One adventure that always gets me out of the house is a good ole giveaway, what can I say… I’m a sucker for free things!
So when a new neighborhood grocery store has a grand opening event and mails you an invite for a chance to win a $500 gift card, you better wake your butt up at 5:30 am to be one of the first 500 in line!
Save on Foods grand opening on March 23, 2023, and Gift Card Giveaway
For the first 500 people, they were giving away 2 chances at a $500 gift card and another 498 opportunities at a $10 gift card. So, I had pretty good odds at $500. Why not try, at the least, I could get some free milk and butter while I was up.
After waiting in line for an hour and 20 mins, we all filed into the store at 7 am and were greeted by friendly, smiling staff that were handing out the gift cards one by one. The store was pristine, I had never seen a store untouched and displayed so beautifully. They also had a pianist playing music for us.
To find out what you won you had to bring your gift card to the cashier. They also had another coupon if you bought $50 worth of groceries, you get a $10 gift certificate for next time. With all those people coming in all at the same time, the store got pretty crowded quickly. So I got $50 worth of grub and headed to cash.
Here’s my card! Guess how much I won!
Drum rollllllllll…
Ahhh, I won $10. Plus, I also got another $10 gift card for next time! It wasn’t $500, but it was exciting to try. Plus it was great to support a local business on its grand opening.
Go check out Save on Foods in Richmond, B.C. at 9100 Blundell Road at the Garden City Shopping Center. Open every day from 7 am – 10 pm
They are having a door crasher for the first 500 customers on Saturday, March 25th. They’ll be giving away a 3 lbs bag of navel oranges (worth $8.49)! Happy adventuring!
When I opened the “State of Mobile” reading by data.ai I actually laughed as I went to the eleventh page and looked at the “Average Age Group Index Among Top Apps Per Category”. For Gen Z is said the typical apps, apps that I use like Instagram, Snapchat, Spotify, although I was surprised that Tik Tok wasn’t on there. For Millennials it had said WhatsApp Messenger, which I thought was funny because I am on a family groupchat with a bunch of cousins as well as aunts and uncles on WhatsApp and I would say the average age on the group chat falls into the Millennial age category. And than last, but not least, where I laughed out loud was for Gen X and baby boomers where it had in fourth place, Stocard. I laughed because when I am currently writing this, Thursday March 23, my mom had JUST texted our “Jackson 4” groupchat to add her Chipotle card to our Stocard app.
That little starter may not be relatable, but for me it was quite funny. ANYWAY, while starting my website, as I had mentioned in previous posts, I never thought I would actually be writing to an audience. I thought the only ones who would read my posts would be myself time and time again, but then also those who were reviewing my blog as well as whoever was marking it. Little did I know, when I post on Instagram, people actually look at what I post or share. Now, I get an average of 43 people viewing my blog postings when I share a story on Instagram promoting it.
For my audience and my goal as a blog content creator (weird to say that after writing consistently for 2 months), I never really aimed to have my blog show up on others search pages. Sure I could include keywords for people to view my posts, but personally, my blog wasn’t meant for that. My blog was never meant to be a profit maximizing website to capitalize off of the hungry, but rather a way for me to just write about what I like. I have to admit, I hate writing about topics that I’m not interested in, and I have had teachers tell me “Tara, when you like something and are actually interested about the topic, your writing drastically improves”. So when writing this blog feels like a chore, or a job, than I might start to write more dry.
If I just focus on the reasons ten and eleven in Sam Hollingsworth’s article “15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO”, which are 10. SEO is PR and 11. It’s a Long-Term Strategy. I believe all Sam’s points are valid and make sense, but his points concerning my website do not coincide. For example, both his tenth and eleventh points relate to the longevity of the website, but for me, I don’t plan on writing posts consistently for the rest of my life or even past this course. Once the course is done, as fun as it has been, I don’t plan on keeping my website going as I have other things in my life I have to deal with and other courses to work on. Anyway, all in all, I have to decide what I want to do and want to complete in the remaining part of this class.
AI is on a rapid rise in education. Professors and educators have been banning new softwares like ChatGPT and Dall-E with the fear that students will use them to plagiarize entire assignments and diminish critical thinking. However, the use of these technologies is inevitable and increasing in various everyday circumstances. As educational institutions continue banning them, they will just get more and more advanced, which means that at some point, we’ll all have to cope with them somehow. So this week, I tried out two of these technologies: ChatGPT and Dall-E, and found a few ways students might positively use it in the classroom.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an AI software developed by OpenAI that is meant to generate almost-immediate, conversational responses to questions, prompts, and commands. It launched to the public in November 2022, and since then has been a topic of discourse in academia, ethics and technology, and general interest of the common person with free time and internet connection. Its impressive technology allows the responses to be detailed, articulate, and generally factually correct. User input also helps craft desired outputs, as the AI can “learn” and tailor its responses to reflect feedback and critiques. As mentioned, ChatGPT has faced rejection from educators and institutions with its negative implications for students, but there are ways that ChatGPT can be effectively implemented to aid learning and expression.
Idea Generation
Writer’s block is pretty inevitable for any class, especially PUB 101, where I write two or three posts a week. With a simple prompt, ChatGPT can generate ideas to take inspiration from for essays, assignments, and blog posts. This could yield excellent results, as each student would be able to spend more time on the execution of their project, rather than spending time brainstorming ideas that are often too simple to accurately and rigorously demonstrate their learning. To bypass the possible concern that this would limit creative thinking and be a case of plagiarism, I must clarify that in fleshing out projects from a mere concept to execution still requires a lot of creative thinking, and by referencing the software’s assistance it would steer clear of plagiarism claims since the ideas would in a sense still be the student’s own based on the prompt and information fed.
Keyword Generation
In PUB 101, I’ve learned that inputting keywords in posts is extremely important. They help improve the SEO and my website’s reach. ChatGPT could effectively help generate some of these keywords to benefit each post on my blog. So, I decided to type the following into ChatGPT: what are some keywords to include in a blog post about reviewing Taylor Swift’s album “folklore”? Here’s what it generated.
What is Dall-E?
Dall-E is an AI software, also developed by OpenAI, that generates complex creative images from text prompts. Prompts can include things like recreating individual artists’ styles, using various art mediums, and ultimately absurd visuals that one would not expect to see in one image. Like ChatGPT, the use of Dall-E has been a controversial topic. Specifically, when is it ethically permissible to use it, especially in academic contexts?
Creating Visual Interest
My content posts often use a lot of images from the internet. While this is useful in many cases, especially for posts that take on a more editorial-style, I think that adding pictures created from DALL-E could enhance the personalization of my posts. It could make the blog reflect me and my own personality instead of always relying on other people’s pictures and using generic-looking stock photos. For example, my post about crocheting could have included Dall-E pictures to create added entertainment, visual interest, and personality.
Dall-E generated image using the prompt “an oil painting of a girl learning how to crochet”.
Citing and Copyright?
Since ChatGPT is such a novel tool, traditional citation styles have yet to cohesively come up with solutions for ways students should properly credit the use of the technology in their work. However, as a student and a blog-owner, citing your sources is a critical step in ethical academia and success. Suggestions have been made for citation style from APA, for example, an online library guide for a university suggests, “This technology is new and we are all learning about generative AI resources and how to ethically use them. Consider making the ChatGPT conversation retrievable by including the text as an appendix or as online supplemental material.”
But then again, would we even need to credit the model if it’s not really taking from other people’s ideas? If things are written by ChatGPT, who owns the copyright? The human who generated the prompt, or the creators of the model? Only time will tell.
References:
Antonelli, W. (n.d.). How to use dall·e 2 and Craiyon, the AI art tools that can generate images from any text prompt. Business Insider. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/dall-e-mini
Dall·E: Creating images from text. DALL·E: Creating images from text. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://openai.com/research/dall-e
Introducing chatgpt. Introducing ChatGPT. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
Johnson, A. (2023, January 31). Chatgpt in schools: Here’s where it’s banned-and how it could potentially help students. Forbes. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/01/18/chatgpt-in-schools-heres-where-its-banned-and-how-it-could-potentially-help-students/?sh=130da4506e2c
Research guides: APA style 7th edition: Chatgpt & ai tools. Humber. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://guelphhumber.libguides.com/c.php?g=716556&p=5279441
For this week, the readings have made a shift in content. Although these shifts happen every week, I thought that this week was different from the rest. While one of the readings involve the basics of SEO and other things, the reading that caught my attention was the data on mobile usage and apps. The data collected was from 2022, and the article is called “S T A T E O F M O B I L E 2 0 2 2.” This study collects data on apps downloaded and where it is downloaded in each country. The article states that there are “Globally 230 Billion Downloads…” (data.ai, 2022, pg. 7).
Some examples of data that I found interesting was the use of apps from each generation, one of the top most used apps by Gen Z according to data.ai is Instagram, followed by Spotify, Netflix, then Snapchat. I was also surprised that male and female usages were different for the top-used apps. Accordingly, males’ top downloaded app was WhatsApp Messenger, while females’ top downloaded is Facebook. Overall this article is a great source of collecting and looking at data, and I suggest that you take a visit to it as well.
References:
Unknown. (2022). S T A T E O F M O B I L E 2 0 2 2. PUB 101: The Publication of Self in Everyday Life. Retrieved March 22, 2023, from https://posiel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/dataai__state_of_mobile_2022__en.pdf
Analytics are an aspect of website design that I see mentioned quite often, with videos and articles discussing how to best utilize the information you can get from built-in metrics and website additions such as Google Analytics.
In the artist world, you would only need to focus on analytics if you’re trying to find freelance work or an industry job in the field. Since I make art as a hobby, I have little use in analyzing the pieces I post (especially since they’re made for fun 90% of the time).
In the past, I have lost motivation and passion for art because I was constantly checking my engagement rates, optimal timing, and post formatting. Although I don’t resent the art I’ve made purely to appeal to trends and popular media, I find that it doesn’t genuinely represent me and my style. My personal art journey has also been stunted from such attempts for engagement, since I try not to add anything experimental or “weird” in order to appear more palatable.
Because of these reasons, I choose to ignore analytics on social media and focus on engaging with my friends, creating art that is true to myself, and relying on the miraculous and constantly shifting nature of the algorithms and individuals to decide how each post fares.
When discussing this website, I have a much more impersonal view of the content I create. I am less confident in my writing, and analyzing works will always be more stressful to make public than something like art which can be interpreted in infinitely many ways.
On the rare occasion that I do check my analytics, I’m mostly looking for information about the people who use my website and whether I’m meeting their needs well enough. For example, I found that 89.4% of my user base views my website on desktop which helps me prioritize which elements to update or fix. I also enjoy seeing which posts people visit my site for; there are a surprising number of users who choose to view my classwork instead of the blog content itself.
I enjoy browsing different user reports and seeing if there’s any visitors who come back to the blog often (35.7% currently). Interestingly, a majority of my audience finds my website through organic searching, which suggests a user base outside of just my fellow classmates. My overall bounce rate is 52.63% which I hope will stay in that range for the rest of this term.
I keep a filter on known bots and spiders, but there’s always a gnawing feeling in the back of my head that much of these analytics are taken up by non-human users. Despite this, I still find it fun to peruse the different tabs and wonder why each person has chosen to stop by my site.
I am usually on my computer into the late hours of the night, which has always been reflected in when I post my art. Surprisingly, that trait has carried over into the content of this website, with many posts being completed after 9pm. While posting late would typically be considered a bad practice (afternoons are usually more preferable), many people happen to visit my blog in the evening. This could also be due to different time zones (where it would be earlier in the day for the rest of North America), but there are very few users reading outside of the lower mainland.
As a whole, analytics are a valuable source of user feedback, especially if you don’t receive more obvious sources like comments or emails like me.
Looking at Completely Cass‘ website, her website seems to be catered towards student athletes, like herself. The website currently lacks content posts, which makes it difficult to feel connected to the author; however, the video in the “About Me” section allows the audience to have a better idea of who Cassidy is. This video is lively and entertaining to watch. Through the clips of sports matches, concerts, and spending time with friends, we can get a glimpse of Cassidy’s adventurous and fun life. Using this information about who she is, I can assume her target audience is someone with a similar lifestyle to her.
Content
Cassidy’s blog currently lacks content posts, which prevents me from being able to provide an in depth review of the website’s content. There are categories that Cassidy has made, which makes me excited to see posts from each category once they are published. These categories include “Athlete Who Can Do Both,” “Adventurous Soul,” “Things You Should Know,” and “Mental Well-Being.” Although these categories are currently blank, I can tell that Cassidy’s main focuses are lifestyle and well-being.
Design
In “15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO,” it mentions importance of having a “clean, effective user experience” and establishing authority for your website (Hollingsworth, 2021). I believe Cassidy does a good job at this. The white background is minimalistic and the menu titles are clear and concise, which makes the website seem simple to navigate from the user’s perspective. Additionally, the website’s logo is clean.The “CC” logo creates a professional look that legitimizes the website, making it more marketable. A way that Cassidy can increase her website’s search engine optimization is by using keywords and tags that increase the audience reach.
Marketability
Considering Cassidy’s website has limited content, it is difficult to observe the website’s marketability. Based on the current website, I believe Cassidy is on the right track to being marketable. The website’s simplicity gives it a professional feel while being easy to navigate. Although there is a professional feel, the “About Me” page personalizes the website, giving the audience a glimpse into the writer’s life. Moreover, the website’s alliterative title, “Completely Cass,” as it is catchy and memorable; I think having a catchy title can make a website more marketable.
Conclusion
Overall, I like the theme and layout of the website. The logo gives the website a professional edge, while the content creates a personalized feel to the audience. Although there are few posts on the blog, I still feel like I have a general idea of Cassidy’s interests. To improve the website’s SEO, I would recommend including keywords and tags in each post to reach a larger audience. I look forward to seeing more content on the website in the future and learning more about Cassidy!
Reference
Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 6). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo. Search Engine Journal. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close
From last week’s process post discussing analytics, this week’s readings proposed a visual of Data.ai. The content used analytic reports to show which apps and websites are frequently used/downloaded. It is a useful tool that helps navigate businesses and users to improve their projects and increase engagement. It is ideal for decision-making processes and delivers overall insight into the performance of the gaming market for instance (Data.ai., 2022).
The reading even acknowledges the age of technology we’re in. Linking to my last process post, technology has evolved into a new age and is advancing as we speak, it has brought Gen Z to what it is today (Data.ai., 2022). With Gen Z, comes new trending sites and apps. Data.ai. has reported that TikTok has ranked “Top Apps” in the 2021 market.
As a social media user, I agree with this report. TikTok has grown a huge community of creators and overall is an entertaining app. I think that TikTok has become very successful because it offers short collections of entertaining content that keep the audience engaged and active since videos are around 15-30 seconds. Compared to an hour-long youtube video, TikTok has an advantage as it caters to short attention spans. I do find myself scrolling for hours in my free time which is probably me contributing to levelling up TikTok’s ranking.
Speaking of technology, SEO is introduced as “Search Engine Optimization.” The Search Engine Journal states that SEO is the most viable and cost-effective tool to understand and reach customers (Hollingsworth, 2021). The article elaborates on reasons why SEO is crucial for businesses. From this reading, 2 reasons stood out to me the most. 1: Organic search is often the primary source of website traffic (Hollingsworth, 2021). This is a true statement, considering where we all start online is with a browser, an organic search engine. 2: SEO is a strategy used for the long term (Hollingsworth, 2021). This is a factor to consider because technology and the internet have impacted society, and are constantly changing.
I’ve known about search engines beforehand since it is a daily tool I use, although this is my first time digging deeper into the topic and hearing about SEO.
– Eliza (aka Peanut)
Reference:
data.ai. 2022. State of Mobile 2022
Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 9). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs SEO. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved March 21, 2023, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close
For content creators, you could say that analytics are the key to knowing and growing your audience. But for the audience? Well, that’s a different subject.
For audience members, analytics means that our every movement, action, and choice is tracked. Pod Academy (2016) notes that most, if not all, the applications we use require our location information. We “willingly” give up our location for social media, digital payments, and more. We’re tracked by security cameras and the cookies on our browser. Scary, right?
What is a digital trail?
Something to think about is what is a digital trail?
A digital trail, according to Dr. Elisa Oreglia (as cited in Pod Academy, 2016), is made up of the remnants—breadcrumbs, you could call them—that you leave behind when engaging with the digital world. You may not mean to leave a trail behind, but it is just something that comes with the territory.
Anytime you use your phone, your computer, your credit or debit card, or anything that has a chip and is traceable, you are sprinkling your breadcrumbs around. But why do or should we care about breadcrumbs?
Why care about breadcrumbs?
Breadcrumbs are the reason your Pinterest feed suggests to you everything that you love and find aesthetically pleasing; they’re the reason why your TikTok For You Page is catered so well to your interests and likes; the reason why most random (yet perfectly-suited) ads can predict our next purchases; and so on.
Beyond this, companies and whoever else has access to our information can find out our political preferences, financials, and other private data.
A great question for us to consider now is, what’s happens next? Will our trails helps or harm us as we move into the future?
It might not be something we can avoid, but it’s something we can consider the next time we pick up our phones and other devices. For those of us (me) using applications like Google Analytics to track our website’s audience, think about the information you have in your hands. It’s more than you know.
So, I noticed that I have not posted anything much about Blender. Yeah, I know this was originally meant to be a blender website so let me fix it.
Also to go off topic for one second, these blog posts are nice and everything but there has been something I have been questioning. I am making these blogs purely because this is something I enjoy. But one thing that is making me think is how this is for the PUB 101 class. And I feel that makes a difference. Let me explain, if I were to make a blog because I wanted to I would make one out of fun. Though with these blogs being graded, I feel as if all blogs must need a certain length. For me, this makes these blogs more of a pile-on with all the other assignments, process-post, and reviews we have to do. But hey, I am just a guy stating his opinion online and it may not matter. So my bad for going off track, let us continue our blogging!
Here are some nice dominos being tumbled over, I was trying out the physics feature on this. Watch out for the little surprise at the end of this video. Oh, and just for one more add-on to this piece, the “S” and “G” are meant to be my initials.
Hey, this one took a while to do, mostly because I was trying to figure out how to make the ground look realistic. Apparently, in some versions of blender, there was a template for rock texture and depth. So that is being used in this little short video. As for animating the text, I had to make sure the text lit up at the right times, so each text are there own separate object, not as one big text.
Here is a sheep, we do not talk about the sheep. the sheep although made of simple things, but knows a lot of things.
Here is a cool thing I did here, notice something? Yes, the floor is reflective, that’s what you thought right? Yes, this was cool, I added a thin glass material right above the floor, which automatically added the reflection which I thought was so cool. Thank you for looking at my art dumps, if you have any questions, please type in the comments, I may choose to request somebody’s idea if I get any!
In State of Mobile 2022, Data.ai reports that each user spent on average 4.8 hours on their phones, which is one-third of the time we typically are awake. Reflecting on my own device usage, my screen time averaged about 10 hours and 50 minutes across all of my devices in the last week alone. Of course, this covers more than just my phone—so a more realistic look that I’m able to access is my social media usage, which has solely been on my phone. Just yesterday, I was guilty of being on TikTok for 9 hours and 7 minutes, which is so wild.
As somebody who clearly spends an unhealthy amount of time on social media, I believe SEO is crucial to reaching the customers, readers, subscribers, and users you want—whether you’re an individual or a business. Whoever your intended audience is, SEO is a force that captures leads towards what you are putting out in the digital world. In “15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO,” it states that SEO can boost the effectiveness of the user experience of a website, and can drive trust and credibility in an online space (Hollingsworth, 2021). Over time, trust and credibility can be built with consistent care for SEO, to keep brands relevant and more easily discoverable. When we better understand how our own audience is trying to find us and meet them where they are, we’ve already created a trail that they can start to follow.
SEO doesn’t just cover websites either—for example, Instagram users heavily rely on hashtags to extend the reach of their posts beyond those who already follow them. By making sure they use the right hashtags, users can reach more people who find their content relevant. When I used to post for a small Instagram shop I was running with my friend, a decent amount of time was spent testing combinations of hashtags, from ones that had less than 10,000 posts to ones that had over 300,000 posts in them, to see how popular and lesser-known hashtags would affect our post reach. The analytics we reflected on in our Professional account each week helped us see which posts were doing well, which hashtags were associated with it, and where our audience was coming from, so we could continue to target those people.
It’s not easy to build an audience from the ground up, but with consistent effort and reflection, it’s definitely possible. However, in our heavily saturated digital world, I’ve observed that it takes zeroing in on a niche, as well as being insanely active on multiple platforms, to really see growth. With the need for a considerable amount of effort, the communities that last online are likely founded on passion rather than a fleeting need to go viral.
My parents always get mad at me whenever I try to argue with them about social media platforms. Of course, I do believe that social media is taking away the mystery of our generation compared to others, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. My dad is always saying that I am giving away my data and that the big companies are going to know whatever about me, but my response is always “so what”. How bad is it if they know I like to watch videos about murder mysteries, or what TV shows I like to watch. Is it really the end of the world, no, it’s not. Sure, I do think that some people overshare on social media and that maybe they shouldn’t tell everyone where they are exactly at every minute of every day, but posting once in a while with your friends or if you go out for coffee really isn’t that bad.
After reading the introduction of “Digital breadcrumbs: the data trail we leave behind us…” by George Philip, Jennifer Anne Lazo, Rooham Jamali and Rudy Al Jaroodi, I was astounded to realize that my trail is long. REAL long. Even right now, I’m at work and using the mall wifi to use my computer typing on google docs. Anyone who can track that type of stuff, knows I’m at the mall right now using google.
Personally, as I mentioned before, I don’t really care that much about my data trail. Sure, it’s a long one, but overall, the people that get our data are going to get it at some time at some point. Whatever you do, if you search up a store on google, ads are going to pop up for that store the next time you look at something, they are always collecting information and I can’t think of a reason why its bad. If you have self-control and a little awareness about what is going on, they really can’t get to you on their data mining techniques.
When they mentioned CCTV cameras in the article/podcast, I was interested to learn the different opinions of some people regarding them. Some thought it was unnecessary while others thought about the safety it provides. Things like these are what I mean when I say that we aren’t going to be able to stop how far the digital age takes our data trail. Sure we can regulate some things, like how the UK has a data protection law, but there are always going to be backdoors or other ways to get information that we won’t be able to control. Overall, I think as a generation and a population, we need to increase our awareness about social media and the information they can take but think about the benefits this may allow as well.
Digital footprints, digital trails, and digital breadcrumbs – the data trails we leave behind us when we use technology are something many of us have been warned about our whole lives.
I Know A Lot About This
Like my previous post on digital literacy, I’ve learned quite a bit about digital footprints, especially as a Communication major. In one of my classes, I even produced a 10-minute documentary on the effects of digital footprints on future employment opportunities. But in that documentary, I emphasized individual actions and the implications of “cancel culture,” and how to mitigate the impacts of digital footprints on young people’s futures.
But on Pod Academy’s podcast, they explain that digital footprints don’t just encompass people’s individual actions and choices made on the internet. A lot of information is spread unintentionally when using any sort of technology with a chip in it. For example, when I use my phone, it’s constantly communicating with cell towers and the internet too. That means that my phone’s always giving apps information about me and my environment.
And as an avid technology user, this is a little worrisome. I don’t exactly want my phone tracking me and giving all these apps tons of information at all times. But also, I’ve sort of gotten to a point where I don’t care. Like many others expressed on Pod Academy, the creation of our digital trails has been so ubiquitous that people simply don’t worry about it anymore.
Google Analytics
The information collected from our digital trails or footprints is often used to improve outreach and grow audiences. For example, for my own blog, I installed Google Analytics, which allows me to track people’s browsing habits on my website.
As of March 18, 2023, within the past 28 days, I’ve had 35 users visit my site. I can also see information about my most popular pages and top content, and how visitors experience my site such as how long pages take to load (which 9.4s, considered poor… oops). This information should help me build an audience and engage them effectively. However, to be completely honest, although I have been checking my Google Analytics from time to time out of curiosity, I haven’t been using it to help improve my site for my audience.
The “traffic” section in Google Analytics for Spilling the Royaltea
I think that a big reason why I haven’t been doing so is because my site is turning out to be more like a digital garden than a blog. Digital gardens, according to Basu, are spaces that do not focus on growing audiences and having huge viewerships. Instead, they focus on personal growth, which is exactly what Spilling the Royaltea has been about. As my blog has developed, although I do have a target audience in mind, I’m not too worried about growing my audience, getting famous and rich, or any of that kind of stuff.
For now, I’m using my analytics simply as a way to satisfy my curiosity about who’s looking at my blog. I’m really enjoying my blogging process and especially like the lack of pressure to gain huge audiences, so I think that’s what I’ll be doing for the time being.
To Monetize or Not To Monetize?
So, all of this leads to the question of whether I should monetize my site. With the whole concept of digital gardens in mind and the idea of creating a space for me and my thoughts, I don’t foresee monetizing Spilling the Royaltea anytime in the near future.
Based on my own experience with monetized sites, I felt like ads make websites feel distant, incohesive, or even disturbing, since many of the ads from Google Adsense are often inappropriate. I want my blog to be as inviting and welcoming to users as possible and I want it to retain its intimate, personal feel. I don’t want users to believe I’m “using them” by exploiting their information and digital trails to extract money from them. With my own apprehensions about advertising and data collection in mind, I don’t want to create a space where others feel the same kinds of fears.
I also want my blog to reflect me and my thoughts only and with a third party who imposes their ads or has input on what kinds of content I post, it takes away from the intimacy of my blog. For me, the content I post is what matters, and I want users to focus on this too.
So although Spilling the Royaltea is simply a passion project (…or a school project) without any financial gain, I’m very satisfied with how the experience has been so far. It’s the joy of blogging that matters, not how much money I can get from it.
Artificial Intelligence has had a looming presence in our society for decades. Still, with the recent popularity of ChatGPT, questions have begun to arise regarding its impact on our lives. While artificial intelligence may be viewed as a threat to authentic schoolwork, I believe that educators should recognize the benefits that can come from it. Not only this, but they should find a way to incorporate it into the education system as a tool rather than a restriction.
Chat GPT was launched in November of 2022 and was able to amass over one million users within a week (Baidoo-Anu & Ansah, 2023). It is self-described as “a conversational AI created by OpenAI that uses advanced deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses to natural language input” (ChatGPT, 2023). Since its release, it quickly became a large-scale topic of discussion and controversy. Many have questioned its legitimacy and accuracy, while others have brought up the implications that it would have in education. The chatbot is incredibly easy and fast for anyone, namely students, to retrieve information. Not only this, but it can write essays, create outlines, solve numerical problems, and write code. Consequently, this makes it easy for students to compromise their academic integrity. A Stanford survey found that 17% of students used ChatGPT on their fall quarter-finals (Cu & Hochman, 2023). This demonstrates that cheating using AI continues, even in prestigious institutions. Furthermore, in higher education, the use of AI to complete school work could be argued to “undermine … the very purpose of higher education, which is to challenge and educate students, and could ultimately lead to a devaluation of degrees” (Cotton et al., 2023, p. 3). University students could be jeopardizing their academic careers as a result of the technology, and it is crucial that it is not used in a way that could impact their quality of education.
While AI technology could pose a threat to genuine schoolwork, it is also valuable to note the possible benefits that it can have within the realm of education. ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for students to help them learn better. The chatbot has been noticed and recently used to create individualized student learning plans. A study discovered that it was able to adapt to the varied levels of knowledge and create necessary adjustments when required (Chiang, 2020, as cited in Baidoo-Anu & Ansah, 2023). This model could contribute towards more efficient studying and learning among students at all levels of education; and would provide personal suggestions, allowing for a deeper understanding of course content. Not only can this form of technology be of use to students, but teachers can also benefit from it. One professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania stated that using Chat GPT decreased the time it took to make and test the exam from 30 hours to 15, a 50% decrease. This illustrates that an open mind about artificial intelligence could save them time. Not only this, but the time could be spent in other ways, such as having more time to develop connections with their students (Baidoo-Anu & Ansah, 2023).
It is my opinion that artificial intelligence is an inevitable aspect of our future, and the technology will only continue to improve and be less detectable. Therefore, its restriction will serve no benefit to students or instructors. Instead, educators should be conducting further research into how we can implement the use of AI technology “throughout the student lifecycle in order to take advantage of the immense potential that these technologies have for constructing intelligent learning and teaching systems” (Alam & Mohanty, 2023, para. 38). AI has and will continue to be integrated into our society, and combatting it will make things harder for both educators and students. In fact, a professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has included an AI policy in his syllabus for the first time, but he is not forbidding it. Students in his class are permitted to use it for discussions and other work as long as they check for errors and state that they used the software (Wood & Kelly, 2023). I believe this policy is fair and encourages honesty, a vital part of academic integrity.
To conclude, it is clear that artificial intelligence can be used negatively and can provoke unoriginal work by students. However, I think educators should be taking strides toward using technology in schools; this includes implementing AI as a tool. By encouraging the use of AI to help students further their understanding, rather than banning it entirely, students will likely be more informed and therefore make more informed decisions.
References:
Alam, A., & Mohanty, A. (2023, January). Foundation for the Future of Higher Education or ‘Misplaced Optimism’? Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In Innovations in Intelligent Computing and Communication: First International Conference, ICIICC 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23233-6_2
Baidoo-Anu, D., & Owusu Ansah, L. (2023). Education in the Era of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI): Understanding the Potential Benefits of ChatGPT in Promoting Teaching and Learning. Available at SSRN 4337484.
(ChatGPT, personal communication, March 13, 2023)
Cotton, D., Cotton, P., & Shipway, J. R. (2023, January 10). Chatting and Cheating. Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2190148
In a survey conducted by the PEW Institute, Facebook was shown to be the leading social media site for adults in the US to obtain news, with 31% of participants regularly getting their information from the site. This figure is not much of a surprise, since Facebook has a certain reputation for being propagators of reactionary information and false news. The aforementioned study also stated that the percentage has been steadily going down in the past few years, which I postulate is likely because of an aging main demographic and the rise of newer social media apps.
My primary issue with Facebook as a possible source for news (and every other social media site, for that matter) is the ability for people to rapidly spread misinformation and a general lack of critical thinking when it comes to such news. A prime example of this phenomena was on full display around the 2016 US presidential election, where disinformation and conspiracy theories ran rampant on Facebook. Of course, this kind of false news has existed forever, but the rise in prominence was especially apparent in the aftermath of such an influential event.
In “Misinformation with Fake News”, Mircea Botei (2017) described this as a turning point, where the public suddenly became more concerned about social media’s possible influence on democracy. Botei further expresses false news as “[an attempt] to appear truthful and thus to be accepted and transmitted further. It is news that tells what the audience wants to hear.”(p. 138) I have to agree with this sentiment, as reactionary headlines are a common sign of an untrustworthy source.
Political campaigns have taken advantage of current media trends to further their reach for decades, using whichever method was most popular at the time. Kathleen Jamieson (1996) mentions the widespread use of radios and television in the 1900s, with her book Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising sourcing the ridiculous advertisements political candidates were able to make about their opponents as an example. Still, the massive coverage of the 2016 US election in particular highlighted this mass move from television to the internet.
Fortunately, some good has come of this tragic spike in false news; many social media sites (including Facebook) were pressured to provide transparency reports over political ad campaigns hosted on their sites, according to Efe Sevin (2021) in “New Data Sources and Presidential Campaigns”. Following the 2016 election, Facebook joined companies like Google and Snapchat in revealing their advertising archives to the greater public (Sevin, 2017). However, we should not underestimate the intentional role that social media companies play in these spaces. Many social media sites are anything but guiltless for the rise of false news and influence of political proceedings; some are just better at hiding their involvement than others.
In the article “Social media ethics in the data economy: Issues of social responsibility for using Facebook for public relations “ Candace White explains how Facebook uses aggregated data from users to target those who are most vulnerable. This fact directly relates to the presidential election, as Cambridge Analytica—a company hired for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign—was revealed to have stolen user data from over 50 million people through a data breach of Facebook. I have been suspicious of the content and news circulated on Facebook since I first made an account, with this mistrust only growing as I learned more about their unethical business practices.
All this is to say that there is a distinct need to modify the existing structures that facilitate the spread of false news. Diogo Andrade introduces such an idea in “Paving the way for regulation: how the case against Facebook stacked up”, which lays out a few different strategies that the US was discussing at the time. The most viable and comprehensive solution in my opinion is ending the monopoly Facebook holds as the top company in its field. Andrade mentions dividing up the website (and its acquired companies) into competing forces, creating laws to restrict website’s abilities to harvest private data from users, and “limiting and eroding Silicon Valley’s power” (2019, p. 125).
Although Facebook has only gotten more powerful since the previous articles’ publication in 2019, I still hold onto the hope that future US elections won’t be at the mercy of malicious advertisers and complacent social media giants.
☆.
Reference List
BOTEI, M. (2017). Misinformation with Fake News. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series VII: Social Sciences. Law, 10 (59)(2), 133–140.
Jamieson, K. H. (1996). Packaging the Presidency: A history and criticism of presidential campaign advertising. Oxford University Press, Incorporated.
White, C. L., & Boatwright, B. (2020). Social Media Ethics in the Data Economy: Issues of social responsibility for using Facebook for public relations. Public Relations Review, 46(5), 101980. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2020.101980
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ongoing talk of the town, AI has made rapid progress in recent years, which has also led to growing concern amongst academics and professionals about its impact on society. (Luckin & Cukurova, 2019). As AI is advancing and becoming readily available for the public to use. Some students are starting to adapt to it and integrate AI products like ChatGPT and Dall-E in their learning but there is still resistance from most academics (Duckworth & Ungar, 2023). In this essay, we will explore the pros and cons of Chat GPT and why AI should not be banned but rather integrated into learning for the future.
AI has the ability to revolutionize the way we learn and interact with data. As described in the previous ChatGPT essay, AI language models can help with personalized learning, research, information collecting, collaborative learning, and peer-to-peer support. Yet, there are possible hazards and concerns linked with AI in education, such as the potential for bias perpetuation and lessening the necessity of human teachers.
After trying ChatGPT for the first time, I was impressed by its efficiency, but after using it more and researching I was able to conclude that ChatGPT isn’t reliable enough to blindly trust, not only does it provide common and mainstream ideas but also sometimes incorrectly answer the question given, which defeats the whole purpose of using it as it isn’t able to correctly perform it’s a major function. (Kim, 2023) Although it should be noted that the functionality of AI will only improve in the coming future, AI isn’t and will never be as creative and accurate as a human mind. “Cheating With ChatGPT: Can OpenAI’s Chatbot Pass AP Lit? | WSJ” is a very appropriate example for the same, in this video, the host could only get a C with help of AI in AP literature, which is far less than other students in the class.
As a student, I have seen a lot of my peers using ChatGPT to write assignments, and some even use them for online examinations. It is robbing students of motivation to write and think for themselves (Baron, 2023). These students who are relying on ChatGPT are not acquiring the essential skills needed to succeed in academics or in other professions in the future, It can be argued that in the future as AI improves, the workforce would have adopted its use in their work. However, core skills and skills to evaluate, edit, and improve the product of AI are still going to be necessary to stay ahead in the industry.
The usage of AI has also resulted in growing concern regarding plagiarism as ChatGPT uses data from other sources without citing them accurately, this ethical implication has led to huge discouragement in the use of AI in academia. We should consider how we have been already using tech tools for academic writing for a long time, for instance, SFU Library offers as well as promotes a citation generator for citing academic sources, back in the day, citations were typed out without the help of these generators. Technology is not going to stop growing and humankind should advance with it rather than resist it. AI is another such technology, and the more we are resistant to it slower we will advance and grow with it.
Given these concerns, it is critical that we use AI in our daily lives in a responsible and ethical manner. Rather than flatly prohibiting AI, we should investigate methods to best utilize the capabilities it provides while limiting its potential risks and limitations. This includes investing in ethical AI research and development, developing norms and standards for AI use in diverse industries, and promoting public education and understanding of the potential benefits and risks of AI.
There are always going to be concerns emerging with anything new that arises, soon AI will be the handy tool everyone uses, and efficient use of AI will become a required skill for employment in certain sectors. It is the job of the university to make the students equipped with the skills they are going to need in the future. For effective learning, universities should promote stricter policies and usage of creative novel ideas AI can’t generate and promote discussions and group work over individual assignments.
References
Baron, N. S. (2023). How ChatGPT robs students of motivation to write and think for themselves. The Conversation : Education.
Kim, B. (2023). LET’S STOP PRETENDING- CHATGPT ISN’T THAT SMART. Barron’s, 103(7), 19–20.
Luckin, R., & Cukurova, M. (2019). Designing educational technologies in the age of AI: A Learning sciences-driven approach. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(6), 2824-2838. doi:10.1111/bjet.12861
Angela Duckworth, Lyle Ungar. (January 19, 2023 Thursday). Chatbots belong in our classrooms; Banning ChatGPT is like keeping students from using Wikipedia or calculators. Los Angeles Times. https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:67BT-XC31-DXXV-34X6-00000-00&context=1516831.
I have been watching Youtube probably since I was 17, and I am now 23, and I have watched many of them for five years. I watched them become famous on Youtube; at first, they never used to have “advertisements,” and their channel took off, and they would add more advertisements to their videos. Even now, I still watch them, and they started doing paid promotions from companies. Since they are big on Youtube, they have a vast audience, and they promote a product, and in the end, they get paid by that company. The content creators I watch often ask their supporters what they want to see more of or don’t, and it has changed. They create polls on Instagram and get their supporters to head to their Instagram and vote- this is another way to get more attraction to their Instagram and gain more followers. Many Youtubers rely on how they advertise their content because it is their source of income, but it is essential not to flood your content with tons of advertisements because it can cause people to stop watching. Overall, I don’t mind when I have to watch advertisements on the channels I follow because the content of the people I follow is worth it.
Over time many people turn to social media for information about events that are happening around the world. Many people use social media to campaign for their company, use it to make money, or use it to escape reality and read about what is going on in the world. Sometimes when surfing the web and you go down a rabbit hole finding yourself being focused on a particular event that is taking place. As you come across many social media posts, news articles, and Reddit comments, you may come across some information that is not reliable. For example, while I am invested in a controversial topic, I often come across pages that people use to gain clout by spreading false information to gain more attention. I believe that helping others learn ways to recognize incorrect statement on social media can be beneficial in the long run to avoid spreading false news.
Often, people will come across an article on Facebook, read the article name, and share it without fully knowing what is said in the composition. Then, the article begins to spread like wildfire. Once someone shares that piece on their Facebook, their friends read it, and since they have a connection to you, they believe the misinformation you reposted and often believe it. To avoid this happening to you, review the source and look into other outlets to see if the information is relevant. The PEW research center concluded that roughly a third of U.S. adults get their news from Facebook (Liedke & Matsa, 2022)
Another important way to recognize false information in an article is a mental checklist of looking for crucial information on the page. Nowadays, incorrect information is widespread across all social media platforms, and it is up to everyone to identify whether or not it’s a reliable resource. There are lots of people who utilize the internet, and it is up to them to gain web literacy to where start learning how the internet works (Caulfield,2016). So far, to check if the information is valid and truthful, you must look at when it was published, who it was posted by, does the author have credentials, where this information is coming from? and what is the purpose of the information.
Thirdly, another way to detect whether or not the news is true or false is to have a keen eye to spot disinformation. Often when people open their laptops, a little preview of current articles may arise from their computer, and sometimes, it may catch your eye. Then, as you’re reading the article, read it carefully and start researching the topic further. Then, if you come across more websites and the information lines up, and it has reliable authors and provides a list of where they got their information, you are on the right track to see whether or not it is true or false.
Social Media and the Interest have a lot of resources, and often people turn to them when they are researching something or just scrolling through their Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. But, unfortunately, sometimes, when using these, it can take you down a rabbit hole, and you may find yourself looking into something, and in the end, it was all a lie. Therefore, it is essential to recognize whether or not the resources are reliable and to start learning the critical factors of when a website is spreading false information. Media manipulation is accurate, and in the article “Media Manipulation and Disinformation online.” Written by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis mention, The extent to which the historically low levels of trust in mainstream media can be traced back to media manipulation is unclear. Still, it is worth noting that distrust of the media can become a self-perpetuating phenomenon (Marwick & Lewis, 2017). Whether or not you use the internet or social media as a source outlet, you must be confident that what you are reading is accurate, and trusting what you read is up to you.
References:
Social Media and News Fact sheet (2022) Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project. Pew Research Center. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-media-and-news-fact-sheet/ (Accessed: March 14, 2023).
Caulfield, M. (2016) https://hapgood.us/2016/12/19/yes-digital-literacy-but-which-one/.
Marwick, A. and Lewis, R. (2017) Media manipulation and disinformation , Media-Manipulation-and-Disinformation-Online-1.pdf. Data and society research institute. Available at: https://www.posiel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Media-Manipulation-and-Disinformation-Online-1.pdf (Accessed: March 14, 2023).
Analytics are tools used across different social media platforms. I am most familiar with Instagram’s analytics, and it also helps track my screen time use on the app itself. I keep track of the reports on Instagram since I hold a public account. I like to see insights on how my posts are doing and the rundown of how many users interact with my account. I mainly post dance content on Instagram (some are published on my movement page) and analyze how my audience on Instagram grows which helps build a bigger dance community. Insights like these do help guide you in knowing the progress of your business/accounts, although as discussed an invasion of privacy is at risk.
For tools like these to collect data, they need to also collect personal information from your phone (number, location, etc.) and about the environment, the user is in, (Digital Breadcrumbs: The data trail we leave behind us 2016). A conversation from the Pod Academy states that a phone comes with a series of sensors that run background information which transfers from the phone to cell towers, which can also be communicated to the internet where others and sites can gain information about you (Digital Breadcrumbs: The data trail we leave behind us 2016).
Tieing into KeptCollexion, I have Google Analytics plugged into my site. It gives me tips on how to improve my site and reports the overall health of my site. Currently, my site’s status reports as “Good” and suggests that I improve my site’s performance and security factors. It’s good to know what steps to take to upgrade my website, but a risk I am taking is the exposure of personal data collected.
Reflecting today, I think it’s challenging to keep everything private once you own a mobile device or some computer since these devices run a constant background cache of data and personal information. It’s something that can’t be avoided unless you decide to go deviceless. Think of it now, TVs and smart homes do the same. It is just the way technology runs today, but it also reflects our responsibility to how we use these devices and what we choose to share and install.
Reference:
Pod Academy. (2016, May 3). Digital Breadcrumbs: The data trail we leave behind us. Pod Academy. Retrieved March 14, 2023, from http://podacademy.org/podcasts/digital-breadcrumbs-our-data-trail/
Report Analytics. (2017). PNG Tree. photograph. Retrieved March 14, 2023, from https://pngtree.com/freepng/report-analytics-audit-business-data-marketing-paper-blue_4772977.html.
I have been intermittent fasting for the last two days to months; let me tell you, it is hard! My health has been taking a toll on me because I often find myself exhausted halfway through the day and constantly feeling sluggish, so I knew something had to change. Then, I came across Intermittent Fasting, where you must start eating at a particular time and stop eating at a specific time. So I eat my first meal at 9:00 am and stopped eating at 5:00 pm. I thought at first that this would be easy. I mean, all you have to do is stop eating after a certain period of time, right? NOT!! I struggled not to snack on anything when I ate my last meal at 5:00 pm the first night. I remember feeling so many emotions; I was irritable and couldn’t do it. I never knew it could impact me in this way. I sat in the room and felt like I wanted to cry; that’s how tough it was on me. But, with time and the right mindset, I got past my first hurdle, the first week of fasting. I allowed myself to have one cheat day, and I got too comfortable with it around week four, and I broke my fasting for five days!! I ate my favorite foods, and I let it get-go for five days, and I said to myself, “I give up,” My partner reassured me that I could do it, and in the end, I started all over again. Now that I am hitting my two-month mark, I have noticed some significant changes, I get whole way faster, and it is still hard not to snack after 5:00 pm, but it has gotten way more manageable. Overall, this is working for me. I am down seven pounds and will continue my journey till I reach my goal.
My daughter was an angel when she just turned two, but the terrible two’s started to kick in when she was around 19 months things took a turn. My daughter is now struggling to work with her emotions and displaying her motions very harshly. The tantrums! she has a meltdown almost every day, especially when it is bedtime or when she needs to get ready in the morning daycare, anything that triggers her, she screams her head off. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL! I am having a hard time with this phase. I am trying to teach her to use gentle hands and use her words when she is upset because hitting and yelling get her nowhere. Now that she is turning three next month, on April 8th, and soon going on the “big kid” side at daycare, she will need to learn how to use her words and deal with the situation that may arise at daycare while playing with her friends. Also, no one tells you they refuse to eat dinner when they are around this age!! All they want is snacks and cereal.
My first baby is turning!! I can’t believe it. Isabella and I are on a learning journey together, and we will learn how to deal with emotions and grow together. I want to set a good example for my children and instill in their brains that they always have myself and their dad in their corner. In time, this phase will be behind us, and in the meantime, I want to spend every moment with them while they are still young because I will never get these moments back.
