Final reflection Part 2:

Class Furniture: So this semester was the first for us here at AUC with the new and unorthodox interactive classrooms, which were extremely fun to learn in and completely innovated the way we as students learn from our professor. Starting with the touch boards which were distributed all over the classroom to ensure that all students are able to fully see what the doctor wants to present and allowed for the presentation of several slides or pictures and the same time which completely enhanced our learning experience and personally gave me a sense of being in an advanced classroom that was fit for university learning and finally gave me some sort of change and elevation from the level of classrooms that i was used to from school. In addition, the touch feature on the boards allowed for multiple activities for example each morning our doctor would put a photo of a number of people with different feelings and we would all walk up and place a mark on the feeling we resembled the most on that day which really provided for great for discussion and also getting us in the mood to start learning especially since the our class was 8:30 am. I believe this was the best feature in the class, the rotating chairs were also a great touch but the screens were definitely the best part about the class. The only downside to the class for me was that the lights were a bit too strong and focused, which is personally not for me I like the lights to be a little bit more dim.

AI Tool: a major part in my academic and personal journey this semester was AI which is becoming a more integral part of life day after day. The tool or website that I used the most or in fact was the only on I used is Chat GPT at the beginning of the semester I was using the 3.5 version until a friend of mine gave me the 4.0 version and my life completely changed around since then. To start with the 3.5 version I knew from the start that its use to me was a little bit limited to certain topics and materials for example it couldn’t solve sophisticated math problems which makes it not very useful for me as i am an engineering major; however, I did rely on it a lot in my RHET classes and used it for inspiration on materials to write on and give me headings to the subtopics that i can talk about and it was really helpful in this area, I also used it when assigned to create a game to teach people about global warming to give me an idea of a fun scenario that would be both interactive and informative to my audience and this are it did an Okay job it still needed some work on it but it save a great portion of the effort needed. In my personal life I used it when applying to be the head of events in the Student Union to provide me with some further ideas that i can work on for events after I had completely ran out of ideas however most of the ideas i had already thought of. As for the 4.0 version it was something else, the most noticeable difference was the fact that it can access the internet and PDFs which to me was groundbreaking, especially when I had an accounting assignment to summarize 78 pages worth of financial statements which i wasn’t very ready for with all the work load I had at that time. While it did manage to answer 70% of the questions I wanted it wasn’t that good at the remaining part but that was probably due to the file size being big. Overall my experience with AI and especially Chat GPT has been great and will continue to use it and hope that the university’s policy about it becomes more lenient in the future. The only downside to it is the sources part as we discovered throughout the semester that it provides fake sources so I don’t really on it in this part.

Slack: Slack was a unique experience for me as it was the first time for me to hear about it through this course. The concept of slack is exactly like Whatsapp but it does maintain a bit more privacy in terms not having to include your phone number and also choosing the time period to receive notifications in which was a great feature that isn’t very present on many applications and was really helpful in keeping some space and being able to take time off from university and studying, However, I did face a couple of problems with it throughout the semester, the first and most problematic one being that I almost never received any notifications when messaged, which made me miss some announcements luckily some of my peers and friends were aware of this problem so they always let me know if something was up or if there was an announcement. The second problem that I had with it was struggling to navigate through it at first with the different channels and chats we had a was a little bit lost until I finally got the hang of it. Overall my experience with slack was okay but I would prefer to use whatsapp in my future courses as it is much more easier and convenient for me.

Canva: I have heard of canva a few times before this semester but never used until this year and I actually had so much fun using it. Canva is a website similar to Google doc but can also be used for creative works to create posters and posts and is extremely easy to use and navigate through which I loved. I used canva numerous times this semester in many areas for example in making my blog post assignments as it had great templates for me to use which were suitable for many occasions and had many different themes and also allowed me to uniquely design my work and place everything in the way that I wanted. I also used it when preparing some layouts for venues as it had so many features for me to use such as stickers shaped like fences and portable toilets and clinics which made it extremely easy and time saving for me to do these layouts. The only problem with canva is that it doesn’t have direct access to my photo file on my laptop so I have to drag and drop each photo that I want to use into the website first but other than that it was great.

WordPress: was a unique website and it was the first time for me to hear about it. At first setting up the account itself is a little bit difficult as it is not as straight forward as other websites or apps because in this one we also get a unique URL to access our blog page directly which was very interesting but as I said the registration part is a bit challenging. As for navigating within the website itself it is really easy and clear and you know where to go to do what you want. Another great feature was the fact that I could write the blogpost on another website as I did in canva and download it as a JPG and add it to the post on wordpress which was very helpful. However, the fact that i don’t receive notifications when someone comments on my post and not being able to see who viewed my work was a little frustrating to me. It’s a really cool website and very easy to use but i don’t believe I will need to use it in future courses maybe if I want to pick up blog writing

Zoom: Zoom is a platform that I am very familiar with and have been using for the past 4 years ever since COVID hit back in 2019 and it is great to see that it is still improving up until today. From the ability to record meeting to look back on them to revise anything and rewatch the lectures which is extremely helpful to also being able to attend lectures and learn from the comfort of our homes to not waste time and any lectures and stay on track on our learning journey. Zoom has been a breakthrough in the learning and education field from the day that it was released and I am always happy to use it. In addition, zoom has added new emojis and reactions that are very helpful to use when I don’t want to talk or turn on my camera. Also it helped us a lot to interact with people from all over the world for example during Soliya or when talking to the German students it helps enhance our intercultural experience and broaden our horizon.