User:Aveerell

Hello, my name is Apoorva. I am a student currently enrolled in CIS2 at De Anza.

CIS2 Midterm
The low adult literacy rate is an issue we have been struggling with for a long time despite the efforts to limit it. According to a study by the US Department of Education, 32 million adults in the US cannot read. They cannot read anything more than a children's picture book. Literacy is very important for personal growth, empowerment, economic security, social change, etc. but according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, 14 percent of American adults showed "below basic" literacy level and 29 percent showed a "basic" literacy level and is not any better than it was 10 years ago! It has been discovered that traditional learning methods only reach 2 million to 3 million people, a major problem being the limited course locations. Also, with research showing that 77 percent of the American population now owning a smartphone, a lot of people have been trying to promote adult literacy through apps.

1. https://learningupgradeapp.com

The group, Learning Upgrade from San Diego, California tied with another group for the Adult Literacy XPrize grand prize. They developed an app called, Learning Upgrade that helps adults learn English and Math in a fun way, with videos, songs, games, and rewards to motivate the users. This app is now available on both Android and iOS devices for free.

2. https://www.amrita.edu/news/amrita-s-learning-app-wins-125000-prize-us-based-xprize-adult-literacy-competition

AmritaCREATE, an educational research laboratory affiliated with Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, has developed a two-track adult literacy app for both English Language Learners and native speakers. They tailored their learning material to the needs and interests of diverse groups to motivate them to use the app even for a short time every day.

3. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/04/18/choice-humanitarian-partners-microsoft-edge-launch-accent-digital-literacy-tool/#9xroJfJTJhy08hep.97

Microsoft has partnered with the non-profit organization CHOICE Humanitarian to release a browser-based digital literacy tool, called Accent. They deployed Accent in underprivileged regions of Guatemala to teach local women Spanish with fluent teachers to guide the class.

CIS2 Final Project
1. Introductions This article is a great introduction to the course. It talks about how the internet is affecting the people and society, and the changes in recent history caused by the internet. It also states that the current "network society" is a result of the digital revolution and sociocultural changes. The actual article is very lengthy(13 pages) but this shorter version of it done by MIT, does a very good job of making this readable and gets the point across to the reader without missing anything.
 * https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530566/the-impact-of-the-internet-on-society-a-global-perspective/ (New Search, Favorite)

Internet of Things(IoT) is basically an extension of the internet into the objects we use everyday and physical devices. These devices can be remotely controlled and monitored and they also share the information like location, user profile, audio, etc. An example of an IoT device that is used widely is smart speakers like Alexa, Google Home, etc. This does make things easier for us but there are also a lot of security risks that come along with it. This article talks about the rapid growth of the Internet of Things without proper security measures and what it could mean.
 * https://www.pewinternet.org/2017/06/06/the-internet-of-things-connectivity-binge-what-are-the-implications/ (Selected Media)

2. Privacy and Freedom of Speech With data theft and leakage being rapidly growing phenomena, it is very important to know what is safe to share online and what is not safe to share online. This article tells us what kind of information should not be shared online and when we are over-sharing. This one incident mentioned in the article really caught my interest - an Australian girl sued her parents for posting 500+ potty pictures and another incident that I thought was funny was - a guy who called in sick at work and then bragged on Facebook about it, got fired. What really surprised me is that over 40 percent of the people on Facebook leave their profile open to the public, which means everything they post is available to a billion people!
 * https://askbobrankin.com/never_share_these_things_online.html (Protect It - Media)

Search engines and advertising networks love to track and profile your online activities. As mentioned in the article, most of the browsers do allow us to search in private mode but they are more focused on our offline privacy rather than stopping trackers from tracking our browser history. I think this article is important as it lets people know that Firefox Focus and DuckDuckGo privacy browsers are browsers that offer a completely private browsing experience and stop trackers from tracking us all the time. However, the only downside is that these apps are available only on mobile phones but they do offer extensions on another browser. Thanks to this article, I now use the DuckDuckGo browser instead of Google Chrome. This article further lists the features of both the browsers and compares them to see which is a better browser.
 * https://www.guidingtech.com/firefox-focus-vs-duckduckgo-best-browser-privacy/ (Protect It - Media, Favorite)

3. Intellectual Property This video introduces us to the concept of copyright in an entertaining manner. The creator, Ryan Molton, states that copyright means being aware of and respecting the rights of other creators. He also goes over the copyright rules that we should all live by.
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=eATwzWz1Dzw (Selected Media, Favorite)

We all know that AI is a rapidly growing field but what shocked me was the statement in the article, "WE’VE BEEN WARNED ABOUT AI AND MUSIC FOR OVER 50 YEARS, BUT NO ONE’S PREPARED". Of course, AI can make music but I did not think it can create music so perfectly that people cannot distinguish if it was an AI or the artist itself. Sure, AI can be used to help an artist but I believe it can and will lead to the loss of creativity in the future if artists continue using AI for their work.
 * https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/17/18299563/ai-algorithm-music-law-copyright-human (Discussion)

4. Crime This article provides an infographic to the effects of cybercrime. It defines cybercrime - it constitutes of any and all criminal activities carried out by means of computers or the Internet. The article also lists the different methods victims could be attacked, telltale signs of encountering a cyber criminal, and it also lists the different measures we can take to protect ourselves against cybercrime. I always thought of the negatives of cybercrime but this article has let me think about it in a new perspective - there has been a growth in the job market to fight cybercrime, which is the only positive side, I think, of cybercrime.
 * https://www.ashford.edu/online-degrees/criminal-justice/how-cybercrime-affects-society#info (Discussion, Favorite)

This article is very interesting and important. It talks about an incident in which an international group of hackers was able to steal directly from the bank instead of from the customers. They stole about $1 billion from 100 banks across 30 countries. They were able to do this by installing malware that let them take control of the banks' internal operations. Previously, hackers would steal from the customers but this incident got a lot of experts worried that stealing directly from the banks could become a new trend. The hackers spent 2 years preparing for this attack using phishing and other techniques to infect the bank employee computers and to spread the virus to the entire network.
 * https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/02/16/bank-hesit-cybersecurity-kaspersky-report/23509937/ (New Search)

5. Employment, Education, and Entertainment This website is helpful to the people who are interested in STEM, which is currently a field that is growing exponentially with so many people interested in it. This website introduces EiE, Engineering in Elementary. EiE is a curriculum designed by the Museum of Science, Boston. It can be used by students and educators in K-8 grades. They offer both school and after school programs and support from elementary school, with continued support through high school. It is really important to make sure engineering is also given as much importance as science, math, and technology as engineering is the final product of the work of the other fields.
 * https://www.eie.org (Discussion)

This article talks about what people view recess as and what it actually is and its importance. People view recess as a break from learning but according to this article, free play is also part of the learning process. Playing improves divergent thinking, flexible thinking, and creativity and important social-emotional skills like teamwork and conflict resolution. . However, nowadays, with children under pressure to study and perform their best, schools are cutting down on recess. This method is short-sighted. Play has classroom benefits as well! It reduces off-task disruptions and increases academic achievement. Therefore, it is important that students have enough time to play.
 * http://www.spencerauthor.com/the-case-for-more-recess/ (Discussion, Favorite)

6. Midterm - Grand Challenges In present times, there are a lot of places struggling because of the shortage of water. To help solve this problem, a California-based team of architects, "Skysource/Skywater Alliance", built a shipping container that can harvest enough water from the air to satisfy 100 people's daily needs. There are a lot of other people who have come up with technology to create water from thin air but that was all only in small amounts, this is the first project that can extract at least 2,000 liters of water per day, at the cost of less than 2 cents per liter. They even won the Water Abundance XPrize because they "demonstrated the greatest ability to create decentralized access to water."
 * https://www.businessinsider.in/Two-architects-just-won-1-5-million-for-creating-a-device-that-can-pull-clean-drinking-water-out-of-thin-air/articleshow/66337216.cms (Discussion, Favorite)

Artificial Intelligence(AI) might be the next biggest discovery in technology since the internet or computers itself. AI can be used in various fields like medical care, automation, etc. In this Forbes article, the author tells us how to use AI for problem-solving. He mentions three criteria that his team follows:
 * https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/07/23/what-problems-should-you-solve-with-ai/#60a545b337f2 (Discussion)

a. Use AI to solve problems you can prototype first: Doing so will provide an opportunity to test, iterate and fail fast at a low cost and in a safe environment.

b. Use AI to solve problems in applications where you can afford to make mistakes: I think this is the most important point since, it is humans who have invented AI, and humans can make mistakes. It is important to start deploying AI in areas where the cost of making mistakes will not make a significant negative impact on anything.

c. Use AI to solve specific problems, not entire systems.

7. Evaluating and Controlling Technology Nowadays, people are using digital money, i.e. using credit cards, debit cards, etc., instead of carrying cash. It is very easy to lose track of how much we spend using cards since all we have to do is swipe once. To avoid spending over-limit, Credit Sesame helps plan all of our expenses and also helps us to be on track of our credit cards, helping in this way to improve our credit knowledge and credit score.
 * https://www.creditsesame.com (Discussion)

Net Neutrality is defined as "the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, or method of communication." This Quora page gives all the pros and cons of net neutrality and why net neutrality should not be revoked.
 * https://www.quora.com/Is-net-neutrality-a-good-idea-or-a-bad-idea-What-are-the-pros-and-cons?redirected_qid=21197471&share=1 (Selected Media, Favorite)

8. Risks, Failures, and Responsibilities Computers now are used in almost all aspects of our lives, this includes the health and medical care field. Computers are becoming a very important aspect of the medical field as they are used by doctors to diagnose a patient more accurately and give them the necessary treatment. This article lists 10 different ways computers are used in the medical field.
 * https://www.techwalla.com/articles/10-ways-computers-are-used-in-medicine (Discussion)

Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. One would think that machines can never make mistakes but according to the article, a study titled, "The Elephant in the Room", published on August 9, 2018, has found that AI systems have failed a vision test that a child could get through with ease. The study basically lists a lot of common failures of state-of-the-art object detectors. It is mentioned in the article that the present best object detectors work in a way that information flows through them in only one direction. Also, Amir Rosenfeld, a researcher at York University in Toronto, said that the new work shows “how brittle current object detection systems are.”
 * https://www.quantamagazine.org/machine-learning-confronts-the-elephant-in-the-room-20180920/ (Selected Media, Favorite)

9. Anytime, Anywhere Thunkable is a cross-platform that enables us to build our own apps just by dragging and dropping the components we want and connecting them together. A cross-platform means that any app created on it can work on both Android and iOS, flutter is another example of a cross-platform. Thunkable also lets us to just customize already existing apps instead of creating one from scratch, and they also offer live chat support.
 * https://thunkable.com/#/ (Selected Media)

In this TED Talk, Lloyd Pendleton talks about how he went from being skeptic to believing in the Housing First approach to homelessness. The Housing First approach means providing the displaced with short-term assistance to find permanent housing quickly and without conditions. He also talks about how it led to a 91 percent reduction in homelessness over a ten-year period in Utah!
 * https://www.ted.com/talks/lloyd_pendleton_the_housing_first_approach_to_homelessness (Discussion, Favorite)

10. Technology Advances, Social Trends Self-driving cars has been a topic about which a lot of people have mixed feelings. There have been multiple accidents caused because of self-driving cars. Despite this, Volvo Trucks' Vera - an autonomous vehicle, which does not have a cabin itself to tow goods around ports and factories more efficiently, has been assigned its first task - to deliver containers to a port terminal in Sweden. The autonomous vehicle was introduced in September 2018 and is powered by the same drivetrain and battery packs found in Volvo's electric trucks
 * https://newatlas.com/volvo-vera-truck-assignment/60128/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=b0a99dfd0b-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-b0a99dfd0b-91443157 (Selected Media, Favorite)

This website provides 35 interesting technology facts and shows the improvements technology can bring in the form of a graph. A few facts I thought were interesting are:
 * https://orleansmarketing.com/35-technology-facts-stats/ (Discussion)

a. Every minute 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. More video content is uploaded to YouTube in a 60-day period than the three major U.S. television networks created in 60 years.

b. Over 4.2 billion data records were stolen in 2016!

c. 10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020.