Tag: Digital

Digital vs Handwritten Notes

An important process in studying and learning is note-taking. Almost every student does it, and it is a practical requirement to pass a class. With the large amounts of information presented in each course, note-taking helps in encoding the information and thus makes it easier to remember. It also produces study materials to refer to later for exams and projects.

TYping (computer)

Typing is a fast and easy way to take the information presented in lectures and textbooks and consolidate them for reference later. But, due to its fast nature, this method leads to the least amount of information retained and will require you to study more later.

The organization is customizable

Limitless folders can be created almost instantly so sorting is as easy as ever. Tags can be applied to files for easy access, sorting, and searching. Each file has a name so it is clear what that file is, and those names can always be changed.

Easy to share

Rather than copying or scanning notes, computers have simple share screens to instantly share with anyone. People can collaborate on the same document like in Google Docs, or files can be emailed and/or texted quickly.

Typing is the fastest

Writing can be time-consuming, especially in a fast lecture. Typing takes the least amount of time so more information can be put on the page and reviewed later.

Import lecture slides

If someone does not want to type out all the information a professor teaches, importing lecture slides is very easy and can be stored on the device.

Backups

Although it is less likely anything bad will happen to a computer since it is more valuable than a notebook, computers can backup manually (or automatically) so that your notes are safe.

Digitally Handwritten (Tablet)

The tablet (and other devices that allow digital handwriting) is a happy medium that has both benefits of the computer and those of paper notes. Sharing and customization are easy and handwriting yields greater retention while the size makes tablets as portable as notebooks.

Portable

Not only is a tablet the size of a notebook (or smaller), but it also takes the place of all of them. All your subjects can be stored on a single device.

Simple and extensive editing capabilities

Handwriting allows you to write anywhere on a sheet and not be restricted by margins or spacing and there are a variety of pen sizes and colours to use. Photos and other elements can be placed anywhere on a page and text wrapping is not a concern. If you want your handwriting to be turned into text, many apps offer that ability.

The organization is customizable

Tablets, and other such devices, offer the same organization options (and sometimes more) as computers.

Easy to share

Sharing is just as easy as with computers.

High retention

Since you are handwriting the notes on the device, there is higher retention and mental processing of the information. This yield to better acquisition of the information and less need for studying later.

Import lecture slides

Storing lecture slides is just as easy and the same as with computers.

Backups

All your notes can be stored on the device or in the cloud. Same as computers.

Paper notes


The standard modality that college students have used for centuries. Paper notes are the most accessible way to take notes. Cheaper than the other two methods, many people utilize paper notes to record information for courses.

Natural feel

Paper is what we all write on. Many aspects of our lives include writing by hand on paper.

Portable

Notebooks are easy to carry and transport. Just so long as there are not too many.

Flexible

There are no restrictions. A page is very flexible in that you can write anywhere on it.

Cheap

Unlike the other options, notebooks can cost only a few dollars or less and pencils/pens are very cheap as well. This is a great option if you do not want to break the bank.

Highest retention

Since you must be very aware of what content you are writing down as well as that erasing is not as easy on say a tablet, there is higher retention of the materials compared to the other modalities discussed.

No distractions

Computers and tablets have notifications and if someone texts you or you get emails on the device, or your favourite game sends an enticing notification to try and get you to play again can cause distractions. This disrupts your flow of learning and breaks your focus. Do Not Disturb is an option, but for a true distraction, a free distraction-free is the best option.

Reference

https://guts.wisc.edu/2020/11/19/pros-and-cons-of-typed-digitally-handwritten-and-paper-notes/

Digital And Text Based Literacy

Meaning And Introduction

The field of literacy studies has made many of us take a deeper look into the similarities and differences between text based and digital literacy. It seems not only through the literature but also by observation as a classroom practitioner that there are certain elements and conflicts between digital literacy and text based literacy that need to be combed through by educators in the field.

One of the most powerful lessons we’ve learned through our work with schools is the importance of doing the work we ask our students to do. Nothing helps us anticipate misunderstandings or understand the strategic support our students will need as much as stepping into their shoes, and doing the reading, writing, and thinking they will do as part of upcoming instruction. The approach to these said instructions is what one may categorize into digital literacy and text based literacy.

Similarities And Dissimilarities

There are a number of similarities between digital and text based literacy, one of them being, both have a common goal, which is, to gather information and communicate effectively. Digital literacy means having the skills you need to live, learn, and work in a society where communication and access to information is increasingly through digital technologies like internet platforms, social media, and mobile devices. While, text literacy is the ability to gather information to communicate using text. The common goal in both the cases is clearly somewhat similar, just the catalyst is different.

From school to the workforce, digital literacy is vital in many areas of life — but simply, having it is an absolute necessity for anyone who uses the internet. Sometimes forms and applications are only available online, so you’ll need to be comfortable accessing and using them. In short, digital literacy is a necessary skill for navigating in our modern, digital world.

Advantages And Disadvantages

Text based literacy has many advantaged over digital literacy. Text based materials are available all the time, regardless of not being in a good internet zone. Text based materials are not as expensive, But its limitation says, they are not as interactive as digital literacy might be. Also, text based literacy works merely on facts and memorization and has zero scope of innovations and ideas, unlike digital literacy.

Cryptocurrency Heist

Programmers behind one of the greatest ever advanced coin heists have presently returned about all of the $610 million (generally Rs. 4,530 crores)-plus they stole, Poly Organize, the cryptocurrency stage focused on prior this week by the assault, said on Thursday. The stage, which was small known some time recently Tuesday’s heist, pronounced the programmer on Twitter as a “white cap,” alluding to moral programmers who by and large point to uncover cyber vulnerabilities, upon the return of the reserves.

Poly Arrange, which encourages peer-to-peer token exchanges, included that the tokens were exchanged to a multi-signature wallet controlled by both the stage and the hacker. The as it were remaining tokens however to be returned are the $33 million(roughly Rs. 245 crores) in tie stablecoins solidified prior within the week by cryptocurrency firm Tie, Poly Organize said.

The reimbursement prepare has not however been completed. To guarantee the secure recuperation of client resource, we trust to preserve communication with Mr. White Cap and pass on precise data to the open,” said Poly Arrange on Twitter. A individual claiming to have executed the hack said Poly Organize advertised him a $500,000 (generally Rs. 3.7 crores) bounty to return the stolen resources and guaranteed that he would not be responsible for the occurrence, agreeing to computerized messages shared on Twitter by Tom Robinson, chief researcher and co-founder of Elliptic, a crypto following firm. Poly Arrange, which permits clients to exchange or swap tokens over distinctive blockchains, said on Tuesday it had been hit by the cyberheist, encouraging the guilty parties to return the stolen stores

The still as however unidentified programmer or programmers show up to have misused a powerlessness within the computerized contracts Poly Arrange employments to move resources between distinctive blockchains, agreeing to blockchain forensics company Chainalysis. On Wednesday, the programmers begun returning the stolen coins, driving a few Blockchain examiners to guess that they might have found it as well troublesome to wash stolen cryptocurrency on such a scale. Later on Wednesday, the programmers said in computerized messages moreover shared by Elliptic that they had executed the assault “for fun” and needed to “uncover the defenselessness” some time recently others could abuse it which it was “continuously” the arrange to return the tokens.

At $600 million (generally Rs. 4.460 crores), in any case, the Poly Organize burglary distant surpassed the record $474 million (generally Rs. 3,520 crores) in criminal misfortunes that were enrolled by the whole decentralized fund (DeFi) division from January to July, concurring to crypto insights company CipherTrace. The burglary outlines the dangers of the for the most part unregulated DeFi segment, said crypto specialists. DeFi stages permit clients to conduct exchanges, more often than not in cryptocurrency, without conventional watchmen such as banks or trades.

How Archives transformed in the Digital era

The Word archive is derived from the Greek word ‘Arkheion’. The word was further referred from ‘Archon’, which meant a magistrate who oversaw the town hall where all the official public documents were stored. The Word Archive came to use for the first time in the 17th century.

Archives are also known as ‘memory institutions’ because they record and preserve memories and form a significant part of culture, community, official and unofficial history of any place or region or state, or any institution. Their function is to collect, store and preserve artefacts and documents of historical, cultural, and legal importance from the yesteryears and the present so that they remain accessible, informative, and useful to future generations. In general, any organization, government institution or individual can build archives. The National Archives, UK has described archives as “collections of records or documents, selected for lasting preservation due to their historical value, significance as evidence, or as a source for research studies”. International Council on Archives (ICA) has defined archives as “documentary result of various human activities conserved for its long-term value”. They further described archives as contemporary accounts created to can provide a true and verified version of past events.

The significance of the archives lies in the orderly collection of crucial source documents accumulated over an individual’s or organizations’ lifespan and preserved, which can serve as evidence or reference for future work. As archives are the repositories housing various historical documents and records of value, archival research is facilitative for scholars and researchers looking for data to assess and facts to study from the original documents. However, owing to the vastness and diversity of ample archival documents and records, archival analysis is a hectic and tedious job. Access to the artefacts and documents stored in an archive is not an easy task and requires permission from the respected authority. In addition, most of the information stored in traditional achieves is paper-based and thus, is susceptible to decay with time. The aforementioned limitation of traditional archives can be overcome by archiving documents and artefacts in various digital formats, which can ensure that the information is preserved for a substantially longer period.

With the advent of newer digital technologies, it became easier and more convenient to store and preserve the information in the digital space. With the assistance of new digital tools and methods, the process of transcending information from the physical world to the digital world became much efficient and easier. 

Digital archiving is an area where the relationship between digital tools/methods and information preservation can be witnessed. It is a blend of the former and current storage of information. Their function is similar to traditional archives, as repositories of elaborated collection of information in various digital formats at a virtual location. This also makes digital archives more accessible and democratic as the physical constraints are eliminated.

Advantages of Digital Archives:

  • The the digital archive allows “anywhere-anytime” accessibility to users ensuring a reduction of time, cost, and money.
  • The redundancy of information stored in digital archives can be reduced, which can promote ease of access.
  • No geographical site is required to build a digital archive, which is cost-effective.
  • The simultaneous requests of access from multiple users can be addressed by creating multiple copies of information stored, which can overcome the issue of bottlenecks encountered in traditional archives.
  • Managing and navigating objects or records stored digitally are easier in digital archives, which allow developing capacity to preserves terabytes of information.
  • Digital archives are less subjected to bureaucracy like traditional archives, which can ensure data accessibility to the general public.

Digital archives are not perfect. Many times due to the digital divide and other constraints, researchers are not able to access the information. Sometimes the information challenges the authority and due to this, the information can be unavailable in the digital archives because of censorship. But there is no denying that digital archives have transformed the way information is stored and processed.  

References:

Short and Long form content: Their relevance

The terms short and long-form content gets thrown around a lot in the realm of the internet but if we were to clearly define and differentiate both type of content. Then it becomes much harder to discern between the two.

For instance, if we were to describe, how many word counts define long-form content. Then we will notice that there is no particular amount of words that will fulfill those criteria. For some content creators, 1000 words might be long and for some, it may be short. This same principle can be applied to the viewers as well. Due to these many experts consider long-form and short-form as more of beliefs rather than any specific word count. The word count can also vary according to the type of content and subject.

Now let us transition into the social media platforms instead to understand this phenomenon better. In a nutshell, the rise of short-form of content and marketing sounds likes a great deal but we have to look at the underlying challenges and opportunities that come with it. Tik-Tok, Instagram, and many other platforms have become quite popular but somehow YouTube still manages to be relevant. Why is that?

One of the biggest strengths of YouTube and its encouragement of long-form of content is the higher level of engagement. Long-form of content is easier to monetize, instead of one ad banner in a one-minute video a creator can add multiple advertisement banners in a 20-minute video. Advertisers prefer that and so does the platform, this also incentivizes the content creator to make long-form content. In the advent of the pandemic, many platforms that focused on short-form content have suffered. An example of this is ‘Quibi’, which started as a Netflix alternative on the go, and many people were not traveling and restricted to their homes due to the restriction and lockdowns. The relevance of Quibi shifted to a very volatile situation. Because when a person is at home, he/she prefer to watch a full episode instead of a brief version of that content. We cannot determine the exact failure of Quibi but it’s certainly one of the major contributors to this.

When does short content Work?

This is not to say that short-form content does not work, because the popularity of platforms that cater to short-form content is thriving especially when it comes to images and short videos. This means that it’s very crucial to determine the target audience. Although Tik-Tok and Instagram might not have the original content and monetization possibilities as compared to YouTube. They are still the go-to platforms for many new creators and numerous advertisers.

But things are a little different when the content is in written form. It’s also essential to understand when the short-form content works and when it does not. For instance, Buzzfeed focuses on large volumes of shorter content. Another thing to keep in mind is that multimedia is an integral part of Buzzfeed content and sometimes the content only acts as a supplementary shell for their multimodal content.

Due to a busy work-life balance, people tend to have less time to spare, and short-form content seems like the right choice. It also works well on mobile application platforms. Applications like ‘inshorts’ and ‘dailyhunt’ have perfected the short-form content delivery. While working on short-form content, there are a few more prerequisites that are necessary. For example, the content needs to be on point and needs to convey the whole story succinctly. To keep the engagement the need for multimedia inputs also becomes more important. Due to the digital transformation of the news, the time cycle of news has become compressed, readers demand any kind of news instantly and news is now consumed in binges.

Things to keep in mind and is it good or bad?

Short-form content also requires short-form marketing. This is a challenging area where advertisers are trying to keep the users engaged but they also have to ensure to not annoy them with on the face and bombastic ads. This is one area that is still not well received by the consumers.

There is no particular answer to the question if the rise of short-form content is good or bad. This all depends on the context of the problem. While designing and creating the content, the writer will have to determine the target audience. This essentially solves half the problem. There is a demand for short-form content but this is more relevant concerning video and photo content sharing. Written short-form content needs to be accompanied by multimedia to make it enticing. While the heading needs to be attractive but overly clickbaity headings should be avoided. The epidemic of fake news in instant messaging platforms like Whatsapp has left a sour taste in people’s mouths.

Many predicted that desktops will be wiped out as smartphones arrive but desktops are still relevant and even though a mobile-first strategy is preferential, almost every major website still offers a desktop equivalent to their mobile counterparts. The reason is simple, less bounce and significantly higher average time on the site.

The same can be applied to the long-form content, with long-form content there are more possibilities compared to short-form content. There can be additional content and features like good or bad, or pros and cons, just like I’m doing here! Various examples, references, graphs, etc can be complimented to the content. It also becomes easier to organize content with numerous subheadings to make content much more intelligible. This is not to say that the longer the content is necessarily better because sometimes long-form content results in a point of diminishing returns. In many cases, the topic and subject are much more important than the form of content. Content relevance, internal linking structure, User Experience design, pictures, videos, and the quality of a website or application are very important as well.

In conclusion, we can say that both short-form and long-form of content are relevant, the only catch is to determine which type of content applicable in that particular situation. Short-form content platforms have seen a huge surge of popularity but on the contrary, marketing and monetizing of short-form has their own sets of problems that are needed to be addressed.

Video games and Education : How to bridge the two

Videos games have become a significant part of our culture for over half the century. They have also lead to many leading artistic and technical endeavors including many innovations in all these years. People have started to recognize the importance of these games as culturally important and the need to curate and store them properly. 

Education is one of the areas that have gone through a transformational change in 2020 and forward. The learning space has transitioned from a physical space to a space that has gone digital. The convergence of various technologies and modalities has given birth to a new space in the education system.

When it comes to Computer games, many used to scoff at them as a mere product for brief entertainment, but the increased proliferation of digital in every individual’s life means that Video games have a more significant role to play than ever before. The increased visual fidelity with better computing power has signified more immersion in the digital world. Online education has been given a push from governments around the globe. The majority of the higher institutions are teaching remotely with the help of different online tools. One of the major challenges that many educators face is the problem of engagement on par with the physical class.

Instead of just looking at online education as an alternative for the physical classes, we have to look at online education as a means of learning that can enhance the experience and engagement of the students than the physical classes as well. The technologies in 2021 clearly indicate that various tools and measures can be added into the experience of not just online learning and but also in the space of cultural heritage and digital tourism. Video games are an important tool that educators can leverage to fulfill these requirements.

Engagement and immersion can be the key factors that can drive the education system forward. There are many instances where students skip a certain subject even before attempting to learn it. This can be due to a poor and unfavorable experience with a certain instructor or wrong assumptions about the difficulty of that subject. Engaging interfaces in the form of creative games, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality can help alleviate these types of issues.

Human-Computer-Interaction is an important field where the aspect of design and technology converge. This area not just deals with technological issues but also with the psychological and socio-cultural problems while designing/building a product or an interface. The interface is an important area that is often overlooked on many platforms. Many Educational platforms don’t offer the freedom that can help students, but they rather use the stingy design philosophy and force the users to a particular behavior while using it. Therefore the interface of games becomes equally important. Games can be used to create a more participatory environment for both the teachers and students alike while increasing the experimentation and systematic thinking in the class.

Video games are usually played to win or accomplish a level. Players are motivated by winning these challenges and this is the key to stay engaged. Games motivate through fun, which is part of the natural learning process in human development with instant and visual feedback.

We can conclude that the implementation of video games in the realm of education can make online learning more engaging and intuitive for learners. This is still a novel field of research and we have a long way to go but we cannot dismiss the numerous possibilities that games can provide us in this area.  

Lack of Anonymity in the Digital Age

For a second, close your eyes and imagine this scenario. You are walking into a room full of strangers. You don’t know anyone in this room and, in turn, no one in the room knows you. What you are experiencing as you walk into that room is called anonymity. Anonymity is Greek for ‘no name’ and allows us to try new things or express ideas without being judged, simply because we are hiding our true identity from the world. Don’t get this concept wrong, you are not trying to deceive anybody. Instead, you are going by the name of Anonymous, and people know that it is not your true identity. But anonymity is fast disappearing owing to the advent of the digital age.

anonTalking about online anonymity is like trying to see the world as either black or white, without any shades of grey in it. Today only a hermit could be termed as a totally private person and even then it is not necessary that he or she would be anonymous. For all we know, he or she could be a famous and influential hermit!

Your concern should not be whether or not you are anonymous online. Your concern should be focused on the level of control that you have over your own anonymity. Who you are is defined by the perception of those around you, people who directly or indirectly seek to influence your every word and action. On the internet, you seem to have a black and white stance on things; there is an all or nothing level of control on your privacy and, thus, your anonymity. You cede control of who you are to too many large corporations like Facebook and Google. You trust them to share who you are in a way that you are happy with.

You post your countless pictures, or the selfies as you may call them, with your geotagged locations; you make all your future plans inherently public. You engage in horrible insults knowing full well that the target of your harassment is just one click away from your real name and address. What you forget to realize that it is you who is making his personal information public on your volition.

anon2One could even argue that it’s even detrimental not to divulge at least some information online. But it is privacy fatigue that you have become so dependent on social media which is giving you a lazy attitude toward staying anonymous. Today each of us leaves breadcrumbs that an investigator can very easily use to follow back to us.

Any effort to completely anonymize your activities will be more or less futile but you still can take note of some tips. Keep your devices and accounts password-protected, making a new password for every different account. Get used to blocking and do not feed the trolls. Make good use of your common sense and don’t try to dwell and engage in any provocative material online. If you are going to troll, be constructive instead of being negative. And if you are thinking about responding to a troll, don’t.

Image Courtesy: GOOGLE