Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
I am an introverted extroverted person; I am more of an intuitive person and when it comes to decision making, I am more likely of a thinking person than an emotional person. I love perfecting the details of my life especially the things I get attached to like going to the gym and maintaining a healthy lifestyle and applying rationality to everything I do. I am an empathetic person in certain situation, but I think my experience in this course opened my eyes towards empathy from a different perspective.
Throughout my experience in this course I was able to grasp a lot of knowledge, skills and attitudes; of these was a skill that I will always use in my academic, social and career life, I should always have a minimum information about the background of the person I am talking with because there is no one single way to present a piece of information or knowledge to people as different people come from different backgrounds with different cultures and experiences, so in order to have a fruitful communication I should find different ways to communicate with different people.
When it comes to empathy, I learned to not only empathize with people whom I deal with on daily basis and in certain situations, but I learned to empathize with different groups of people and empathize with their sufferings, for example: when shifting to online education I learned to not only focus on my personal problems and the fact that I might have a slow internet or the fact that the content is a little bit hard or that I might lose track a little bit because other people might have bigger problems like: not having internet at all, no having personal laptop or not even having an environment at home that supports online conferences and focusing.
The course was eye opening to the fact that I should not be biased and that I don’t just have to think about myself, instead I should put myself in other people’s shoes and be more thoughtful and empathize with others and with their cases, giving them fair and equal chances. The in-class activities, articles and the Ted Talks helped me a lot in understanding these ideas. One of the articles was the othering “http://unboundeq.creativitycourse.org/activities/othering-belonging-annotation-via-hypothes_is/”: talking about how groups discriminate other groups calling them the others, feeling they are superior to the others, which is a behavior that might lead to violence. Another source was the Ted Talk video “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXuJ8yQf6dI&feature=youtu.be” about the search engine algorithms and how it is defective and should be less biased and adjusted to give fair and equal chance for different perceptions to show, for example rather than finding a picture of a beautiful girl when I search the word beautiful, I should also find pictures of the beautiful nature etc. and this shows how the search process doesn’t show everything with fair share due to the behavior of people.
I also learned that I shouldn’t believe everything I find on the internet and there are ways to search for credible news; going back to the Ted Talk about algorithm, I learned that I should be aware of the algorithm and how it works to be able to get credible information. Also, we had an in-class discussion about fake news and how we should trace the credibility or the fakeness of the source of a news.
If I were to show someone my learning in this course, I would show them Soliya reflection “https://omarmarakby.design.blog/2020/05/03/soliya-reflection/ “ as this online exchange program was a new experience for me, which I enjoyed a lot and I would do it again as the technology makes you live an enriching experience, of which you get exposed to different people from different countries and cultures. I would also show my work on Me and My biases “https://omarmarakby.design.blog/2020/03/10/me-and-my-biases/ “ and the process of self-criticizing and how it is important to understand yourself and be aware of your faults and try to improve from myself and strive to be a better person. And last but not least My digital literacies pathway “https://omarmarakby.design.blog/2020/05/10/my-digital-litracies-pathway/” , as it lit the bulb and made me see how social media became a daily ritual in our lives, we open our eyes to our mobile first thing without even thinking. The test also made me realize that I am confident and familiar with using technologies in general; when it comes to research and finding information, I am able to do that and use good searching tools. I might be good with the creative and innovative tools, but I don’t have an extensive knowledge with multimedia and editing tool and I don’t mind learning more. And lastly, I realized that the best way of learning is through combining different ways of learning to be able to grasp the whole experience.
I gained a lot of knowledge and experience self-traits from this course and I learned a lot about myself and about the digital world we’re living in. but, if I were to change anything about this course, I would’ve loved to take more outdoor classes if we were still on campus because I think it outdoor classes creates a more integrating and better environment, I would’ve wanted to have more talks with guest speakers, who have experience in the concepts of othering and discrimination and digital literacy, to gain more knowledge from them and since a huge part of the course was about different cultures and digital identities and digital literacies, I would have loved that one of the assignment was to get in touch in on campus with international students and help them out with assignments or to gather in an event and form discussions; something like that would’ve been a fruitful experience and last but not least, I would have loved to have a local field trip and get exposed to another cultures and also educate people about different digital tools and their usage.
Since this course added so much to my character and it was a valuable course, I think this course is for everyone as for sure it will somehow add something to every person, affect them, get them educated about digital literacy and let them add from their experience to others. I enjoyed a lot the in-class discussions unlike the Blog posts, It is not that it is not valuable, but since I am not a fan of writing or presenting my learning into writing, the Blog posts would not my first choice to present my learning, I’d rather reflect on my entire experience in the form of discussions with the doctor or a presentation with infographics, animations and voice over. However, I am still presenting my learning into writing because of time constraints.
Links:
Othering Article: http://unboundeq.creativitycourse.org/activities/othering-belonging-annotation-via-hypothes_is/
Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXuJ8yQf6dI&feature=youtu.be
My Learning
Soliya Reflection: https://omarmarakby.design.blog/2020/05/03/soliya-reflection/
Me and My Biases: https://omarmarakby.design.blog/2020/03/10/me-and-my-biases/ Digital Literacies: https://omarmarakby.design.blog/2020/05/10/my-digital-litracies-pathway/
Throughout the course we have been exposed to different types of tools, each has its own usage, interface and importance. Of these tools, I chose Seven that had the most impact on my way of learning: 1) Blackboard, 2) Slack, 3) Zoom, 4) Soliya, 5) WordPress, 6) Google package vs Microsoft office.
Blackboard is an educational hub that we use constantly to find on it the course materials, course grades, emails of the doctors and students if you want to get contact of anyone in the course to communicate with and blackboard collaborate was used during the online shifting. But It might not be the best tool for communication and announcements, since sometimes notifications about some announcements are not sent. And Blackboard collaborate is not that effective as Zoom in terms of connectivity.
When it comes to Slack, it is a platform which we can use it through the laptop or the mobile; we join using a link and creating an account, without having to put your private number unlike WhatsApp. Of its advantages are the ease of communication because of the direct message option and the ability to create different locked channels or chats for different subjects to avoid disorganization and confusion.
Zoom is a perfect hub for online conferencing, the problems are limited to two things and one of them was solved: 1) the fact that if you’re not premium, you won’t be able to maintain a meeting more than 40 mins, this might have a pro, which is time efficiency. 2)the security problem that anyone who tries random IDs, could’ve joined the meeting, but the problem was solved when the password option was created, that you cannot join the meeting except when putting the password. I can use it on the laptop or the mobile and the share screen option very beneficial if we want to do a presentation or if the doctor wants to explain something visually; during one of my classes the doctor was explaining something using the share screen option, but something went wrong with his laptop, so I instantly shared the screen from my laptop and we were able continue the class normally.
Soliya is an online exchange program, where I got to know people from different countries and I got exposed to different cultures. We got divided into groups according to measured parameters from the Survey we did and within each group we had 1 to 2 facilitators. The existence of the facilitators keeps the dynamics of the conversation going, there was no awkward silence. The platform is well organized as you need to press a certain button to talk as if you are raising your hand, avoiding interruption and every person could hear the other person talking. The technical team is always there to communicate the technical issue with. However, in my opinion the user interface could be more developed and the technical issues are more than the ones you might find in a tool like Zoom like: problem with the microphone, the microphone could disconnect without giving any notifications and the screen disconnects a lot.
We used WordPress for blog posting our assignments. The interface is user friendly and the its navigation is easy; it took me some effort to be able to organize the appearance of the blog and know the language and how to blog post because it is not like essay writing, but once I got hold of it, things were easy. It was easy to track my performance on it for the course purpose, comparing between each blog post and knowing if I am getting better or worse or am I on the same level.
Last but not least, Google package versus Microsoft office. Google package has an edge for working in groups and has different tools that facilitate group working because with google, you can work as a group online and update the sheet, slide or excel and build on each other’s work; unlike Microsoft if someone works he/she has to send his updates via email to the others and the compile them at the end and you might find repeated stuff as you are not able to view the progress online. Also, Google Package has Google forms, on which you can create surveys and I personally used it to create the survey for my project. However, in my opinion Microsoft PowerPoint and excel are better than Google slides and excel in terms of features and interface. In my Opinion, Slack, Zoom and WordPress could be used in the future in other context; as ZOOM has minimal connection issues and is an efficient and beneficial to and you can join with any account you don’t have to have certain email or account on Hotmail or Gmail. WordPress could be used in the future if I want to continue in the blog posting activity. And if I had the chance to do the Soliya experience all over again, I would do it because the technology makes you live an enriching experience, of which you get exposed to different people from different countries and cultures. However, it has a limited purpose and Cannot be used in the future in another context.
A dark technology supposedly connecting us globally, but it is actually driving us apart. We should understand how our data is affecting our lives. The Great Hack documentary movie discusses the case of the power of big data and privacy invasion scandal, which happened during 2016 elections. Cambridge Analytica data company “A country’s intelligence agency and a fully service propaganda machine” collected private data from some sources and mostly from Facebook to be able to work in the politics of various countries, including the United Kingdom’s Brexit campaign and the 2016 United States elections and affect people’s behaviors, more likely change people’s behaviors towards these incidents. Through the documentation of this incident or this scandal, we were able to see how our private lives are vulnerable, how all our personal information on social networks like Facebook, websites we visits, all transactions we make and every electronic interaction we do are easily accessed and gathered to be transformed into propaganda, campaigns, videos, pictures or advertisement used against us to wash our brains and modify our behaviors and way of thinking without us knowing, or do we know, but we’re not bothered? “we’re now the commodity, but we’re so in love with the gift of this free connectivity that no one bothers to read the terms and conditions”.
All what I could think of while watching the movie how theses technological platforms could sometimes be a bless and sometime be a nightmare, how the data and the platforms turned to a weapon more dangerous than guns that you could sometimes use against people and sometimes it could be used against you. It is a weapon that creates an information warfare. But is it just Facebook’s or Cambridge Analytic responsibility? Or are we creating a scapegoat to avoid facing the truth that it is also our responsibility to protect our data. Facebook and Cambridge Analytic are of course sinners, but we also did a mistake; The mistake of being careless, the mistake of being ignorant, the mistake of accepting all the terms and conditions without reading them and the mistake of believing everything we see without extra research. It is the job of companies like Cambridge Analytics to gather data and use them for marketing and propaganda to affect people’s behaviors, they are sinners, but we should be able to put an end to these sinners by not believing everything we read and listen too, we should put some extra effort in researching to know the truth, we should put some extra effort in knowing more about the application we’re downloading or the quiz we’re taking online to try and limit the invasion of our privacy; just sitting and waiting for data rights to be declared as human rights will not do us good for the time being because even if Cambridge Analytic is gone, the technology is not gone and there will be another Cambridge Analytic. We should be more aware because being ignorant doesn’t just affect us, but it also affects our friends.
In my opinion, combining different ways of learning is the best way to make sure the information have passed to everyone and understood by everyone and that there is enough practice applied; And that’s why I have chosen to combine the three pathways, I have chosen the twisting pathway Digital literacy.
Taught:
From All Aboard Stations, I have decided to learn more about the Smartphones, since Smartphones became powerful tools to connect us everywhere and anywhere, they became useful to almost every aspect of our lives and they even can replace computers to a great extent.
The lesson aimed to make people learn the main components of the software and the hardware of the phone. In my opinion the information about the software and the hardware wasn’t sophisticate nor it was information for a 1 year old person; It was just enough for people who want to know a little bit more about the Smart phones to make them conscious of what they’re dealing with. Information about differentiating between different types of smart phones was quick and wrapped; I think more information could be useful. And Lastly, Knowing some ways in which smartphones could be used in teaching and learning; I think most of us have tried a least once to apply this part during their classes. I personally have used my smartphone as a scanner and editor to grab digital copies of book pages, of course as a translator too, Scanning QR codes during FYE and some sessions, of course for answering polls, survey and quizzes and lastly for listening to a podcast.
In my opinion, All Abroad have manage to apply a benefiting way of Digital literacy; I like the idea of reading about something interesting and then applying it on a quiz for the information to stick more in your head. I have taken my quiz and earned my Badge.

Tinkering:
From ds106 I chose the Visual Assignment and I chose to create a collage with all of my favorite things and places, which I sincerely love and make me feel relaxed and at peace. Each pictures tells something about me and helped in building up my personality.
The Gym: Going to the Gym doesn’t just help in my physical development, but it also helps in the mental development, it helps me to let go of all the negativity; it is a place, where at the end of the day I let out all the negative, toxic and bad feelings and thoughts I have been building up throughout the days.
My cat: Having a pet made me more empathetic with others and made me care more about the people around me
AUC Campus Garden: The Campus is my second home, where I used to spend most of my time. And the Garden was a place that helps in having a clear mind for the day; A place where I have my morning coffee as a kick-off for the busy day and where I have my breaks to release some steam off and get energized for the rest of the day.
Home Balcony: My home will always be the place, where I let all my guards down, I don’t put on any masks and I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do, I have the freedom to do what I want. I love to enjoy this scenery from my balcony every morning.
The Beach: Enjoying the beauty of the nature, relaxing, releasing all the pressure and not thinking about anything. Only enjoying some time off.

Theory:
From the Mozilla Internet Health Report 2019 articles I have chosen to understand the issue of the privacy and security of the internet. The more we have technological and digital advancements, the more this issue of privacy and security becomes crucial. Not only it is easy for individual hackers to hack your phone, computer and profiles, but now businesses use our private information to rise, governments also use our information for political interests. In my opinion nowadays, it became very easy to access the private information of anyone due to the existence of smartphones and millions of applications that people download without reading anything about the privacy settings of those applications. So people should be more aware of this issue and start getting educated about it to protect themselves and their privacy and their rights.
Resources: https://internethealthreport.org/2019/understand-the-issue-privacy-and-security/
We worked on our game, Amir Abdel Haleem and I, trying to deliver a sense of a general daily routine with common decisions students should go through during quarantine. We first searched online for general tips that serves the well-being of the individual during lock-down. We were directed more towards the physical well-being and formulated a survey under the scope of this direction and sent it out to get the results of daily habits of people and what motivates them to workout and stuff like that.
However, afterwards we found that we needed to highlight more on mental and psychological well-being as well as the physical one. So, decided that we will construct our game based on the two aspects creating multiple scenarios that make the player walk through a whole day experience from the nigh before. When the player reaches the end of day he should get a report about his physical and psychological states as well as statistics about the decisions he made extracted from our survey and presented in the End of Day Report.
Our first draft of the game was having all he scenarios done and linked to each other as a setup that can be tested as well as its graphics, but the end of day reports were not ready yet as well as some polishing to the content of the game’s questions was needed still.
The experience of the us building the game made us realize the huge shift we as students are having in our academic experience as well as all the challenges and pressure we are facing to put in our best performance in academics and still maintain balance with everything else and also adapting to the circumstances that were imposed on us because of the spread of COVID-19.
The process overall was beneficial as an eye opener towards life changes that we did not consider it will impact our life heavily but even the minor changes did affect a lot. The minor changes maybe unrecognizable in the beginning but it a have a cumulative effect that may hit hard after short period of time. And from the technical aspect we underestimated the complexity of building the game with a lot of scenarios available in it.
My new experience is going through online discussions through an international connect program named “Soliya” offered through Exchange Portal. The program aims to connect people all around the world and stimulates discussions in many different topics. The program is designed to have four sessions of 2 hours each with a session once a week.
Thing I found unique in Soliya is the questionnaire that we did before starting the sessions, I think it served coordinating different people into groups that will serve their development best. Also, the fact that you get into a group with people from different backgrounds and places other than you as uncomfortable it may look as beneficial it was for me.
The online discussion was so organized and I guess the platform itself served this purpose along with the facilitator, everyone one had the room to speak without interruption and every one has the right to freely express their opinions without anyone being offended as all the participants kept in mind that we are all exchanging ideas and experiences. Also, our facilitator was so helpful in keeping the conversation going and ensuring we are all getting along the group.
Our group had students from Africa, Europe, North America, and Asia. We discussed a lot of topics in depth like what makes our identity what it is, the effect of social media and news media on people in general, how people constantly judging each other that may lead into grouping and racism.
For my personal experience, it felt so heavy in the beginning to get into the conversation and share my thoughts but it was because I didn’t feel comfortable having such discussion with people I barley know and just knew their names. But after almost half of the first session things started to smooth up and by the second session it was all well and good. Actually, by our last meaning I felt so sad that it was coming to an end, I felt connected to the group even if it was just few online meetings. I wanted to have more of our meetings as I really enjoyed our discussions and exploring our differences and perspectives on the topics we discussed. Overall it was mind opening experience that I would like to have it again anytime.
(In collaboration with Amir Abel Haleem)
Living a healthy lifestyle with a healthy daily routine is something we always take into our consideration and act upon. In my opinion every person should take care of themselves by maintaining a fitness routine, a healthy diet and good sleeping cycle; not just to stay fit, but also to build a healthy body with a good immune system and try to avoid getting sick a lot.
During the covid-19 situation a lot of articles and a lot of people are trying to focus on this part of life in order to maintain a good immune system that could fight such viruses. What I think are the most beneficial things in the three articles below 1) a trusted source, 2) the fact that theses articles gives you tips but they don’t just leave you there, the articles also show you how to do them and makes things easier on you for example: for the physical activities, there are tips and then there are examples, pictures and videos of activities and for the nutrition part they have some easy to find ingredients and easy recipes. Lastly, the articles reflect on the habits that people acquired as a reaction to the virus and the quarantine like panic-buying and how to avoid them and what you really need to buy stock from and the things that can be stocked.
But there is also the negative side to theses articles; the fact that these kind of articles are redundant and cliché, most of them also don’t take into consideration the mental health and the psychological state of people for the current situation; Most of the articles and the social media are focused on home work-outs and home-recipes to keep your good shape and “summer body”, which is okay because they help maintain a good physical health but we are forgetting the mental health of people. People need to read and hear something that relates to their psychological state and help them overcome it first, only then it will reflect directly not only on the fitness aspect but all other aspects of their lives.
References:
Online studying and working from home might make it easier for you to create a good time managed schedule for your studying and for other plans in your day; all you have to do is create your own table; gather up information from your course presentation or syllabus on how the semester will go on in terms of deadlines, course materials, exams and assignments for each course and then you might add important dates to you like: planned dinner with family. The trick here is not creating this very nice time planned schedule, but it is following the schedule, giving yourself the mental push and energy to work on these stuff as planned not for example spend the day sleeping.
To try and solve this problem, one might start narrowing the big picture semester schedule to a weekly one, prioritizing the weekly commitments and including the class times, work commitments, volunteer roles, practicum placements, as well as any other regular events. And then narrow it down a little bit more to daily schedule, helping in managing the daily tasks and prioritizing daily tasks based on deadlines, how much time they’ll take can the task wait or not and this schedule will help in completing all of the high priority tasks. And the best thing to do is to divide your day, we have a lot of time to do everything, so we might put small blocks of time for everything to benefit more and not feel trapped all the day doing one thing.
Daily tasks could be managed through paper planner, online calendar or a time management app, each has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. I personally prefer using the online calendar as I already know the interface and been using it even before online learning, it is easy to share with group members and it is a friendly user platform. To communicate and learn in the online learning environment, one should use the email professionally, try to make it grammatically correct, keep it brief, send the email for something that you actually need and wait for the reply for a while. Other tools that could be used to communicate are: forums, ePortfolios and online assignments. Lastly, it is very beneficiary to give and receive a feedback on What is being done correctly and well, How it can be improved and What the next steps might be.
I liked spent more because of the better interface and how it shows real statistics after each decision you make. I felt stressed while playing the game, so what about people who get exposed to this in their daily lives. The game makes you empathize with poverty and the fact that you are put in a reality like situation, at which you have to take calculated decisions makes you understand how severe those decisions are and makes you appreciate the value of the luxury we have. The question is “does money really buys everything?” We live our daily lives thinking that money is not everything, but actually it is the asset that leads to having each and every other basic need like: being healthy and buying food to survive and it also buys you freedom. “It’s just stuff. Until you don’t have it”
The Syrian refugee game was good in raising awareness, but it is not as good as spent in terms of the interface and the time; the game is very short and it doesn’t put you through the same detailed scenarios as spent, so you don’t actually get a taste of the real feeling .
In conclusion, I though spent was more realistic due to the fact that it showed real statistics after each decision, also because it gives you a taste of what reality could be, making you empathize with poverty. I also liked that you get to take a small part or take a little action by donating at the end of the game.
Defining myself can be very difficult as looking to myself as a human being ongoing continuous changes and progress adapting different mentalities and maturing more and more. However, there are some basic stuff that I feel proud to present myself with. I feel pride in being Egyptian, being my parent’s greatest investment, a bigger brother for my sister, a former athlete, an engineer, a politically active individual, I love teaching stuff to others and helping them within my maximum capacity. What can affects my behavior within different circles is adapting the language of each group and I don’t mean spoken language but the terms used and their general mentality in order not offend any of them and deliver my message clearly.
My identity is my story, my beliefs and qualities and what defines me and makes me who I am; how I tell my story, how someone else tells my story is what defines my identity and how my story is told and from where the story has begun could completely change my identity. An example of identity is the your Name, it could also be one of the things that people could be biased about. There are 3 kinds of areas of bias; First: noticing some differences more than other like gender, color, age and physical disability and stereotyping with particular groups, Second: the way we interpret the world around us like: priming and being influenced without realizing, quick decision making that make us stop scanning or processing and experience and expectations and Third: the way we socialize in groups, in-groups versus out or other groups, how we behave differently towards in-groups members, and view our in-group differently from out-group; which brings us to othering and how othering is not just a problem of prejudice, but it’s a way that leads to the plantation group-based inequality and marginality. It’s a widespread problem in the world, denying the full inclusion or certain groups in society and it begins from the role model, and the higher power, as much your story and identity could be powerful based on your power in the society, also being not included begin by your power in the society or how powerful or role models view you; It is very important to solve the problem of othering, not only using temporarily solutions that won’t last; Solutions must not only improve intergroup relations, but reduce intergroup inequalities and group-based marginality, The solution must Belongingness, inclusiveness, improving the well-being of everyone, encouraging new identities and reframing individual and group identities. We want to avoid anxieties that can be turned into fear and anger or empathy and collective solidarity.


It was a little bit different than my expectations because I haven’t thought before about my preference to the color of skin, I know people with different tones of skin color and I judge more or less based on personality. When it comes to the body type, I may prefer the well-toned and healthy body due to the fact that I spent part of my life dedicated to health, weight lifting and exercising, but I am not biased against Fat. I think that the experience of the IAT is a different experience; It is not the ordinary online test that we would do and it doesn’t judge your personality based on questions that you might answer in a biased way unintentionally, but it judges in a different way.
Of the many biases I occasionally get to see are: discrimination against women’s driving skills, race bias like seeing someone who is white and has narrow eyes and immediately assuming they’re are Chinese when they might not be and last but not least also about women saying “you’re all women, you don’t know what you want exactly, all of you are like this… etc
A case of bias I read recently online is about gender inequality. “A man and a woman switched names at work for a week” “Martin R. Schneider, an editor for the movie-reviewing site Front Row Central based in Philadelphia, realized men and women are treated differently in the workplace after he accidentally signed off on emails using his female co-worker’s signature “
Mr. Schneider thought his colleague Nicole was a little bit slow to get the tasks done than him due to his higher level of experience, until he accidentally switched his signature with Nicole’s and was signing all his emails as Nicole, he found out that clients are being so rude to her and act difficult just because she is a woman they don’t trust her expertise and once he reintroduced himself to the client the issues disappeared so he decided to switch signatures with her for a week and suddenly she was finishing tasks faster than him.
A behavior like this could cause discouragement to Nicole in her work life; it could’ve also lead to her being fired from her job, if it was not for Mr.Schneider realizing the issue.
One of my main bias is discrimination against women’s driving skills; whenever I see someone driving irrationally before seeing who os the person in the car, I assume she is a woman. We are all bias, accidentally we all are putten in a state when we are bias and I try as much as I can to not let this bias behavior control me and get mad immediately whenever I see an irrationality while driving.
References:
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/video/day-learning-2013-binna-kandola-diffusing-bias