Author Archives: hennissss

WEEK 12

It is now the final week of this class and I’m completely done writing everything except this last process post. I thought I could summarize my entire process of creating my blog as this is the last post. In the beginning my site was a very simple one page with all my content coming one after another. The background was white and the text was black, everything was really simple and lacked any personality besides the few pictures I had at the time. After a while It was getting really cluttered and confusing to distinguish what type of post you were reading so I decided to try something new with having the homepage be just a page with 4 buttons, one for content posts, one for process posts, one for mini assignments, and one for peer reviews. I liked the style of this because it was really simple but at the same time it made the homepage an extra step to get anywhere on my site and I knew eventually it wouldn’t work because I had to add more sections for the essay and about me. This made me once again change the style up completely to what I have now. Now the homepage acts as the content posts page and has a navigation bar at the top to get to every other part. The sections I have are for home (content posts), process posts, mini assignments, peer reviews, my essay, and about. I changed the background colour to an off white as it’s a little easier on the eyes and I also added a dark mode for if you’re using my site late at night. I think it’s been a very tough process to get to where I’m at now, especially with all the trouble I had at the start to even get my site to work in the first place, but I’m happy with where it’s at for now. The readings this week are mostly about community guidelines and comments. The readings; The Psychology of Online Comments and The dark side of Guardian comments, talk about how interactions on the internet are oftentimes more aggressive and negative compared to real life. They mention the online disinhibition effect which explains why people say things they wouldn’t say in person because of the sense of detachment and anonymity they get from being behind a screen. It also talks about trolling which is when people post comments they know will make you have a reaction and they get joy from the attention they receive when you respond to them. I don’t think this necessarily affects my website as I have yet to receive any comments on my posts and don’t think anyone actually reads the content I’m posting but I will definitely take this into account when using the internet elsewhere for example on social media. I don’t think the best way to combat this is by removing comments and banning users as it doesn’t really affect them as they can always just make new accounts, but rather I think the best way to combat this is to just simply ignore it as if they don’t receive a reaction they’ll eventually stop

References

Gardiner, B., Mansfield, M., Anderson, I., Holder, J., Louter, D., & Ulmanu, M. (2016, April 12). The Dark Side of Guardian comments. The Guardian. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/12/the-dark-side-of-guardian-comments

Konnikova, M. (2013, October 23). The psychology of online comments. The New Yorker. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-psychology-of-online-comments 

WEEK 11

We are now in the second last week of the course and I’m feeling good about what I’ve created so far in terms of the content as well as just the website as a whole. I think when I started the class I had a lot of creative visions of how to personalize my website and I tried some of them over the course of the semester, most of them didn’t work out or came with sacrificing accessibility. Overall I think with all the problems I’ve had since day one I’ve made tons of changes and tried all sorts of different ideas to make my blog what it is now and while it’s simple it’s pretty effective in my opinion. This week’s prompt is about transmedia and unfortunately I couldn’t access the reading. It pops up saying the content is blocked so i’m not sure what it was about. Instead I thought I could find another article online related to transmedia and use it. I think transmedia is an interesting thing to talk about from the context of a blog, specifically one like mine that is really informal and kinda random. Transmedia seems like it would make more sense in something that is telling a story. That being said, I think if I were to use different forms of media for my content I would do short videos that go a little more in depth about certain topics in my blog. I think this would work best because some of my posts are fairly informative and I think short videos are the best form of content to help people stay engaged and interested in the topic while learning something in a short amount of time. I have recently tried some new forms of content such as images and content focused on the reader but I don’t think there was enough time given to do anything more unique for content posts each week. I would have loved to do a video style content post but it would have taken easily twice as long as writing it. In the future if I decide to keep posting on my blog when there isn’t a due date on posts I might try something more unique.

References

Jenkins, H. (2007, March 22). Transmedia storytelling 101. Henry Jenkins. Retrieved April 6, 2023, from http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html

WEEK 10

This week I added a lot more to my about section of my blog. I added one of the main reasons I started my blog and the goal I had with it as well as a little more about me personally and what readers should expect from the blog. Since I didn’t want to add an image of myself I decided to add images of topics I’ve written about that way there’s still some images which I think are important. I took an idea from Victor, who I did my peer review #3 on, and put these images under a “gallery of topics” as I think it is a good way to visually understand the topics. This week’s reading was all about search engine optimization and why it is super important for reachability as well as the importance of mobile optimization. In terms of mobile optimization I believe I have that down as my site is just really easy to use and friendly for mobile. The navigation is all in a menu, the spacing of all the text and images work well, the font is readable and big enough, and overall I’m happy with it and dont think I’ll change anything anytime soon. As for SEO, I’ve thought about it for a while and I don’t think I really want to optimize my website for this. I really want my blog to be personal and connect to readers by using informal language and overall just a laid back tone. I don’t want to change titles or change wording in my content to be more friendly for search results. Basically anything that takes away from the actual content to be more optimized is out of the question for me. That being said I decided to add relevant tags to my posts as I don’t feel it takes anything away from the actual content but would help it appear more in searches.

References

data.ai. (2022). Posiel.com. State of mobile 2022. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://posiel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/dataai__state_of_mobile_2022__en.pdf

Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 9). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close

WEEK 9

I got some feedback about my website’s design and decided I’m going to stick with this for the rest of the class. I’m still a little bit behind on assignments but slowly catching up as I’ve had a break from midterms being over. I just noticed that I was supposed to have an about me section since week 1 and so I added that, it’s very small as I didnt know what to put and didn’t really want to put an image of myself. I might add more to it later on if I can think of anything but otherwise I’ll probably just leave it really short and simple as I want my content to speak for me anyways. I’m starting to run out of ideas for what to do for content and it’s making it really stay motivated. That’s pretty much all I’ve changed since last week. The reading/podcast this week talked about digital footprints or breadcrumbs which are essentially the details we leave behind when using the internet. I think It’s actually crazy how much information gets left behind just by browsing google. I have this app on my computer that searches for and removes trackers, essentially it just cleans up your computer. I run this program about once a week and every time there’s at least 1000 trackers it detects which is just insane because I know for a fact I’m not on that many websites in a week. The reading explains how the information collected on us is used to advertise products that we might be interested in. Their solution is to use ad blockers, a VPN and browse on a more secure browser. I think ad blockers are a great way to help with targeted marketing by just simply removing the ads that you see but it doesn’t fix the actual issue at hand it more so acts as a bandage to cover it up. The idea of a VPN would be great but I have yet to find a free VPN that works well and I’m definitely not going to spend money on one. For the point of using a more secure browser it’s a good idea but for someone who has been using chrome for years I really don’t want to switch. Overall I think the podcast brings up some good points about this problem but needs some more in depth solutions to it, for me personally I’m just going to continue to use this app that removes trackers as it works well enough for me.

ReferencesDigital Breadcrumbs: The data trail we leave behind us. Pod Academy. (n.d.). Retrieved March 22, 2023, from http://podacademy.org/podcasts/digital-breadcrumbs-our-data-trail/

WEEK 8

I haven’t changed much about my website since last week, which could be a good thing in that I’ve finally found a style that I like. I just figured out how many assignments we need to have done by the end of the semester and realized I am very behind so I’m going to have to do some catching up. I think I’m going to try some different forms of content posts for the future because I’ve only really done writing up until now and it’s getting a little boring. The reading this week is all about AI which is something I’m incredibly interested in. The first reading talks about DALL-E and explains how to use it. I think that I’m going to try and do a content post using DALL-E, potentially create a story using it similar to the mini assignment #3 or just post a series of really unique and cool images it creates and include the prompts I put. I think that DALL-E has some really cool use cases for artists who could take an image generated by it and create something out of that or just simply use it as inspiration to create something from scratch. The other really popular form of AI used by the public is ChatGPT which I’ve been using a lot recently. I don’t use it to write things for assignments or anything but I do use it to reword sentences if they seem off to me and also to summarize websites to see if it’s what I was looking for. I wasn’t able to access “The elements of indigenous style” or “Traditional Knowledge Exists; Intellectual Property is Invented or Created” readings for some reason so I can’t really speak on those.

ReferencesAntonelli, W. (2022, July 14). How to use dall·e mini, the viral AI tool that can turn any prompt into a series of pictures. Business Insider. Retrieved March 17, 2023, from https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/dall-e-mini

WEEK 7

I’ve still been trying to figure out how I want to design my website but I think I’ve found something that I like and works well in terms of accessibility. I finally figured out how to add a navigation bar at the top that stays for every page so now you can get back to the home page. I went back to the first design I did with having all my content posts on the home page laid out in a way that they continue to the last week’s post once done reading this week’s. I thought about also removing all the buttons to get to all the posiel stuff but I thought it might get confusing to know which week is which so I kept it the same. The colours I went with are pretty simple with an off white background with black text but I also added a dark mode option that changes the background to a dark blue with white text which I think looks really nice. The reading this week by James Bridle, Something is wrong on the internet is pretty interesting to me. A few weeks ago I did a content post on ways kids have gotten rich quickly (essentially outlining some get rich quick schemes and saying what I thought about them), one I did not include was content creation on social media and predominantly Youtube. The reading talks about this indirectly but people have found ways to create content that generates a lot of clicks sometimes by using AI and they upload them to Youtube to generate money. This can be very effective because they target their content to children, who have a massive presence on Youtube and have lots of time to watch. The problem is that sometimes this content is very disturbing especially for children. I think this is a huge problem and think that Youtube has a responsibility to better monitor these videos being labelled as for kids. The reading about wikipedia was also very interesting because it made me think of a dilemma. In a class I had last semester the professors praised Wikipedia, not because they thought it was all amazing truthful information but because the purpose of the site was to provide a way for people to present their findings and knowledge for free and allow others to access this knowledge for free. Obviously with it being accessible to everyone on the internet some people are going to make up fake information or change things because it is funny and they can. Essentially what I’m trying to say is that wikipedia doesnt deserve all the hate it receives because its intention is good and if you know how to use it properly it can actually be extremely useful at providing information or sources very quickly. I thought that the other readings this week were good but nothing really piqued my interest and I mostly agreed with the points they brought up.

References

Bridle, J. (2018, June 21). Something is wrong on the internet. Medium. Retrieved March 17, 2023, from https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2 Tone, S. (2022, July 11). She spent a decade writing fake Russian history. wikipedia just noticed. #SixthTone. Retrieved March 17, 2023, from https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1010653/she-spent-a-decade-writing-fake-russian-history.-wikipedia-just-noticed.-?fbclid=IwAR3XFmfyFxVcZSNuxS9HSXqZG55mnN29vkX8E-LuR7-MEvnq0tK4ZK6Lo7A

Peer Review #3

Victor Poon – http://vpcardcollections.com/

When opening Victor’s website you are first presented with a fullscreen image of Ash Ketchum with Pikachu on his shoulder. I like this design choice and think it gives the reader a glimpse of what his website is about without using any words which is a good thing. At the top left of the page there is a title for his website in a nice simple bold font, and just to the right of that is a navigation menu that allows readers to access each part of his website. Both use a white font which provides a good contrast to the dark blue background making it easier to read. While I think this is a good start, there are a few things I would change. For starters I would replace the default text over the image, currently, it says “My Blog” and “Just another WordPress site”. I think if he replaced that with his website title and then centered the navigation menu at the top it would be more balanced and remove some unnecessary text. Moreover, if he would like to keep the two text boxes he could also add the text just underneath the image that says “VP CARD COLLECTIONS IS A PLACE TO SHARE STORIES AND IN-DEPTH REVIEWS ABOUT A VARIETY OF TRADING CARD PRODUCTS”, that way when someone opens his site they get the title and a short description of it without having to scroll at all.

Scrolling down, there is a detailed about me section with a good picture followed by a section talking about pokemon as it’s one of the main topics of the website and finally at the bottom, there is a gallery of pictures of different card packs he has opened. I think everything here is well done and valid to have on the homepage. The theme of the homepage is very good and looks professional, some may critique the fact that the background changes from black to white to black again as it is inconsistent but I like it and think it provides distinct indicators that you are on a new section of the homepage. The design is kept consistent throughout the entirety of his website, overall a very simple and minimal design that just works very well for this kind of blog. One thing to note is that not all of the content is showing up in the navigation menu which makes it a little confusing to find all his posts. The actual content itself is well done, his content posts examine many different trading cards/card sets from pokemon to the NHL. Reading the posts you can tell this is something he is passionate about, he goes over how many cards are in each set, the prices, the rarity of certain cards, cards that have special qualities, and the artwork on the cards. The process posts do a good job of examining the readings from each week and providing his thoughts on them, but in his more recent ones, he doesn’t include any changes he made to his website or details on his process of content creation for that week which is an important part of the process posts. Since this week is all about blog marketability and search engine optimization I thought I would outline some things that are done well and things that could help improve this for Victor’s blog. The article 15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO outlines 15 reasons search engine optimization is so important for reachability and every one of these points can translate to any website not only businesses. “With the rise and growing domination of mobile traffic, local search has become a fundamental part of… Success”(Hollingsworth, 2021). The article explains the importance of mobile support for reachability and this is something Victor has done well. Everything on his site works on mobile just as well as on desktop and the navigation bar is put into a three-line icon that just makes more sense for mobile. The article also explains the importance of having keywords on your website so your content will show up more frequently in people’s search results. Pokemon is a massive brand with millions of searches each day so it’ll be hard to optimize this for his website but I think if he used specific pack names as titles for his content posts that it would show up more for people looking for information on those packs. Overall I enjoyed reviewing Victor’s website as someone who grew up playing pokemon games and had tons of pokemon cards as a kid. It was interesting to hear about recent information on the subject and I think with a little more polishing this website would be very good.

References

Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 9). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close

Page, M. (2023, February). Designing Yourself. Lecture, Burnaby; Simon Fraser University.

Is banning artificial intelligence truly the best course of action?

We are not even three months into 2023 and yet you could already call this the year of artificial intelligence. Although the idea of AI has been around for some time, the recent developments have been remarkable, particularly in terms of accessibility to the public. The advancements have been so fast that society has had a hard time deciding how to proceed. One of the more challenging dilemmas is AI’s implications on education and students. Many schools have called for a ban on the use of AI, but is this truly the best course of action? I contend that AI should not be banned in schools for several reasons. First, there are more effective ways to combat plagiarism and cheating. Second, AI can be a powerful tool for enhancing student learning. Finally, since AI will undoubtedly be an integral part of our future, it makes sense to begin implementing it now.

For years, many have criticized the grading system for evaluating student performance. In his academic journal, The Case Against Grades, Alfie Kohn outlines the many problems with the grading system. Kohn argues that grades decrease student interest in learning, encourage students to seek out easy tasks, and lead to a reduction in the quality of student thinking. Moreover, he contends that motivation to earn good grades is extrinsic, resulting in a focus on grades rather than on learning. Perhaps most concerning is Kohn’s claim that a grading-focused environment is linked to higher levels of plagiarism and cheating (Kohn, 2013). The biggest concern with AI in schools is its potential to be used to plagiarise and cheat, some schools have decided to ban its use because of this. However, “Mr. Sid Dobrin, chair of the English department at the University of Florida believes that banning AI won’t solve anything and that students are plagiarising assignments because they can be plagiarised…Some professors are redesigning their courses entirely, making changes that include more oral exams, group work, and handwritten assessments in lieu of typed ones”(Huang, 2023). Making these changes in how students are assessed removes opportunities for plagiarism and cheating while also creating a more engaging curriculum.

AI also has tremendous potential for enhancing student learning. In his academic journal, Artificial Intelligence Applications to Support K–12 Teachers and Teaching, Robert Murphy highlights the ways in which AI can benefit both teachers and students. Murphy mentions how AI can be used to create personalized curricula that adjust the difficulty of questions based on each student’s level of knowledge. This feature helps keep students engaged by providing a challenge that is neither too easy nor too difficult. Additionally, AI can be used to identify students who may be falling behind and provide them with additional resources to help them catch up. Finally, AI can be used to provide students with learning and attention challenges, such as ADHD, dyslexia, and dysgraphia, with an educational experience that is tailored to their needs (Murphy, 2019).

Lastly, since AI will inevitably be a part of our future, why wait to implement it? Although some people are skeptical of AI and not fully on board with its use, the technology is here to stay. Companies like Microsoft and Google are racing to develop more advanced AI, and countries are competing to develop more sophisticated AI technology. In his academic journal, Cai Cuihong says “The world is thus embarking upon, or perhaps could be said to have already started, a new cold war, this time driven by AI” (Cuihong, 2019). With so much emphasis being placed on AI research and development, the technology will develop fast and could have a big impact on our everyday lives. With that in mind, it makes the most sense to begin implementing it into our lives now.

While it is understandable that some schools have banned AI with it being a new technology and how it was quickly used unjustly, this is only a short-term solution and as time goes on it will get more and more difficult to detect it. Instead of trying to ban it, schools should embrace AI because there are better ways to combat these issues, such as changing assessments to include more oral exams, group work, and handwritten assignments. Additionally, it has tremendous potential for enhancing student learning, such as through personalized curricula and tailored support for students with learning challenges. Finally, since AI is here to stay and will only become more integrated into our lives, it makes sense to begin implementing it now rather than waiting.

References

Cuihong, C. (2019, October 1). The shaping of strategic stability by artificial intelligence. JSTOR. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep24532.16

Huang, K. (2023, January 21). Alarmed by Ai Chatbots, universities start revamping how they teach. Nexis Uni. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://www.todayonline.com/world/alarmed-ai-chatbots-universities-start-revamping-how-they-teach-2090501

Kohn, A. (2013, November 13). The case against grades. JSTOR. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/42982088

Murphy, R. (2019, January 1). Artificial intelligence applications to support K-12 teachers and teaching. JSTOR. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/2847893/Details