Month: May 2017

Apps That Got Me Through First Year

During my first year of college I decided that I would try and go 100% digital for my studies as I had never done that before, I am more of a paper girl, after all. There were some positives and some negatives to the experience and I think, going into second year I will try and have a more 50/50 approach to things. Between all of this I did find three apps that really made things much easier for me and I thought that I would share them with you!

  1. Notability: This is one of the best apps I have tried in recent year as it is a great all in one tool. Primarily it is a note-taking app but it can also be used to annotate PDFs and can be synced across multiple devices using cloud software like iCloud, Dropbox or Google Drive to name a few. What I like about Notability is that you can also record lectures using it so you don’t have to worry about taking  everything your lecturer says to you. YouTube channels like Life is Messy and Brilliant  has a range of tutorials to help you get the most out of Notability. I am definitely going to be using this app going forward into my college education.
  2. Trello: Trello is basically like a running todo list but you can divide your list into ‘boards’ or projects and plan out your workload accordingly. I used this a lot during my final few months of college and I needed somewhere other than my bullet journal to plan out what exactly needs to be done for each module. You are also able to track your time spent on a project with Toggl through your Trello app which helped me see how much time I was spending on each subject.
  3. Google Drive: Because my university offers us unlimited Google Drive Storage while at college, it is a lot easier for me to use Google Drive for all my coursework. This means that all my assignments all go into my Google Drive and my notes from Notability.

                                              Let me know what applications you use for college!!

Do We Need Clickbait?

Clickbait has been a source of confusion in the online community for the longest time. For those confused as to what clickbait is, the definition from Urban Dictionary is as follows:

An eyecatching link on a website which encourages people to read on. It is often paid for by the advertiser (‘Paid’ click bait) or generates income based on the number of clicks.

However, in recent months, click bait has become a part of the Vlogging phenomenon where certain YouTubers have been criticised for using clickbait for their videos. But clickbait is not a new thing, it has merely been renamed in order to suit the online world. Tabloid newpaper’s have been writing eye catching headlines for years in order to coax readers to buy their newspaper. The difference now is that we are watching YouTube for free, so the idea that Vloggers need to make money seems foreign to us as we are not providing them an income in the traditional way.

So maybe perhaps we do need clickbait after all??

Nerve and Blue Whale : A Look at Online Truth or Dare Games

A while ago I watched a film called Nerve, which is a teen drama where is based around a online truth or dare which stars Emma Roberts and Dave Franco. In the film, the stakes are very high and the prizes for completing a dare is various amounts of money. While watching it, my friend and I kept saying how believable it was that people could get wrapped up in a fad and would test it to the limit. We saw it last summer with PokemonGo, where there was a large amount of accidents due to people playing the game and the only reward was to catch imaginary creatures. Don’t get me wrong, I played the game just like half the country but thankfully, I didn’t injure myself playing it.

Another fad that came to mind when I was watching Nerve was the NekNominations which were dares done online in order to see what kind of mix of alcohol people could drink in a certain amount of time. The videos were uploaded online for others to see. To me, this bears a striking similarity to the plot of Nerve due to the huge risk attached to the dares themselves. what made my uneasy was how close we have gotten to this kind of fad, and maybe this is a wake-up call for people so that a real-life Nerve doesn’t happen.

In recent days another ‘game’ as come to the forefront, called Blue Whale, in which teenagers are challenged to complete 50 tasks ranging in severity going so far as to self harm as part of the game. What makes me uneasy is how close we have gotten to the plot of this film, and that terrifies me and the worry is; how much further can these games go in the future?

The End of First Year

This time last week, I was revising for the final exam of the semester and I was procrastinating by making plans for the summer. One of those plans was to commit to posting on my site more than I had been over the past few months. And to start it off I thought it would be a good idea to give an impression of what my first year in Digital Humanities was like.

From what I have gathered from other people, Digital Humanities was much more intensive than other degrees and, to be honest, sometimes the workload got to me but I quickly realised how important time management is and the importance of the work life balance. Long-time readers of my blog will know that I am an organised person by nature, but with deadlines and such I really felt like I had to up my game and this has given me a good indication what is expected for the second year and beyond. It has also given me a chance to work on my planning skills which I will talk about during the summer.

Altogether we had approx 11 subjects completed throughout the year via semesters. This helped to split the workload and also allowed us to focus on a smaller amount of subjects at a time. Some of the subjects included: Fundamentals of Internet Computing, E-Commerce, Multimedia, Python Programming along with three separate Digital Humanities modules. The subjects gave us both a practical and a theoreticial approach to the modules which will aid us while we progress and even during Work Experience.

As some of your may know, I chose to study English as a minor subject and although it added to the workload, I was very happy with my choice as throughout the year I discovered how interconnected both fields are. This will benefit me hugely for my final year project in third year and I will be very interested to learn how projects are combining English and Digital Humanities in order to benefit others. Because, in my opinion, that is what Digital Humanities is all about.