Nardine Emad

I learned to use new tools like slack, zoom, hypothesis, google forms and google slides as well. I have learned from zoom how it’s so easy to connect with people around us and how an easy tool like that can help so many students around the world attend classes in the time of crisis like nowadays. When using zoom I learned how to share my screen when I had to do a presentation which was the first time I do it and it was very easy and very suitable for the purpose of a presentation. I also learned from zoom as well as many other things in this course how privacy online is very important when we had to set a password so that only the people who have it can join or when there had to be permission given by the Dr in order to access the room. However, I think the problem with zoom is that it only stays for 45 mins like what happened when we had our first zoom meeting when there was rain, but I guess the uni made accounts for the doctors for that reason. I learned how to use the hypothesis tool and it was my first time using it in this course, it’s a suitable tool for drs to use in order for students to interact with writings of different people and see the opinions of other students about these writings. Slack was also new to me, I liked that it was engaging, and we could ask questions and share memes I think I would like to use this tool in the future. I think it was better than blackboard especially when we switched to the online model of uni because it could be accessed on the phone easier than blackboard the application is better and sends notifications and even more colorful and more pleasant to look at. Finally using google slides vs google forms. I liked google forms more it was easier and clearer and quicker while doing the game. When I started with slides I was confused with the order and about to give up and just write a story, but when I used forms, I got the hang of it and did the game. I actually acquired a bit of patience using google forms because I had to test it every time, I added a new scenario to make sure of the flow of the game. I learned that I’m not very patient and sometimes I like to take the easy way out and that’s why I’m glad I stuck with the game.

I chose to go with the taught path to have a hands on experience. I started with the lesson on smartphones, it seemed interesting to find out more about the thing that spends more time with us than our friends and family. The lesson was very interesting. It first gave some info about how the phone itself works and how the screen is made and the technicalities of the phone itself. What was really interesting is when the lesson took me to a section on how to use my phone in education, this device is something we use on daily bases as a tool for entertainment and social media but there are many beneficial uses for it. Phones can be used by students and faculty in education and it can also be used in the workplace in many different ways. Filming and editing is one way for students and teachers, scanning apps that could give access to books and written documents, augmented reality and overlaying texts and images and videos on images of real scenes i like that the lesson gave an example of overlaying with a popular game that i’m sure most people played which is pokemon go. It can also be used for presenting using bluetooth airplay and cast applications, this makes it so much easier than carrying around a laptop everywhere. It can also be used for quizzes and polls. It made me think about slack and how communication was easier using an app, and apps of the auc banner and blackboard and how it’s easier to use an app on the phone than a website on a computer now adays. I have been trying so hard to monitor my screen time after attending a lecture called digital addiction in a camp and this lesson made me see the phone as a tool for education and work not just social media and communication and games so monitoring what i use on my phone through screen time app should give me an idea if i use it for a good use or just social media and gaming apps. 

The second lesson i took was the online security station, when we talked in class and watched videos about how all of our info is online for anyone to see and the video about the coffee house and how much info they found out about people through their facebook was shocking to me, taking this lesson i thought they would focus on what information to add however it was more about how to secure this information, which was also something important to think about. I understood the importance of smart passwords and how it’s beneficial to have different passwords for your different platforms. This lesson taught me about Phishing, i knew a bit about the concept from a tv show that shows how people are cat fished through social media and dating apps, but i thought i can never be exposed to that since i don’t talk to people i don’t know. However this isn’t the case, people can be phished through their emails, emails are sent in an urgent format and seem very legit so we believe the email and click the link and get redirected to a website that is an exact copy of the original one so we believe it’s real and enter our credentials handing it to thieves who can now have access to all our info including credit card details, pictures and everything. This lesson thankfully included a part on how to tell if this email is not real and how to avoid this from happening, by grammar check because there is almost always a grammatical mistake in the email, and by checking the urls and the spelling of everything. The lesson also included a part about viruses and malware but this wasn’t very interesting to me. It was educational for sure but I didn’t enjoy learning about the different types of malware. Finally i liked the facts that this lesson started with about the cyber attack and information stolen numbers it was very scary learning that 1 to 2 billion people were attacked and had their info stolen in 2015 makes me think 1 to 2 billion times before clicking on an email and entering any of my info online.

I chose to create a game about Panic buying. my research was in the form of observation and two interviews one with my mom who is the best example of a panic buyer and another interview with a small grocery store owner, my questions were mainly about clients who regularly buy from him to try to monitor the change in their buying behavior. I chose canned food and fresh food because he mentioned that most of the people who usually buy from him fresh food started to buy frozen and canned food in bulk even though they don’t do that. What i want people to think about from my game is the real reason behind their excessive shopping and why they are suddenly buying in bulks. studies have shown that panic shopping is because of herd behavior, people start to panic when they anticipate shortage and so they start to buy in bulks, then other people notice that others are over buying so they do the same thing which therefore creates a shortage. people end up creating what they anticipated would happen. A clear example of this is when there was a storm a month ago and this is what started my interest. EGYPTIANS CREATED SHORTAGE OUT OF NOTHING. supplies were running out from supermarket even-though the weather forecast anticipated the storm will last two days, people were still buying like it would last weeks. My players will face different scenarios and they will have to make decisions that will have different consequences. they will go on a journey from the minute they leave their house to the minute they leave the supermarket.

This is a link to my game

These are the images I used i got all my images from Pixabay.com

https://pixabay.com/vectors/canned-food-tin-can-vegetables-149221/

https://pixabay.com/vectors/shopping-cart-basket-pushcart-29647/

https://pixabay.com/vectors/market-icon-supermarket-store-food-5043879/

https://pixabay.com/vectors/swiss-cheese-swiss-cheese-food-575540/

https://pixabay.com/vectors/counter-sales-man-supermarket-309880/

https://pixabay.com/vectors/medical-icon-isolated-sickness-5055813/

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/quarantine-coronavirus-home-office-5049110/

I actually really enjoyed the game, i used to play Pictionary with my friends which is similar but with people rather than an AI and here bias is seen. bias towards what the AI is built to see and what it is designed to recognize. Creating an algorithm that is unbiased is very hard there will always be unbiased implications to any algorithm. This game is biased because how an AI translates what i was drawing is based on his understanding of what this looks like even though my understanding of it is different.

The TedTalk was eyeopening, how she started with showing what came up in google when she first started searching black women was shocking, how black women were seen, pornified and looked at as only sexual beings instead of normal humans, and how the search engine would have been completely different if white woman was entered, the internet is a clear racist place and we don’t even notice it. we consider technology to be the best creation and we neglect the bias and the inequity it puts in the world and embeds in the minds of people without them even being aware of what is fed to their minds. her talk shed a light on how search engines misrepresent women and how we don’t see the ethical dilemma in that and we think that search engines are a great tool to use, however there is bias built in them and how money is influencing what we see rather than credibility. We are fed opinions through search engines like the example of beauty, what we get when we search for something is not the true reality, it’s the pictures that are more popular rather than the more realistic or more credible.

My game takes you on a journey to and through the supermarket, with different situations you have to make decisions based on the Situation described. My aim in the game is to make whomever is playing think of why he is over panicking and over buying products. is it because people around him are buying in bulk, or because he actually believes he needs all the products. the first draft is still missing another part of the game with more scenarios to go through. I’m planning to add scenarios interacting with another shoppers and two scenarios interacting with workers in the supermarket.

This is a like to my game https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfK52sBp02b57Va9BLCr25CyoDP3oaDMGFdolBuqjP4eocyCg/viewform?usp=sf_link

I decided to talk about stress shopping and how people went crazy with grocery shopping and over bought supplies they don’t need. In order to conduct research i decided to go to supermarkets and observe, this however has been a bit time consuming and had limitations like the curfew and me not being to go alot due to trying to keep social distance and staying at home. I also monitored constantly what my mom was buying everytime she came back from the supermarket to try and see if she’s still over shopping or not.

what made me very interesting is inspite of people needing to keep social distancing this was a time where supermarkets were floooding with people, i went to seoudi and had to leave without anything because the que to the cashier could take up to two hours. in my research i focused on what products people were buying alot and that seemed to be products that have a big shelf life, for example rice, pasta, canned goods. people were stocking as if they’re staying at home for a couple of months. tissues, wipes and sanitizers the second day COVID was announced a pandemic were out of stock in Oscar, Seoudi and most of the pharmacies in new cairo.. or atleast the ones i checked.

what i found extremely interesting and surprising actually, the last two times i went to observe people were starting to shop less and supermarkets are going back to their normal rate of people visiting. even-though the number of cases is actually increasing and the chances of a lockdown are supposedly higher if the numbers keep increasing. this lead me to the conclusion that Egyptians or atleast some of them in my opinion are not scared of COVID19 or over shopped because they wanted to keep social distance and stay home. it was just the scare and the hype of the curfew and seeing everyone buying made them feel like MAYBE they wouldn’t be able to find anything if they didn’t buy it now. I was talking to my mom she told me she started to buy less because she saw people buying less and because things are getting back to normal, when in reality things are not and this brings the question of are we scared of the virus and getting infected and sadly losing loved ones and that is why we overshop and prepare ourselves or are we just following what others are doing and affected by what the overall feel of the people around us? This is what i want my players to experience at the end.

These games are all eye openers, experiencing this and putting my self in other people’s shoes made me see how privileged i am. The two games we did in class were a bit hard, especially spent. I couldn’t last the whole month and when i had the option not to pay for something i didn’t, even-though some of the things are essential like car loans and dental care.. this made me think about my life and the things i take for granted, like simply going to the dentist when i have a minor tooth ache and being able to drive around in my car not worried about paying for it. The other game about The Syrian refugee, thankfully i made it to Europe, however i can’t imagine the choices they have to take, i couldn’t make a decision on my laptop how on earth do they decide if they could possibly drown or get sent back to Syria.. the lengths they go to reach any place in Europe was also eye opening to how refugees are suffering.

The games I chose to play were a bit depressing as well, especially the burr me, my love one. how the game showed that because of all the bombings that took place in Syria people were not getting any medical attention and even-though doctors were volunteering they didn’t have enough supplies to save everyone, which made me go back to the corona virus spreading around and how tough it is to choose who to save and who is left to die. I really liked how the game was made into a conversation between a couple and how i was a part of the game choosing what to say, it was very interesting.

The second game i played was fake it to make it, this was actually very fun to play, and interesting to see how easily you could make people believe anything if you choose the right audience and the right title and wording you could fool them into reading any article that is fake or not necessarily important. I made the money I needed easily and had fun playing it haha.

The third game I chose is project Honduras, the game was light to play eventhough it was about natural disasters, maybe because it was animated it made it ok to play. the game didn’t really affect me i did’t get the extent of the problem from it. I think it could have been better if i had a fewer number of volunteers or maybe if it was done differently to show how big of an issue floods and hurricanes are, but honestly i was just trying to allocate my volunteers depending on the numbers needed rather than the importance of the issue. I didn’t really like this one.

The last one i chose was by students about domestic abuse, it was very VERY interesting how after every question they gave an explanation that made me more aware of how domestic abuse has an effect on people, i like how they even tackled how silence treatment that we take lightly in every relationship could be a sign that something is wrong, i like how they focused on every small issue that we sometimes ignore, and how a person hitting someone in public not necessarily hitting you could be bad for you eventhough the harm was not done to you. I feel we sometimes ignore signs of violence because it’s not against us and not see how this could easily be us at any moment. It was interesting that the game showed statistics about domestic abuse in housholds in Egypt, it was eyeopening to see that this occurs more frequent than i thought it did.

Playing these games made me see many things differently, i never thought playing a game could change how i think and look at many things around me. I am aware now of issues i hadn’t really thought about before.

I saw a meme yesterday that i just couldn’t resist sharing, its a meme that talks about the weather and corona virus.

What i like about this meme is not just because it’s a famous song or how clever it is. In times of crisis i always admire the simplicity of the Egyptian people. There is a pandemic and a wave of terrible weather and yet somehow we find a way to lighten up the mood and have a little laugh. what concerns me though is that sometimes this belittles the issue in a way. For example the bad weather we are facing when you open any social media you would find jokes and people sharing memes and funny videos in the midst of all this joking maybe you lose how big of a threat some things are. I believe in the importance of joking, I had just read about corona being officially a “pandemic” and this meme made me laugh and for a second feel better, however i think social media should also be used to raise awareness and to tell people how great of a danger something is not just to joke about the issue.