Elizabeth Barragan

Computer Science : HOUR OF CODE 

Dec 1 2016 at 9:00 am - 10:00 am in the Classroom building! 

My Computer Science professor gave us the Opportunity to teach 1st graders how to code! I was so excited to participate. Some of the helpers and I had to prepare an activity of what the kids would do.. in this case we made them  play with the robots and made them follow instructions by showing them a shape, and they had to clap their hands or put their hands on their waist and raise their right hand. I also got to share with the kids why i love computer science.

WHAT? 

I demonstrated first graders how to follow instructions such as what the computers do when the programmers give directions, and I also demonstrated to them that there is programming involved in robots, and trough that the robots  could actually move. The little kids were very fascinated ! Especially since they got to see a really cool lab here at UTEP!  

SO WHAT?

I got to demonstrate kids how to do simple tasks that involved coding! It was a great experience, working with kids and teaching something I enjoy! I also remembered that in my documentary in part of our solution to the lack of people in STEM is to get kids interested and involved. I was glad to be part of that. 

NOW WHAT?

Next Friday I will be attending a middle school and teach them how to program in the computer! I want to keep on motivating students and making them interested, especially girls, in STEM more specifically Computer Science!!

Microsoft Competition

Yesterday I attended a pretty exciting event! The presenter told us that the problems created for this competition were problems that are real life scenarios! VERY CHALLENGING  !!!

WHAT? 

This competition consisted of all university students that were majoring in CS! 

There was a specific website you had to visit and then the person that introduced the event explained that we had to enter the code in order to get into the competition. I went with a two other people and we were entered in the same team. Basically what we had to do is solve the many scenarios provided for us. We had to write code to solve the problem and then provide the output and match it with their output. EVERYTHING HAD TO BE PRECISE! We were also allowed to program in any computer language.. my team was working on it with Java.

SO WHAT?

Of course we did not win, but we got the chance to be in the environment of many advanced programmers. My team and I just looked around and saw them how they first wrote an algorithm and then started to program. They took out a piece of paper and started writing and writing. They all looked focused. This event made me picture myself being a professional programmer. Unfortunately in this event I experienced something shocking.  When my friends and I walked into the room the majority of the competitors were guys and they looked at us and made a face. As if we weren't capable and i felt discriminated ...... 

NOW WHAT?

I got to see how many guys are in this field and how the necessity of more women programmers are needed!!!! This motivated me in proving many people wrong. I also learned that i have a long way to go!! 

HE WAS THE PRESENTER ..

On Tuesday, November 28 I went to this event here at UTEP at the union in the Thomas Rivera Conference room. As I walked in I was the only person with non dressy clothes.. I was so embarrassed. I still decided to stay and earn these extra credit points... 

Dr. Natalicio, was given the mic to talk about how great the staff in research were and she also mentioned that it is so unfortunate that the wonderful talent of each individual isn't shared amongst each other. So she thought of an event that will allow for them to share each others great talents. So there was no better event than this. They later gave out awards to many individuals from all the departments, engineering, nursing, education etc. I really got to see all the great work many professors do! Very interesting! 

Finally towards the end Dr. Raymond Rampf presented his discovering! 

WHAT?

He started talking about periodic structures are a HUGE topic in science and engineering and responsible for many breakthroughs and revolutionary technologies. 

      -METAMATERIAL : a material engineered to have a property that is not found in nature.

---PHOTONIC CRYSTALS : crystal that can manipulate or be sensitized to respond to specific wavelengths of light.

SO WHAT? 

To be honest..  I had no knowledge whatsoever about “Lattices” i still don’t know fully... but it was good to learn just a little about the topic. When your controlling waves the size and shape of those unit cells has to stay the same. As soon as you deform that it no longer works.. The unit cells on the outside are very stretched and in other section the unit cells are very tightly together. Thats why you don’t see these periodic structures bend.. he said that he told his students, “ I don’t care if its impossible just do it.” I want to be able to make something impossible to possible..... this really inspired me! This type of attitude is necessary for society!

NOW WHAT?

I am now inspired and want to increase my knowledge about many topics including this one. of course I’m not going to go ahead and major in it, but its good to know little of many topics! This of course was not related to my major but.. It was interesting. This is one of the benefits of attending lectures and seminars.

This is my ticket... 

How will our group execute ETHOS ,PATHOS,LOGOS?

ETHOS:

   The interview we conducted for the Lit Review was part of our ethos in our Documentary. Also a student pursuing Mechanical Engineering gave his output based on his experience in a STEM field. Obama was used to

PATHOS:

By demonstrating the effect of students after they can't achieve the requirements of a STEM field they drop out and by that there is one less Hispanic student in STEM. Not to mention the tone of the Documentary is serious and allows to persuade the audience.

LOGOS:

The scholarships we provided, images with numbers of Hispanic students underrepresented, and also we provided a section were we talked about financial aid. Through this we informed our audience of ways students can avoid this conflict of underrepresentation in STEM.

                                     WEBSITE:

ETHOS:

In my website I will provide my bio section that will be considered ethos. The assignments that were assigned by Audrey are also considered Ethos because it was given by the professor.

PATHOS:

Assignment Reflection will be a more personal opinion and feelings of the assignments. On top of that I will share personal experiences and feelings of the process I went through on my assignments. By providing emotion, I will provide some elements of design to my website that are designed to give the viewers a specific feeling; the elements of my website are meant to express closure to the experiences based on my content.

LOGOS:

I plan to use logic in my website so that I can provide enough material that is mostly common, I will not plan to make my website so common to where the audience can have the expectations about my website. By using logos, this creates better reasoning to how I explain the information of my content

Section B:

Reading the Website Supplemental Guidelines and                     using the five principles of design:

                       --Contrast

                              --Consistency

                                           --Balance

                                                   --Grouping

                                                               -- Alignment 

                                                                           <SECTION A >

              Website A:   http://trendlines.ca/

                                         QUESTIONS

1.) Identify and describe the balance of this site.

The website had no balance, the colors make this website very confusing there was a picture of a graph in the center of the webpage but it did not make sense and did not give explanation about it. There was different small font all over the website, it wasn’t very appealing and frustrated me. Images are placed in an awkward location in the website, some are bigger than the others

2.) How was the contrast of the site?

The color of the websites don’t complement each other and makes the colored text more impossible to read.  Purple with yellow, black and that graph with multiple colors doesn’t make the website appealing. Very unprofessional.

3.)Evaluate the site’s use of consistency.

The graph once again uses the graph and it lacks consistency due to the different layout and different colors of the lines  and different colors of the text in the graph.

4.)Describe the site’s utilization of alignment and grouping.

The graph being on the left makes it seem un proportional, instead of the text being at the bottom of the graph, the text is right next to it. In the overall website the text is un-proportional.

5.)Based on your analysis of the site in terms of the principles of design, describe the effectiveness of the site.

NOT EFFECTIVE! this website frustrated me and I could not understand anything. As mentioned above all the five principle of design lacked a lot in this website! 

Website B: http://www.aaronxmarquez.com/

                                             QUESTIONS

     1.) Identify and describe the balance of this site.

This website had great balance.The image is not distracting the text since its located in the back and the text stands out. It balances  the image and the text, in the left and the right.

2.) How was the contrast of the site?

Organized, neat and very clear. Although the font is different its not distracting and it fits with the website layout. Not much is there to say since this website did a great job.

3.)Evaluate the site’s use of consistency.  

Minimal, color is consistent, Length wise is very similar throughout all the body text and all the tab text is the same. This makes the website more appealing.

4.)Describe the site’s utilization of alignment and grouping.

The alignment is very unique and simple that although many websites don’t contain that alignment and grouping this website made it work!

5.) Based on your analysis of the site in terms of the principles of design, describe the effectiveness of the site.

VERY EFFECTIVE! the minimal principle of design made his work stand out, and made me want to read more of his projects. He did a great job.

                                     <SECTION B >

Implications of my own design...

1. What will you have to do to ensure that your website is balanced?

My website will be easily balanced since I’m planning to do a minimal layout including text, color and few images of my projects. Like website B, I loved the balancing of text in the home page, so I might do mine very similar with few text. And if its required for more text, I will try to make it seem balanced. 

2. How will you use contrast on your website?

I will use contrast in my website if not one color, maybe 2 monochromatic colors. I will make the text stand out and not distract the viewer with any flashy images or colors. My text will all come together into my theme. 

3.)Where will you employ consistency on your website? 

Overusing any type of images, and colors in my images or transitions will keep my website consistent. I want the viewer of my website to access all my projects easily. A pattern in between all the tabs and its  pages will be the same.

4.)How can you use alignment and grouping to make your website more effective? 

I will switch around the alignment of horizontal and vertical. Of course all my text will be horizontally but my images will be vertical and placed in a way that will not cause any confusion to the viewer. Having a unique alignment that is not confusing and appealing will be one of my goals in creating my website.

5. What colors will you use for your website? 

Gray, Black ,White, maybe a pop of some colors to not make it too plain. My goal is for it to be minimal. 

6. How else can you ensure that your website is well-designed? 

I will use someone else’s perspective and ask them if the website was easy to go through.. if there was anything  distracting them from focusing on the content in it. And of course it needs to pass the five principle of design test! 

HOPEFULLY EVERYTHING GOES SMOOTHLY..

This is an image of my 1301 website..

CS Seminar  

Friday November 18, I attended a Computer Science Seminar. This seminar was based off of two Ph.D. students presenting synopses of recent important papers in their fields, each had the limit of 15 minutes and 5 minutes for questions. 

Conversational Aspects of Virtual Characters Virtual Agents 

——————————————————————————————-

The first presenter was Adriana Camacho, she spoke about conversational aspects of Virtual Characters. She presented her synopses through a powerpoint and she began explaining that appropriate temporal gaze aversion measurement serves to improve communication functions. 

She based her research from existing studies and she went ahead and explained to the audience “There are functions between human’s interactions however I would like to focus more on the conversational aspect of the function of gaze aversion. More specifically virtual characters.” 

From the virtual characters your able to see the gaze aversion non like Siri, this experiment will allow to improve the communication between Virtual characters and humans. 

  She explained that there was 3 functions in the conversational functions: 

                 *Cognitive gaze aversion, 

When talking to someone tend to look away to think what your going to say next and once you know what your going to say you look back to the person you were talking to. 

                *Intimacy- regulation gaze aversion, 

When your talking to someone and you don’t want to make the other person uncomfortable or your uncomfortable you tempt to look away at times when your speaking. 

                *Floor- management gaze aversion

When you want to hold the floor but you pause you usually tend to look away and then when you start speaking again you look at the person. 

These three functions were experimented with different agents and gave a either confirmed or not confirmed result. The conclusion of this overall study was that gaze aversion demonstrates conversational cues between not only humans but also and virtual interactions.

Augmenting Attack Graphs to Represent Data Link and Network Layer-Vulnerabilities 

——————————————————————————————-

The second presenter, Edgar Padilla, 

he talked about the ways hackers can hack into someone’s router through multiple ways! The diagrams he showed in the presentation were very confusing and showed how someone needs to be able to hack a certain router in order to get into the ssh. Also he mentioned that there is a way(super complicated lol) to reroute a router in order to get the credentials for the ssh.

After the Ph.D. student's presentation the audience asked questions... I felt bad for them since some of the questions they weren't able to answer and others they couldn't explain correctly to the audience what they were trying to say! One of the students said "I don't know" for one of his answers.

WHAT? 

Synopses of two Ph.D. students, they both presented their ideas based on their papers and research. Both had interesting topics based on the field STEM. 

SO WHAT? 

These two presenters were Hispanics that have reached the level of Ph.D. it was great to see them represent the Hispanic culture. Not only that it gave me the interest to go on and research further about one of the topic’s which was “Augmenting Attack Graphs to Represent Data Link and Network Layer- Vulnerabilities” 

NOW WHAT? 

Attending this seminar not only gave me motivation to pursue my goals even though there is a underrepresentation of Hispanics( based on the research that I conducted myself) but also set a great example of what not to do while presenting. The first presenter while talking stuttered a lot and used the words “so, ahhh” and other words that could not be truly understand. The second presenter did not have that issue but when some of the audience asked him questions he said “I don’t know” and had a difficult time answering the questions. 

here is the selfie I took along with other classmates with the presenters.

This post will be mainly about how our group will approach this documentary and make it a success! 

A.) What days and times will you commit to the project?

My group has been meeting at least 2 days per week, Mondays and Wednesdays. We agreed to meet at 5:00 pm in those days. 

B.) What days/times are you working as a group and when will you work alone?

Once again we will meet on Mondays and Wednesdays, and personally I dedicated my time in working on this Documentary on Fridays and Saturdays for minimum 2 hours. 

C.) Specifically, what aspects of the project will you address in each of those days? 

On those days I need to rely on my group providing information in order for me to start editing and putting together the Documentary. I will also include the interview I conducted for my Lit Review and will gather the information that will be useful in the documentary. I will also make sure that the work of my other team members fit into the video and makes sense as the overall project.

D.) Specifically, what will you do to complete those aspects of the project?

To complete the aspect that I am in charge in the project, I will look up additional strategies on ways to edit this video and how to incorporate Ethos, Pathos,Logos through music, color in scenes and other ways to successfully persuade our audience.

E.) What specific aspects of the assignment are you concern about? What can you do to address those concerns?

I’m mostly concerned on not being able to successfully make this Documentary persuasive other than that nothing else concerns me. A way to address this concern is by browsing the web and looking at strategies on how to persuade the audience. 

F.) What specific aspects of the assignment are you most comfortable with? Why? 

Communication is good in our group we share our ideas at the meetings and text each other when we aren’t sure about something from our project. I think all of my group members will do their part and nobody will take advantage and slack it. 

                      HISPANIC DIVERSITY IN STEM

PART 1 : 

***************************************************************************************

TOPIC : Hispanic Diversity in STEM

PURPOSE : To influence Hispanic middle school through college students to get involved in the STM education.

AUDIENCE:  Middle School- college students (13-24)

SOLUTION: Provide scholarships and educational programs for kids to raise the representation for Hispanics in STEM.

PART 2: 

************************************************************************************

TOPIC 

ETHOS: 

“America’s future as a global leader in technology and innovation can be achieved by getting more minority groups involved and participating” 

                           - Education Supports Racial and Ethnic Equality in STEM

“The segment of the population will certainly be relied upon, heavily, to help drive the nation’s economic future and pace of innovation” 

                  -A Silent Crisis: The Underrepresentation of Latinos in STEM Careers

PATHOS:

Not only does the lack of Hispanics have a great effect on society in the economic and workforce aspect, but it creates the society’s attitude that Hispanics don’t even have the ability to succeed in such a way and reach high standards. 

This individual shares her experience being a Hispanic pursuing a STEM career. Her experiences are very unfortunate.

The following is a quote obtained from a scholarly source.

“my school guidance counselor didn’t think i had it in me because they didn’t see other Latinos excelling in . . . STEM.”

                            -Lack of Diversity in STEM is Dangerous for Our Students

LOGOS: 

This bar graph demonstrates the participation of Hispanics in STEM field in the work force. The population of Hispanics has been increasing in the United States about 25 percent the middle of this century. The importance of Hispanics participating in STEM field would improve the nation’s future.

SOLUTION:

Awareness is the first step in solving the conflict of underrepresentation of Hispanic in STEM. Another way would be giving Hispanic students the opportunity to pursue a career path in STEM through scholarships. This will increase the percentage of Hispanics in STEM due to having the financial support.

http://www.hsf.net/

http://www.greatmindsinstem.org/college/henaac-scholarship-program

HRAG VARTANIAN 

- Critic, Curator,Editor-in-chief and co-founder, Hyperallegic

This is my evidence....

WHAT:

SO WHAT :

NOW WHAT: