A Late Blog About My Bio

It's All About Me

I've found that in making my bio, 6 word memoir, and especially my final project that I have actually learned so much about computers. Initially, I did not think that I would learn to much in the class. I am no computer wiz, but I thought that the class would be moderately easy leading up to the final and then I would completely fall apart when creating the final project. Instead, you used each module to create what would be our final project. Not only did this help us in the end, but took so much stress off of finals. As the Lego Movie would say, "Everything is awesome!" 

As I was saying, creating the bio was quite easy. This is likely because I did it after I created most of my final project. By the time I created my bio I had a clear understanding of thimble and how to manipulate the codes. It was just a matter a putting it together.

Screencasts are fun!

Last week we were challenged to create a screencast or live video teaching someone something. I chose a screencast because of my lack of free time. I also have no one to help me demonstrate blocking footwork as everyone is swamped with finals (though I think the real reason everyone said no is because they didn't want to put up the net). Either way, I decided I would set sail on the voyage to create a screencast.
I thought that I would have a lot harder time creating the screencast, I spent nearly thirty minutes just picking which one I wanted to download. Eventually I chose screencastify due to the reviews and the screencasts of the screencast app they had presented. It looked fairly easy to manage and not too complicated. I then began to walk through the steps in creating a google blogger blog account. But because I did these steps in my head I forgot a few minor details. I decided that I would use my old gmail account from my previous school to create a blog, just so that the viewer could see it on a fresh platform. This seemed to be a great idea, except I could not remember my previous password. I spent twenty seconds alone typing in different variations of passwords. Once I was in, I did a much better job at navigating. Sometimes I got a little distracted by the different tools available to me in the corner, and for some reason I had the urge to use them all. My next hurdle came in the form of tabs. Screencast only records the tab you're in, or at least the version I decided to record it in did. So i was forced to copy and paste my links back into the tab to open something new. That wasn't really challenging, it was just time consuming. I also struggled with personalizing the templates offered. I couldn't remember all of the different customization it offered because when I was doing mine, I just experimented. I found that making a screencast does not just entail knowing the app and software, but knowing the steps in what you are doing as well. If only I could think of something else to screencast, they're actually a lot of fun!

6Words

My freshmen year of college I attended a small Christian university in my home state of Arizona. That year all freshmen were required to take a class called "Spiritual Life in the Community" or SPLC. This class could be compared to an inquiry class at Southern. However, SPLC had a few major differences. First of all we spent a lot of time talking about our relationship with God, how to pray, and how to spread the word through loving others and speaking to everyone. But what I really kept from this class is how we got to know ourselves.

Each class began with a journal topic or question. From there we would delve into class about the previous subjects noted before. At least once a week we would do some kind of quiz that would allow us to learn more about ourselves. Whether it was the way we accepted love or the way that we learned. What was specifically useful for me in this six word memoir was an Enneagram quiz where we deciphered what our personality was based on a number scale. I used these descriptors to help me make my six word memoir. 

From there I had some difficulty getting my hands on the template for the six word memoir. I started one when I was in class that day, however I exited the tab and was not able to find it in my account. I was forced to remix someone else's remix which I found pretty funny. 

This six word memoir is one that I especially liked because I had to realy think about who I was. When I recovered the Enneagram test, I not only was able to rediscover my number, but I could compare to who I was three years ago; in conclusion I have not changed. But it's always important to self reflect, especially in college where we are given loads of information, surrounded by tons of different people, and are constantly exposed to new ideas; re-rooting yourself allows you to maintain who you are at your core.

You can view my 6 word memoir here.

Gender Bender

The other day I read an online stream about gender. I see myself as pretty liberal in terms of gender and sex. I fully accept gay people and the gay community, I understand that people can be confused. However, in this new politically correct era were everyone feels the need to be noticed in a way in which comforts them, I get a little confused.

So once again, I read an online stream about gender. The woman seemed to be in her mid twenties, had black hair cut in a punk rock style and wore heavy liner. Not that I'm judging her based on her style, but it seems that she already fits the visual descriptors that society has set for her. She may be trying to tell me "screw the man," but all I see is a woman molded by societies perception of punks. But as I was saying, this woman had a stream of about twenty tweets informing the masses of the differences between sex and gender and all of the different gender forms that fit under gender. There was cis-gender, and gender neutral, and fluid gender; I could not keep up. But then I thought to myself: What is gender? We live in an ever-changing world, with new ideas and people born into it everyday. The increasing amount of knowledge that becomes available to us everyday is incomprehensible. It seems that because there are so many people and so many ideas, people feel the need to label themselves or they'll get lost. Maybe it's our loosening ideas and acceptance of others, but fifty years ago no one had any idea what a demi-gender, pangender, or intergender person was. Society shapes who we are. Intolerance fifty years ago and the belief that there are only two genders led to the acceptance and knowledge of only two genders. But because of the openness to different people, new genders are being born everyday. While I do not believe in some of the antic and ideas of all the genders, and whether or not I believe they are valid is something else all together. But I accept their uniqueness and the interesting way in which they are conceived.

Okay Google...

I have a serious bone to pick with Google. Just recently, Google paid tribute to Lucy, one of our first ancestors by displaying a lapse of our evolution in a similar form of the word "Google." This same image of evolution is the one that is seen everywhere. That being said I want to say thank you to Google for recognizing Lucy's discovery date (not that it's anything special, Google finds all the interesting lesser known dates and recognizes them), but I'm seriously irritated with this display. 

Google, did you hire an artist and let them interpret the theory of evolution? We humans are not evolved from apes as it is shown in the image. You would think the all knowing Google would have at least known this. Homo sapiens sapiens link our ancestry back to a common cousin of the knuckle walker, but studies have shown that our chimp like ancestors were not as chimp like as we think. They were likely not knuckle walkers. So Google, by showing that Lucy came from a knuckle walker, you are implying that we too come from knuckle walkers (knuckle walkers that look like chimps). Everyone knows that we did not evolve from the chimp we see today.

Okay Google, now that we've discussed the faultiness in your first link in the chain evolution; lets take a look at Lucy. Lucy is a species known as Australopithecus Afarensis, and she would have walked upright. We know this because of her bone structure, and how similar it is to our own. While Lucy did have some anatomical differences like a thinner pelvic bone and longer arms, she was in fact a bipedal female. But Google depicts her as a hunched over creature. There is no in between stage of knuckle walking and upright walking, you either do it full time or you don't. Lucy also has a cone like head in her depiction. However Lucy's skull was actually quite flt, she did not have much of a forehead, so why she is depicted as having an awkwardly shaped head is unknown to me.

Google, for the first time ever you have failed me. The amount of traffic you get a day is insurmountable. The people who see your image and what it denotes is unfathomable. Displaying human beings as a descendants of chimps is false and sets back so many years. As if there were not already enough people believing that science is telling us we evolve from apes, now we have Google telling people too. Because Google is such a prominent search engine, what they do matters. People believe so much of what they see on the internet and for a credible and knowledgeable company to botch the theory of evolution is pretty dumbfounding.

Cultural Evolution

Are we, or are we not evolving?

Something I always think about is how well I would do in school if not for the internet and the advancement of technology. It was not until 1974 that the first personal computer was born, and even then it had no keyboard or screen. It was not until 1977 that a computer anything like the one we know today was used. Say I was born in the forties like my grandmother and had to lug around 6 different books for college classes instead of an ipad full of ebooks. Even my mother had to rely on an encyclopedia to acquire information.
Today we have a vast amount of information under our fingertips, in our pockets, or on our desktop at any given time during the day. This leads me to a question I have asked and that I think have answered. Our humans done evolving?

In my cultural and linguistic anthropology class we discussed the topic of evolution shortly, only to lay the foundation of the class. But an interesting idea stuck with me; that being the idea of cultural evolution. People, biologically may be done evolving; but our technology has brought us much further than our bodies may be able to sustain. This is not to decline the amazement of the human brain, but to expound on all of the incredible things the human brain was able to accomplish. If it were not for cultural evolution we would not have coats, umbrellas, shoes, and cups. All of these creations were birthed because of the human need for it. In my opinion, we as humans are constantly evolving to fit our needs. We as a species are ever-changing, and adapting our environment and our technology to be more useful to us. In a way the homo sapien sapien species will never stop evolving because it will never stop challenging old ideas and technologies; that concept in itself is truly beautiful to me. 

Synthesizing, Analyzing, Understanding

Exposing Students to More Challenging Subject Matter: 

A Response to Small Differences Matter

Everyday in school from the time of first grade to twelfth was spent summarizing something, comprehension skills, and the ability to regurgitate the information that had been forced down my throat the whole semester. Often times I spent nights reviewing information on a subject only to forget it a few months later. There are very few teachers who had the ability to give us a knowledge that would actually be retained, as opposed to those who just gave us knowledge without actually challenging us. And while, at that time I was thankful for my short term memory skills, I look back at some of time in school and think how wasteful it is.

I think it is important to change our school system to more effectively challenge the student in a way that will be beneficial to them and the world in the future. Like in Small Differences Matter: The DNA of Online Reading Comprehension, I think it is important to instill valuable tools in students that go beyond the seat of a high school desk and to a career. In Small Differences Matter, Mcverry mentions skills like analyzing and synthesizing and how those who have attained those skills do much better at online reading comprehension. I believe that these skills go beyond online reading comprehension and can be used in just about anywhere. Look at the recent South Park episode that pertains to ads. Most of the people can not decipher the difference between pertinent information and an ad. The ability to find information and determine its credibility is vital to success, whether you be looking for an online recipe or researching the American Revolution. Exposing the next generation of learner and doers to more challenging ideas of learning and using information allows them to be better tools in the world.