Friday, August 26, 2016

CST 361s Week 8

Week 8

I'm so glad that this is the last week of this course and we get to move on to more technical courses. I do see how service learning can be a beneficial course for students because they develop themselves by servicing others, gain connections in the community, and may get to work on products that solve real-life problems (not hypothetical assignments developed by instructors). However, this is not what I am looking to get out of school at this time. What bothered me most about this class is that it was more expensive than the other courses because it was assigned 5 units instead of the usual 4 units. It was difficult and time consuming, but I don't necessarily want to pay more because of that.

I've wrapped up the final material for this course, a written final report and a mini documentary, and am ready to begin the assignments for the next course that are already released.

The final report was pretty straightforward to complete, but the mini documentary took a bit more time. Last weekend I went to the Santa Monica Pier to get some background footage or filler footage for it and I've basically spent the whole week working on it in chunks. I put together some slides and transcripts over the weekend. Throughout the work week I recorded portions of the video and then spent the final two nights piecing it all After publishing it, I realized that I messed up aligning the audio on a slide and put it in the wrong place (whoops!). I didn't want to go through the whole process of republishing ... so it's just going to have to be. This may be a teaser, but I don't really want to share it publicly so I won't be listing it here this time.

Saturday, August 20, 2016

CST 361s Week 7

Week 7

The material for this week was extremely brief because there are a week and a half to complete two modules. There was a quick assignment to go over and understand the fourth service learning outcome, which is multicultural community building or civic engagement and that was pretty simple and straight forward. The only other assignment (other than internal forum posts and blog entries) was to read Five Ways Social Entrepreneurs Use Technology to Increase Their Impact. This article describes how social entrepreneurs can better use or interact with technology to drive their idea. First, the author describes the importance of hands-on experience with building technology as opposed to only learning it. By giving women the experience of working with technology and solving problems, we can come closer to closing the gender gap. The article also says that it's beneficial to have stakeholders in a project, alter the perceptions of society and people marginalized, and share data with the community.

My service learning hours are actually complete, but I have been doing a few things to wrap up my work with my service learner outside of this course. It's been exhausting and I'm really glad that I can wind down a bit for a week before my next two courses begin again.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

CST 361s Week 6

Week 6

This week was much lighter work-wise and I really appreciated it! I was able to get a lot more done on the website for my service-learning partner. I'm really happy with the work I've been able to do and I hope that they like my improvements. I attempted to make their website more admin-friendly while I completed tasks by adding useful content to their dashboard, cleaning up the navigation links to only the ones used, and also renaming some of the links to be clearer. I put a ton of hours into working with my partner the past couple of weeks and completed 30 hours worth of work. I've sent off all of the forms to wrap up that portion of the course and will get it turned in soon.

As for the coursework, we basically just created a storyboard for our mini-documentary and did some reflection assignments (video and analysis of vide). They're pretty straightforward, but I definitely struggled with the documentary portion and will likely struggle more with creating the documentary itself! Working remotely has extreme disadvantages here, but I'll use what I have access to in order to make something that is hopefully at least presentable.


Sunday, August 7, 2016

CST 361s Week 5

Week 5

The reading this week covered the difference between equity and equality in regards to social justice. It's interesting to consider the difference and what it is that we're striving for exactly when advocating for social justice. Overall, we just want everyone to have the same opportunities. The videos this week were about Black Girls Code and their mission and how gaming can change the world. Both of the videos highlighted how technology can make an impact. Black Girls Code gives young black women a potentially new opportunity through learning to code. Additionally, they are helping to add diversity to the tech industry. The second video suggests utilizing games to change the world. It's an interesting idea and I think it could take us somewhere when more creative minds get involved.

We continued learning about project management through Coursera's Project Management Basics course. The course itself is fine and relatively interesting. It may be nice to follow it up with the Agile development ideology since it's so prominent in the tech industry right now (even if it isn't ideal for projects).

I'm putting a lot more time into my contributions with my service-learning partner. After posting the basic information they wanted to their website, I'm now able to focus on the larger portions. In particular, I'm focusing on adding an event calendar. This has been a bit difficult because I don't have direct access to their server and I'm trying to manipulate the website through their drupal system. Hopefully, I'll get that figured out soon.