. Toyozato had to save for 9 months to purchase an entry level ACER laptop and with that he had to give up some necessities like crucial items on his grocery list. My grandparents however, got their first tablet last year, and my grandma got her first iPhone as a gift from her service provider in the last 4 months. Meanwhile, I had my first computer when I was the age of 11, and at 19, I’ve been through an ACER laptop, and 2 Macbook Pro’s in the span of 8 years. I was able to have all of those devices, along side applications like Microsoft Office, and the addition of High-Speed Internet that had 1GB download speed and 100MBPS upload speed. Thats all because my family, moreover my dad works as a network platforms engineer. He understands how to use technology to its fullest capability, and what he needs in terms of internet service to use his technology.

The time it takes to teach older aged individuals how to use these basic pieces of technology that we just “understand”. Myself, and the friends and acquaintances I surround myself with are comprised of Generation Y and Generation Z, we just understand how to work these pieces of tech, cause we grew up with it. We were there in kindergarten playing Math Circus on the school Mac Computers, we were there using Microsoft Word to complete school projects, we were in Apple stores, taking photos on Photo Booth. We were utilizing the means in which we grew up with but the older generations didn’t. I’m not specifying older and including my parents in that generalization because they too did grow up when computers started becoming accessible to the public. I’m talking about those who comprise The Greatest Generation all the way to the Baby Boomer Generation.

Once these generations have a basic understanding of how to use the technology, they need other additions such as Internet to have full use of their products. With internet being in such high demand due to the added necessity of the service in today’s time, it comes at a hefty monthly price that people like Mr. Toyozato and my grandparents have a hard time budgeting with. There are so many technical terms when signing up for internet that people often find it hard to compare what you’re getting for what price. The fact of the matter is that both Mr. Toyozato and my grandparents had a hard time signing up for the service, and have a hard time with the monthly payments. My grandparents still have car payments, condo fees, expenses like groceries and with the addition of their high speed internet service, their pension cheques can only stretch so far.

A factor that I find separating the two, is that Mr. Toyozato had no immediate stability for technological help like a son, grandson that he could contact whenever for help. My grandparents have myself and my uncle to help them. I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve received calls from them asking, “Kyle, how can I use the Skype? I’m wanting to talk to aunty Naseem in Germany, but I can’t remember what to do!”. I feel like it’s a big benefit that my grandparents have people around them who understand and have the time to teach them how to utilize and understand aspects of technology and the services surrounding them, that will in turn elevate my grandparents from this digital divide.

But as the time progresses, so do the efforts in adapting almost everything to a technological platform, further pushing people back from whatever progress they’ve made on overcoming this digital divide. My grandma called me the other day because she had a hard time ordering a coffee at the McCafe in Union Station because it was on, “A really big iPad”.

So in terms of the Digital divide, I would like to leave off with a question, and if you’ve made it this far for reading, what will a 1-2 minute response do to you?

With the rapid increase of technology added to society each and everyday, is this helping those who are trying to overcome the ever prominent digital divide here in Canada? Or is it hindering them from keeping up with the rest of us, pushing them down into the number of those experiencing the digital divide?

Due to the fact that I’ve needed to mature a bit going into university, means that I needed to start a new twitter profile that I could be professional on. I already have an online profile which is tied to a handle where I’m able to freely tweet, retweet, and favourite all my guilty pleasures like the latest gossip, fashion trends, reality tv posts and much more. The separation is great because on one profile I’m freely able to express myself, and I’m also able to be more professional on my newer, more business-like profile.

However, I have common knowledge on what to post and what not to post, which many individuals seem to have trouble comprehending.

Now that there are many mediums where people can become more social with others via social media, there needs to be something said about my generation and netiquette. In terms of dictionary.com, Netiquette is defined as, “The rules of etiquette that apply when communicating over computer networks, especially the Internet.”  Reading an article from BBC on netiquette stated some vital points about netiquette that should be in the back of our minds before we click tweet or post. But there were 2 points that resonated with me. These were points 1. and 4.

I feel as if I need to dive into these two points in relation to Twitter because I see a trend of people doing certain things on this platform, including myself which need to be discussed and dealt with.

Point 1. States, "Refrain from personal abuse. You may express robust disagreement with what someone says, but don't call them names or threaten them with personal violence."

It's quite self explanatory as to what this point is trying to communicate to readers. If you're still not comprehending what this means in terms of your participation on Twitter, I'll simplify by saying don't be a troll and don't post anything that would make your nana question if you should get the last cookie in the cookie jar.

Now on to point 4. This states, "Remember that your posts are public. They can be read by your partner, your children, your parents, or your employer."

Leading back to my last point, if you post tweets that you may regret on Twitter, what would your nana think of you in relation to the last cookie in her cookie jar? What would your parents think of you, moreover if your potential employer saw the content you've been posting, would they hire you?

There's so many individuals of this tech and social generation, including myself that don't pay attention to what they Tweet/Post, and don't acknowledge that once something's posted on the Internet, it's there forever.

Leading to why I want to focus the statement of “not paying attention to what we tweet/post” on to our generation and the social media platform Twitter. You may be thinking, "Why only Twitter? Why not Facebook or LinkedIn?" The answer from my perspective is that Twitter allows you to connect to communities of those who Tweet upon impulsive experiences and moments. The bite sized tweets are short enough for those who participate to share little pieces of information, and archive that information with hashtags. Moreover, the platform allows many individuals to come together and participate in discussion over numerous topics, despite the geographic barrier of the world. This coming together and sharing can happen anywhere in the world due to smartphone technology.

In a recent tragic incident in Miami, there was a massive shooting at Pulse, a gay night club. Fueled by hatred, Omar Mateen went into Pulse Night club on June 12th 2016, which happened to be their Latino night. Mateen shot a total of 102 LGBTQ+ individuals, leaving 53 wounded and 49 dead. Due to the fact that this incident was so tragic and touched many hearts, the world took to Twitter to share their thoughts on the issue at hand. For this circumstance, you would think that people would be spreading love, and not hate. But in a world where Donald Trump may have a solid shot at becoming president, this was not the case.

Some people who took to Twitter and many other social media platforms had some pretty repulsive, derogatory, and horrid statements about the LGBTQ+ community which they should really have not posted in the first place.

The one thing that should've been repeating in their minds should’ve been, “Once you post something on the internet, it's there forever”

I would like to bring 2 incidences to the stage where ignorant individuals “tried it” with posting content that could potentially ruin their self presence because they didn't 1. "Refrain from personal abuse. You may express robust disagreement with what someone says, but don't call them names or threaten them with personal violence." and 2. "Remember that your posts are public. They can be read by your partner, your children, your parents, or your employer." and not to mention school/principal. Click here for incident 1, and here for incident 2.

When I saw these two tweets pop up on my timeline, I felt all warm and fuzzy inside because ignorant individuals got what they deserved. Suspect numero uno lost his job and suspect numero dos got expelled and I’m just here sipping my lipton tea. People shouldn’t be able to say things so hurtful on such a social platform. This is a pure demonstration of people disregarding rules #1 and #4 when it comes to netiquette. 

I find it quite ironic that some people still don't understand how powerful and influential Social Media platform can be to their own personal life. I also find it terrible that these people are so expressive with their thoughts that they would post something so horrible on a platform that is highly public. Finally, I believe that this is Karma served on a hot plate with a side of “You’re dumb for tweeting this” and a tall glass of “don’t mess with the gays cause we’ll end you”

Personally, I used to be very expressive on Twitter before my parents sat me down and discussed the premise of the two rules stated earlier. They told me that I need to conduct a professional behaviour for my online presence so then when a potential employer searches my name, only positive links will be brought up for my names search query. To be quite honest, these rules are common sense that some people do know, and some don’t but they should be educated on. An internet footprint can follow you for quite some time and if you’re not careful, you could lose a job because of a tweet you sent 10 years ago that borders hate speech.

So in conclusion on this winding rant of a blog:

Watch.

What.

You.

Tweet.

You never know.

Nana may join twitter, and if she sees tweets that are very mean and naughty, you’ll expect a plate of cold Karma instead of warm chocolate chip cookies next time you see her.