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Digital Age Learner

In the first week of the course we learnt about digital age learners. So who exactly is a digital age learner? Someone who takes charge of their learning, focuses on growth, is self motivated, collaborative and has and open mind to learn.

When we were asked to rate ourselves on the basis of where we stand in digital literacy, I gave myself a 5 initially since I grew up in a family filled with engineers. However, I was keen to learn more through the digital literacy course. I am a digital age learner after all.

What is my relationship with technology?
Technology is something that has become an essential part of our day to day lives, specially with Covid-19 and everything being online. It's like an organ. My relationship with technology was initially an addictive one. It was as if it had taken over my life, whether I liked it or not. Be it for playing music, reading books, or even talking to someone. But now I can proudly say that my relationship with technology has been a healthy one.

Do you enjoy everything about tech or do you prefer to avoid it, given the chance?
I realized that even though technology has made life easier, we should not be blinded by it. Too much of anything is harmful. If given the chance, I would choose to avoid technology since I believe in balance and setting limits.

What are the qualities and traits of a learner you want to cultivate in yourself?
Two qualities that I'd like to enhance as a learner are patience and creativity.

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I set a daily limit on Instagram to curb my usage in order to not spend unnecessary time there.

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Online privacy and Security

When we use the internet, we frequently leave traces of ourselves on many websites. When we accept the terms and conditions of any system or application, we are inadvertently sacrificing our privacy. We are putting our safety at danger by accessing unsafe websites.

In week 2 of the course we learnt about how to be more vigilant and aware of how the internet works and how to be a stress free user.

Reflect on your current habits? Would you like to make some changes?
I am quite active on social media however this week's class forced me to take a step back and evaluate my internet presence. When our professor found a number of my friend online it opened my eyes as to how easy it is for people to find information on you. Previously I wasn't aware about the consequences of digital footprint, but now that I am I made some changes. Changes like ensuring right security settings, building my image and reputation, and believing what I post in.

The digital security and safety class also made me realize how vulnerable everyone is online. I  am guilty of using the same password for most of my accounts, which I reset immediately after class. In addition, as a result of our interactions, I performed some much-needed checks on my laptop, removed my browser history, and updated app permissions on my smartphone.

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Just after the class, I scanned all my devices to check for threats. This was something that I did not do earlier, but now it has become a regular check up thing.

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Data & Excel

Although I have worked with excel a little in my past, I had no idea the things that excel could be used for.  Statistics and math terrify me more than anything else. I was certain that I would not enjoy excel but I found myself enjoying toying and playing with numbers in Excel. My personal experience with excel is a positive one, I would have been a lot more lost without it. It definitely made compiling and calculating data easy.

How can you use and apply the new knowledge about data and Excel skills in other areas of your study and life?
Now that the course is over, I would say I am very comfortable with excel and will use it for future classes. Without excel I am not sure how long some of those psychology statistics assignments would have taken me this term.

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Made a travel budget template on Excel

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Disruptive technologies

The moment I opened this section on Moodle, even though the many of the words seemed new to me and I had no idea what they were, I was extremely excited just by seeing the words AI and VR.

After going through each video in that section, I realized how technology has taken over us and it's fascinating to relate to it's real life implications.

Apparently I've been using all these concepts all my life. Be it AI in the form of Alexa or AR in the form of Snapchat to VR in the form of video games. I learnt how learning through Kahoot in class was also a form of Gamification. I could now understand the purpose and importance of the ERP software my dad used in his company. Being a psychology student the design thinking really intrigued me since it involved the idea of empathy. I realized how Zomato, Air BnB etc were all based on design thinking. It was fascinating to learn about all these in depth and know the technical terms.

I don't think that it's possible to survive without the use of technology in most of the fields. It has become an essential component of our lives and careers. For example email, it's the base of all professional communications followed by much complicated things like a MRI machine for a doctor.

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Casually enjoying a VR game created by a friend

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HTML and CSS

Being completely honest I did not pay attention in school at all during the HTML classes because they used to be monotonous. However I did have some idea about HTML because of my experience in the field of Robotics.

It was nice to revisit and re learn some of the old HTML tags and also some new ones. CSS was new to me, so it was really fun to mess around with the colors and borders.  I used to do my prior coding in notes, but prof. Jasmine enlightened us with the easiest way out i.e. Sublime text and Visual Studio

The adventure story assignment was quite adventurous, confusing yet a learning experience. It probably was one of the most interactive and unique ways to teach, I loved it.

Not a lot of people love working with coding, including me,  but I feel the practice fosters important abilities such as accuracy and problem solving.

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Inspect element and being taught about it was my savior because I could download a view only file from google drive in my other course.

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Search

Surfing on Google is possibly the one thing that all of us believe we are good at. I was surprised at first as to why this section was even a part of our curriculum. It's just Google search, what else is there to know about it? After watching the tutorials I was proved wrong. There were so many things and life hacks I was unaware about.

The videos this week showed me that my current methods of searching could be improved. To begin with, I had no idea that the 'gap' between two keywords functions as an AND operator. I also learnt how to use OR and minus to filter down results. The tutorial also included additional operators such as filetype, intext and so on.

FLAME requires us to write a lot of research papers and I am thankful to this course that now I can quickly narrow down my search results and find credible sources.