• Final Reflection – Part 2

    Midjourney

    This tool was the one that amazed me the most this semester. I made an account and experimented with it for a while. I wanted to generate an image with me surrounded by my pets. I found it really difficult to generate an accurate picture though. I felt like no matter what I wrote certain aspects of the image would be deformed in one way or another. I think that as AI becomes more advanced, this issue will be resolved and I wouldn’t have to spend as much time as I did to try and generate a good photo.

    Google Slides

    Since I started university, I always use google slides because it was the easiest way to work in groups for projects. We mainly did simple things. We used to just download any template online and add our texts to it. However, when I was doing my game, I kept googling how to do certain things in order to make my game more interactive. For example, I learned how to link certain slides and how to make my presentation look more aesthetically pleasing. My laptop is dying on my these days. It is barely working and I’m constantly afraid of losing all my work whenever I’m doing anything. The best thing about Google slides was that it automatically saved my work so I didn’t have to worry about this.

    Masr GPT

    This is probably the tool I was most excited about discovering and the tool I think I’ll use the most after this course is over. I used this website to try and generate a few texts for assignments (bad, I know) but I discovered that the writings were extremely generic and were not based on factual information. However, I was able to learn how to benefit from this tool. I hate doing citations. Actually, something I’m a bit ashamed to admit because I’m graduating but I don’t really know how to do citations I just use any random website to generate them and I don’t know whether or not they’re accurate. Anyways, I use to give Masr GPT the links to the sources I need cited and it would generate the citations for me. This really helped me save time with papers that needed 5-10 sources cited. It also helped me in doing assignments. I would give the website a long text to summarize for me or explain to me. This definitely helped me save a ton of time doing my work. AI has drastically changed the world in such a sort period of time. In my opinion, we have to adapt to this change. I think AI should be used in the work field and in education to do scut work like summarizing, paraphrasing, or citations as long as the purpose of the assignment at hand is not in one of those areas.

    Monitor.io

    Before presenting our final games, we were asked to download an app that mirrors our mobile home screens on the smart board in class. I found this to be very advanced and sophisticated. This is the first second class I’ve taken in an advanced classroom like ours. However, in the class I took prior to this one we didn’t use any of the features the classroom had to offer at all. I think this was because the professor didn’t know what the features were or how to use them. On the other hand, in this class, I feel like we utilized the technology at hand and were able to smoothly integrate it into our day to day needs. I don’t think I’ll get the opportunity to have a classroom like this again because I’m graduating but I’m glad I’m glad I had the full experience this time

    Canva

    I used to use Canva only to make presentations for classes. However, in this class, I used it to make a video and infographics. I realized that it is an extremely sophisticated and useful tool that I should use more often. I literally could not find one downside to using Canva. There are a lot of free templates to use from and the features are very straightforward and to the point. I plan on using it more for my own personal blog when trying to create infographics.

    Word Press

    I don’t know if tis was just me, but I found it really annoying working and unreliable with Word Press. The website lags a lot and on more than one occasion I lost all my work. After a while of this happening, I started working on word and pasting my work into tis website. Nonetheless, It was very fun customizing my own blog. I tried to make it resemble my personality and as interesting as I could. During tis course, it was my first time working with Word Press, but I don’t think I’ll be using it again in the future. I feel like Word Press focuses more on written pieces but I’m more interested in working on images and videos

  • Final Reflection – Part 1

    https://www.canva.com/design/DAFkNUk-wzg/wfZG_uHqXCZsVTHKOWqLjg/edit?utm_content=DAFkNUk-wzg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton: Final Reflection – Part 1

  • Wellness Basket

    https://www.canva.com/design/DAFinIFk7Us/_6M_8S4UlesLZjAT4DlFnA/edit?utm_content=DAFinIFk7Us&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton: Wellness Basket

  • Post-Soliya Reflection

    Question 1: How do the dialogue and discussions in Connect Express differ from other discussions and communication you have participated in? Why or how is it different, if at all? 
    Two years ago, I attended a virtual cross-cultural conference that in my opinion was slightly more organised than Soliya was and therefore affected my overall experience. The topics we discussed were send to us in advance and they were more engaging which gave us more space to actually talk more and learn. For example, we discussed how marriage, money, and time differ between our cultures amongst other topics. In addition, there was only one individual speaking from each country and the countries were very diverse. However in Soliya, I think there were 3-4 individuals with an Egyptain background which gave us very little to talk about because we agreed with each other in everything. There wasn’t a lot of room to learn from different people.

    Question 2: What did you learn about the type of communicator you are? 
    During Soliya I realised that if the person I’m speaking to doesn’t seem interested in speaking to me, I give very little energy in trying to keep on w conversation. In my group, only one person seemed eager to speak to me therefore he’s the only person I dedicated time and effort to speak to. Something that I found surprising about myself was that I wasn’t embarrassed to speak out first whenever a question was asked because I thought I would wait until atleast one person spoke before me.

    Question 3: What can you do to foster constructive communication in your personal life, in your professional life, and in your community? 
    I believe I should put in more effort in trying to communicate with people if they seem as though they are not that interested in speaking to me at the beginning.

  • Protected: Phase 5

    This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

  • Final Game – Facial Dysmorphia

    https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IoCvhZZQ8KYy_ZmiUufITM2jW9PnogGca9HwSsua_fU/edit?usp=sharing: Final Game – Facial Dysmorphia

  • Digital literacies Pathway

    Part 1:

    Part 2: To be honest, prior to reading the article on digital literacies and digital skills, I didn’t fully understand the difference between the two terms. I thought that being good with technology or having digital skills was enough to navigate the digital world. However, after reading the article, I realized that digital literacies encompass much more than just digital skills. Digital literacies include skills such as critical thinking, media literacy, and information literacy, which are extremely important in navigating the web these days. The world has become increasingly digitized, making it more important than ever to develop digital literacies. We need to be more than just “tech-savvy” in order to keep up because having digital skills alone is not enough.The article helped me understand the importance of developing digital literacies and not just focusing on digital skills. Now, I am motivated to improve my digital literacy skills to better navigate the digital world.

    Part 3: As a makeup blogger, developing digital literacies can help me to effectively communicate my ideas and engage with my audience. I want to be able to discover new tools that can make content creation easier for me. Media literacy skills can help me to create visually appealing content, including high-quality photos and videos, which can attract and retain my audience’s attention. Additionally, information literacy can help me identify how to grow my account. By developing these digital literacies, I can enhance the quality of my blog and help me stay consistent in posting.

    In addition, developing digital literacies can be incredibly valuable to me during my master’s program by enabling me to effectively do my academic research papers and study for relevant and trustworthy resources and tools. By developing information literacy skills, I can efficiently search for and evaluate academic sources, ensuring that my research is thorough and well-supported. Critical thinking skills can help me to analyze and evaluate complex academic concepts, allowing me to effectively engage with my coursework and fellow students.

    I chose the Taught Path (Mainly because I tried to do the Tinkering Path and didn’t know how to – Why does this always happen to me?).

    The first course I took was entitled “Understanding Digital Images”. In the beginning of the course, I was asked to choose an area of interest, so I chose image editing and processing. Because images are files of number, computers can manipulate certain properties. However, there are limitation. There were some things that I was already familiar with, such as copping, resizing, changing brightness, and changing contrast. Something new I learned is that when we save an image, the quality degrades a bit. I wanted to learn how I could save an image without harming the quality. A few concepts that were absolutely foreign to be prior to taking this course that I found difficult were pixels and brightness, histograms, and the greyscale. The course mentioned that there were three aspects to taking a good picture: Exposure and brightness range, resolution, and focus. This wasn’t new to me. I learned this stuff a long time ago when I was learning how to take good images for my blog.

    What was new to me was learning about the different files formats and types. Some files store compressed versions that do not include every single pixel value in order to make the files smaller. This could be an issue if the main original photo was supposed to be printed. In fact, when I think about it, when I was in school and had projects that needed to be printed, saving files before sending them to be printed was a nightmare because on more than one occasion I encourtered issues where the document that I sent the printing office wasn’t exactly what I had worked on. Turns out, I was supposed to save it as a TIFF in order to preserve the quality. However, it is a very large file size. What was interesting to learn is that images taken from my smartphone are called “Raw images”, which provide a great advantage of being able to be edited without reducing the quality that much. This was nice to learn about because I was recently considering transferring images and videos from my smartphone to my laptop for editing purposes, but maybe I don’t have to do that after all. The final part of the course had to do with the sources of images. There are many images available online for presentations, education, and design purposes, but we have to keep in mind the license requirements. At the end of the course there was a little quiz on all the concepts covered. Not to brag but I scored a 100%.

    The second course I took was about managing our online identity and reputation. The course is mainly about how we can use social media to promote our professional identity and interests more positively. Whenever we use social media, we leave a “Digital footprint” without even noticing. For example, we can explicitly mention information about ourselves by physically posting it or implicitly through out click patterns. This information is them sold to businesses who profit off it. This information is very powerful and valuable. At first, I thought why should I care? this information is simply used to facilitate things for me and send me targeted ads. However, the video mentioned that it is a matter of protecting your reputation, maintaining your ability to decide where and how your personal information is shared, preventing financial loss, and preserving your freedom. Yesterday, my aunt received an email that her credit card was debited for 750 dollars at some Spa in Miami. She immediately contacted the bank and they told her they would open a fraud case. This was definitely what the course was talking about in regards to how stolen personal information from social media.

    The course went on to speak about our online presence and recommended that we Google ourselves to see what we’ll find. I’ve done this before in our class and I only found a few LinkedIn posts about a few awards I won (Thank god!). Something new that I learned is that when you use the internet you could be a “Visitor” who leaves no social trace or a “Resident” that does. The difference between them is that a visitor mainly observes while the resident comments or interacts with the data.

    The course then went on to discuss social media saying that it has provided us with more opportunities than ever to communicate with people and form professional networks. However, it has also created a medium for a series bullying, trolling, and crime. The course explained how each of these could happen in the real world. The one that really stood out to me was Sock Puppets, or in other words, people who create fake identities online. There was a show I used to watch a long time ago called “Catfish” where people were in relationships with people who they only chatted with online. Some of them were together for 15-20 years having never met. The show gave them an opportunity to investigate whether or not each person was actually who they said they were. Some people only used a fake pictures because they were insecure about they way they looked but were honest about other aspects of their life. However, others completely made up everything they told their supposed “partner”. I also used to watch a show that featured crimes that happened because of the internet. On many occasions, middle aged men would go online and create a fake identity by using images of someone significantly younger than they were and lured children in order to sexually assault, kidnap, or kill them. This entire topic reminded me of a documentary on Netflix called “The Tinder Swindler” about a man who used Tinder to prey on vulnerable women and scam them out of their money. It’s a gripping and eye-opening account of the dangers of online dating and the lengths that some people will go to deceive others.

    The course also talked about stalking. I was stalked in high school by a colleague of mine for around two years so this really stood to me. however, the person who stalked me hacked into my social media accounts in order to read private messages with my friends. I would randomly find him “coincidently” showing up to places I was going. I never gave any thought to it because he was just a friend of mine. Back then, I wish I had paid more attention to the small signs and took better care of my online privacy.

    The course advised us to protect ourselves and others by taking into consideration what we post on public and private, show respect to other, switch off geotagging, think twice before posting anything, and always verify sources to the information we read. The course ended off by stating that we are in control of our online identity and gave recommendations on how we can develop an online profile for professional purposes. There was also a quiz at the end of this course that I scored a 100% on 🙂

    I really liked the online courses and how interactive they were. I like the fact that the texts were short and scattered in different areas. It made me feel like I wasn’t reading a lot even though I actually was. I also liked that I used to press on different icons and more details would be included there. My only issue was that there were short videos that wouldn’t work (This was only the case with two videos). However, they were accompanied with a short text so I kind of understood what the gist of the video was about. I enjoyed the course “Managing our Online Identity and Reputation” way more than the “Understanding Digital Images” one; mainly because it was very thought provoking. Whenever I would read about something I would remember something I watched, heard or, or encountered. 

  • Pre-Soliya Reflection

    On an intellectual basis, I’ve learned a lot in class. I actually found it difficult to refer to the readings and videos on the top of my head because during classes I didn’t actually notice that I was learning, it just came so smoothly as if I were sitting with my friends and one of us started discussing a topic of some sort.

    I learned a lot about fake news. I was really interested in this topic because ever since I was young whenever I would tell my mother about anything I read online she would automatically ask “Are you sure that’s a reliable source?”. I think that especially these days with how advanced technology has become, we really have to make sure that we have our facts straight. For example, the video of Donald Trump praising an Islamic landmark could have led some Muslims living in the United States to like him and even vote for him. Another topic I found increasingly interesting was the article Lina Mounzer wrote entitled “Giving Voice to the Women in Syria” as it gave me a unique perspective on the hardships people go through. I was definetly privilege from a very young age and never had the opportunity to experience something similar to this or even talk to someone who did. I think my perception was a bit narrow on such topics. One of the most interesting videos I watched was the Ted Talk entitled “Don’t Ask Where I’m from, Ask Where I’m Local. I think the reason this resonated a lot is because I was born in the United States and live in Egypt. However, I’ve always felt like my identity was a bit complex for people to understand because both my parents are very different from one another in raising us. Finally, I think the videos where we learned about biases will be very helpful in Soliya. There was a video we watched in class that portrayed the perception Americans may have about people with Asian backgrounds that was a funny, yet knowledgable. There were also other sets of videos on this topic that I found very enlightening. I’m not sure what exactly we will be covering in Soliya and how it might be linked to the topics I mentioned, but I’m hoping that I can gain a wider perspective on how different people from around the world view different aspects of life. I’m hoping that the conversations in Soliya will be similar to the ones we have in class because I always enjoy those. I actually want to learn about the different biases people have but I doubt that this will actually happen.

    During this course, I was able to take a moment and reflect on myself. I realized that I have more biases than I originally thought. However, I think that I am more conscious towards them now and question why I might have these biases more often. I know it sounds bad but that’s the truth. A question about myself that has been racking my brain for a while is whether or not I am a “transparent” person. I feel like I hide my emotions to a great degree. During the first session of Soliya I decided that I was going to speak my mind and not overthink about what people are going to think of me because I’m basically never going to meet these people in my life and their perception of me does not really matter. I was proud of myself from telling the moderator that I was not comfortable opening my camera while they recorded the session because old me would have been too embarrassed (Small win for me yay). I think I’m going to use Soliya to see if I might have any underlying biases and work on speaking my mind. 

    What I have learned about interacting with other people is that I should wait till I fully understand their stance on certain topics then determine how I’m going to talk to them according to their personality. I also learned that not everyone has to have the same option as me and that is totally fine. Even if someone’s point of view is, in my opinion, wrong, sometimes there is nothing I can do to change it and that’s also fine. I’m hoping my Soliya experience will help learn more about different cultures so that when I get to meet people from the same country, I already have some background on their views regarding some topics and am more capable of understanding them.

  • Protected: Facial Dysmorphia

    This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

  • Makeup

    The class was divided into groups and each person wrote on sticky notes social classifications in Egypt. For example, who has more privilege, lighter or darker skinned people? Everyone was assigned different characteristics and according to those characteristics they would determine whether or not they were privileged in a given situation. If they had this privilege, they could talk a step forward. If not, they would have to take a step back. Consequently, there were people way at the front of the class and other far back.

    The class also saw an open AI detector. However, it was not very accurate. This is very troublesome especially in the educational field because this means that students could either do all their work in their own and be accused of using AI even though they didn’t. Or, teachers would realize this and simply not care whether or not students used AI. This could potentially lead to unfairness in the educational system. A student could get a 4.0 GPA and not open a single book.

    The last thing the class discussed was intersectionality. it means that many social classifications are interrelated together. I didn’t really understand what this meant from my classmates so I had to do my own Googling. According to my source: Intersectionality is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression and we must consider everything and anything that can marginalize people – gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc. I found this image online which illustrates it very well