1 – AI – ChatGPT
AI – what a heavy topic. I’ve only ever used ChatGPT in class, never at home.
I’m all for technology and advancement but sometimes it reaches a point where it gets to be too much. Things can be too much, thats why there is a term for it written in the dictionary – excessive. I read something somewhere before along the lines of ‘just because something is working, it doesn’t mean that it cant be improved’. While i totally agree with this, i personally don’t think it applies well to AI in my opinion. While AI does provide benefits, i think its disadvantages are far greater. Starting off with it taking people (hard-workers’) jobs. Obviously anyone would be very interested in using technology to do some work, with zero pay might i add.
ChatGPT, and AI in general, is actually very terrifying because of how advanced it has gotten, something i have learned about myself. AI scares me. This is precisely the reason why i haven’t used it. There is also the ethical dilemmas that comes with AI, so i think in order to avoid that completely, it is best if i refrain from using it at all. Ive dealt with school and life in the past 20 years without the help of AI, so i don’t need it now. Though, it is interesting to see how far human technology can reach but is that really worth it? to me its not.
I work hard on my assignments and refuse to use AI and i have friends and classmates who refuse to refuse to use AI. So basically what ends up happening is i work on an assignment without using AI and a friend/classmate has the same assignment to which they use AI. We could end up getting the same grade or they’d get an even higher grade than I did. I find that hard to get used to. Because of that, i don’t think AI should be used in school. But i suppose thats how people probably thought about the internet back when it was fist invented. Its usage in schools and jobs have stopped people from putting in as much work as they did before. Take for example writing a research paper before and after the internet – which is easier? AI is inevitable at this point, so it’s best to get with the new normal. Regardless, i think refraining form using it for school is the best way to keep education somewhat “ethical”.
If AI is unavoidable and everyone has access to it and can use it for their education then it should be used to only do “grunt work” such as citations and summarizations etc. to improve efficiency or basically anything that doesn’t require a grade. This way, students can finish assignments faster without actually doing it with AI. It’s just a tool that helps speed up the process like websites we get off the internet instead of reading books or pressing Ctrl+F (pc) or command+F (mac) instead of reading through the entire document. Things like that, simple and fast, definitely NOT for doing the entire assignment. Same logic applies to work. If people at work are using AI instead of actually doing the work themselves then they have become obsolete because that way, office managers (and such) can have AI do it themselves and they don’t have to pay them minimum wage for it.
2 – Google Forms
I used google forms many times before, during university and even back during high school and not ONCE did i ever think to make a game out of it. It is very intriguing how things can be modified to be what a person desires regardless of its original purpose. I’m pretty sure google forms wasn’t invented so we can play games. So, to take something so simple and go above and beyond its original function is fairly intriguing. This is something i’ve learned when i got to use google forms for our digital narrative games.
I took advantage of google forms and made 64 different sections until it made my laptop glitch, which i didn’t enjoy at all, something google should look into. It was definitely a fun tool i got to work with this semester. I’ve used it to administer surveys and i think everyone else has too. It came in handy in that respect. There are so many different ways to utilize it which is why it functions effectively, it’s not limited to a singular function. To me, thats what makes online tools like this worth using and worth learning how to use.
I think google forms is an excellent tool for students and workers to use. Its efficient, it is simple. I was a little on edge when i decided to use google form for the games because i usually refrain form using complicated tools when doing simple tasks because whats the point? but i learned that google forms is very simple and straightforward, it is user-friendly which helps invite a lot of people to use it. Anything that is not user-friendly is not worth it in my opinion. This is definitely something i learned about myself while using google forms, i will steer clear of anything that will consume too much of my time. Compared to other tools, i’d say google forms is on the friendlier side. I’m not sure what the deal is with google slides, but i’d assume its just as friendly since they were both designed by the same company. So, had i picked google slides for my games, i think my reaction to the process would have been somewhat similar.
3 – Hypothes.is
The annotating assignment was by far my favorite assignment during the entire semester partly because i enjoyed using Hypothes.is. its not quite user-friendly (or not at first at least), i did struggle with it at the beginning but i learned to work my way around it. learning how to use this new tool is like learning a new skill. tools help hone new skills but they also are new skills.
We used hypothesis to highlight certain areas of an article and comment on it and thinking about it now, i think hypothesis would be a good tool to use for studying or for writing a paper. I like to write my main notes down and search for certain paragraphs that i’m going to use in a paper before i actually start writing anything, so i think this tool will come in handy in the future. It’s probably the one tool i took from this class that i see myself using in other courses.
As great as it is, it is a little frustrating that its not really compatible with safari. Im primarily a safari user, so when i first started using it, i had to download google chrome specifically so that i can add the extension. This is what i mean when i say that it isn’t user-friendly. And it is a little complicated. Had using it not been a requirement for an assignment, i probably never would have used it at all. But since i needed to learn how it works, now i think ill use it in the future. Aside from this, i think this is a pretty suitable studying tool for anyone to use.
4 – WordPress
I’ve only ever blogged once for school back in 8th grade before, but other than that, i’m clueless. I understand that blogging is more informal than it is formal which i actually do enjoy. I don’t remember when was the last time i wrote an informal assignment for a grade other than this course. So, i don’t think i learned a new skill technologically using WordPress but, i do think continuously using it has improved my informal writing.
Just like google forms, it can be used for multiple reasons. At first, it was made for blogging but then it evolved to so much more like traditional websites. So, not being confined to one purpose is a great way to attract more users
i like that it has many options for you. You can upload pictures, videos, links etc. It also has many themes you can choose from, however, the best of them are not free. The free ones to me seem pretty mundane. For a free blogging site, it has many options and isn’t limiting you like many other “free” sites are doing. I would imagine some “free” blogging sites would only allow you to post up to maybe 5 blogs and then you need to start paying to continue uploading posts. Another great way to attract more users.
on the user-friendly front, it is a suitable site for beginners or for students like myself who aren’t looking to “master” it, rather to just easily find their way around to get the work that needs to be done done. It didn’t make me angry and frustrated while using it which is basically my stamp of approval.
I don’t find myself using this tool in the future because i don’t have a purpose for it. But if on the off chance (0.00000001%) i do decide to start posting public blogs for myself, i would definitely consider this tool as an option, probably my top choice.
5 – Slack
One reason i enjoyed slack was the fact that no personal information was shared ever. Most of my classes, we have a WhatsApp group for communication but in order to join that group, you have to share your number. its not the biggest deal for me being apart of WhatsApp groups and having my phone number available for anyone to save, but the idea behind slack was that it was an extra layer of precautions which i appreciate. However, it is easier to just join a WhatsApp group since slack is an entirely new app that needs to be downloaded (i had storage unlike others who might suffer with downloading it). While the privacy aspect of it is preferable, i think using WhatsApp is just more sensible. That’s something i learned for future classes, the WhatsApp thing isn’t a big deal.
I’ve never used slack before, but the most similar thing to slack i used was discord for when we were in quarantine, so i was fairly familiar with how things worked around the app, so i cant really comment on how i first started to learn my way around it like i did with the other apps. However, i can say that slack on the laptop is far simpler and easier to use than on a phone, for me at least.
I loved discord especially because i could write a command in the chat-box to play music when me and my friends were on a call and we could all simultaneously listen to music together. This made me think whether this feature was also available on slack and it was. So, as a whole app, slack has a lot to offer. However, there are certain features (like listening to music) that we didn’t get to experience as a class.
discord often glitches and requires a VPN so we can use it, so we stopped using it all together. Now, i can suggest slack to my friends so we can go back to listing to music as a group now.
6 – Canva
Canva was one of the first tools i used for this course. I used it to do my ALTCV and it came in really handy especially since I’m not a creative person by all means. Many of the assignments required a creative way of representation (like the ALTCV) which is why i enjoyed using Canva so much. Picking out the already set templates and fonts is, unfortunately, as creative as i can get. This is a way Canva helped me out, thats why I’m so fond of it. if i could go back, i would use Canva to do my Wellbeing basket assignment as well (not sure why i didn’t).
I used canva before for many school assignments and for two presentations i had to do last semester, so i definitely see myself using Canva again in future courses whenever i need something to look like its professionally, properly and creatively done. I prefer doing my presentations on Canva than on google slides or powerpoint because of how creative and professional it can look. Google slides, which was my primary presentation maker before, is too simple and bland unlike Canva. To make google slides more interesting and creative, it is a really complicated process but Canva can make slides interesting in a simple way. A good presentation is a really important skill to have, so Canva definitely refines that skill for me the more i use it. I also think it is relatively user-friendly much like almost all the tool i used in this course.
Same as WordPress, many of the templates and features (the really good ones) needed to be paid for. However, the free options were just as good and there was a wide variety of them as well.
sharifamaksoud 
Leave a Reply