#eid100_ru

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?

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.