Chan’s Blog

For this week’s content byte, we had to read Chapter 10 of Own your education and watch a YouTube video on how to choose the best tech career for yourself. Chapter 10 was about how to think critically and own it. According to Megan Stone critical thinking is “A broad set of skills that allows you to objectively question, analyze, and evaluate information with an open mind and to draw conclusions based on logic and credible evidence (Stone, M. 2016).” She mentions that it’s a quality that is desired and valued not only in school but also in your work environment. I have had my share of having to think critically and just hope for the best after analyzing the situation and using logic to fix the problem. The skills of critical thinking are questioning, analyzing, evaluating, open-mindedness, objectivity, and purposeful thinking. These skills are also very important when you are looking for a career. Sandra from the YouTube video, “Choosing the Best Tech Career for You: How to Choose a ...

This week's reading was interesting as it closely relates to my mentality toward everything. This week's chapter assigned to us was about accountability and how to own it. I feel many people shy away from accountability as it tends to steer the blame at themselves if things go awry. Although accountability can be troublesome, it is a necessary trait if you want to be successful in life. In the book Own your education!:a student's guide to greater success in school (and life), author Megan Stone states that accountability is "being reliable and responsible to someone or something and following through with action (Stone, M. 2014)." Regarding my education, I admit to not holding myself accountable and would always end up placing blame on things that could've been avoided. It's much easier to place blame on something or someone other than yourself. It took me a while to have some accountability. I found myself reflecting a lot and eventually was able to br...

     In this week’s reading about taking ownership, we touched basis on what it means to take ownership and why we lack in ownership. It states that we lack pride and confidence because we do not have ownership. It made me think of my own experiences of lack of ownership. I’ve always been a decent student but after the first semester of college I started losing motivation. I started making excuses as to why I was not able to complete my projects or why I chose to wait till the last minute. It would be lame excuses that usually ended up placing the blame on others and circumstances. After trials of failed semesters, I came to an obvious realization of what I was doing, and I snapped myself out of it. I took responsibility and reassessed my goals and had a discussion with myself and changed my viewpoint. According to author Megan Stone there are specific skills needs to achieve ownership; “…assess, learn, practice, and master (Stone, Own your education!: A student's guide ...

     This week's Ted talk was very interesting and thought provoking. Presenter Kentaro Toyama spoke about implementing a program that would provide technology to poverty-stricken countries such as India (which was his example). India has grown economically but unfortunately it still half the country remains poor. The research that he was a part of would provide technology to them to see if they can help with the growth of the social economic development. He further explains the rhetoric of many that by implementing technology will influence the decline of poverty.       In their research they realized that simply having technology in say in education would not be effective. Technology with good teaching and supportive administrators are key to being effective. Simply providing technology without direction would be a waste of precious resources. He concludes that "Technology only magnifies human intent and capacity. It can't substitute them (Toyama, 20...

     T he Ted talk presented by Ivette Bayo Urban was quite interesting and I feel a big eye opener when tech is created. She discussed the importance of listening to people’s stories and learning to understand their point of view as to why they use tech and how to better serve them based on their needs/understanding. There was an experience that shared of one of the women she spoke with about how the phone is “smart, but she is dumb (Urban, 2016).” It spoke to me because it brought up an instance with my mother. She was not born in the US and always struggled with learning later in life. She would always put herself down and it really was an emotional time. When she did the transition from a basic phone to a smartphone, she was very apprehensive as she only used her phone for calls, and she was not able to read English well. However, through time and practice she began to have a better understanding of the smartphone and soon was able to use it like any other well v...