prejudiceequality-blog

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BS PSY, Canva & Graphic Design

This was a poster made to promote my current college program, BS Psychology. The poster is about mental health and how to take care of it, all the information on the poster are from online sources but also backed up with my personal knowledge of what I have learned so far during my schooling under BS Psychology.

This poster was created using Canva, an online graphic design platform that allows users to create graphic designs and other visual content. The platform is very user-friendly because it provides users with pre-made design templates, the ability to edit designs and upload their own designs through a simple drag and drop interface.

Creating the poster was honestly very easy thanks to how Canva works. The first step is to go visit https://www.canva.com/ and select a template from the ones you can find on their home page, I found my template somewhere there as well. If you’re looking from something specific then you can type in the search box found on the homepage.

Next, you’ll be taken to the Canva designing tool. Here you can easily drag around and drop in new elements onto your design. New elements for design can be found on the left-side toolbar that Canva provides, elements like photos, gifs, shapes, text boxes, font styles, colors, videos and backgrounds.

Each of these elements on the toolbar also provides a search box which will allow you to easily find what you’re looking for in each element. Though keep in mind some elements may require premium access, it is annoying but designers have to make money some way.

And before you know it, you’re done designing your poster, it’s just that easy, at least that’s how it went for me. But then how do we know whether or not the design I made is good or not? Good question, that’s where the “Principles of Design” come into place. In the next paragraph, I’ll be talking through the principles that I have applied in designing my poster.

Emphasis - that principle is apparent because throughout my design, I’ve emboldened some text, this brings your eyes towards these key points and hopefully leaves an impression as you read them.

Proportion - from looking at my design, you can see that some text have larger font size than others, this puts them into proportion, that is dividing the infographic into different sections: What, Why and How.

Contrast - in my design, the contrast is mostly on how I use font colors in relation to the background color they have. Like for example in the title, I use a white font on a dark green background, this makes the title text stand out more. Or how I use a dark green and black font color on the light green background.

Sources: Seuring, P. (2019, August 22). 5 Principles of Design and how to apply them to your Life. Retrieved September 10, 2020, from https://medium.com/@perseuring/5-principles-of-design-and-how-to-apply-them-to-your-life-e9b18e640082 What Is Mental Health? (2020, May 28). Retrieved September 4, 2020, from https://www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/what-is-mental-health

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How to: Google Drive

What is Google Drive?

Google Drive is an online file storage system that allows users to store files on Google’s servers, synchronize files across user devices and share files among other users. Other similar cloud storage systems would be Dropbox, Apple iCloud, MediaFire and Mega.

How to use Google Drive?

To use Google Drive, you must first navigate to drive.google.com.

Once you’re there, on the top-left corner you will see “+ New” button which will allow you to create new folders, upload files and folders and even connect with other Google Suite apps (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides).

To upload a file or a folder, press the “+ New” button and click on “File Upload” or “Folder Upload” respectively, a new window will pop-up where can pick what file or folder to upload.

Tip # 1: An alternative to pressing the “+ New” button to add files and folders is to simply drag and drop them onto the drive which is much simpler.

To share files and folders, first right-click them and a drop bar should appear. You are also able to edit or manipulate your files and folders through this drop bar.

Next click “Share” and a pop-up should appear. Here you can add people’s emails to directly email them a link to the file or folder. Another way is to click “Copy Link” under “Get Link” and directly send the link to people through chat or other similar messaging apps.

It’s also possible to change what people can do with files or folders you share to them by clicking on “Change” under “Get Link”. Tip #2: A way to quickly get the a shareable link is by right-clicking the file or folder and then clicking “Get a shareable link”, it works the same as “Get Link” Tip #3: When right-clicking a file or folder, you can check who has accessed them last by going to “View Details”, a pop-up should appear on the right and by navigating to the “Activity” tab.

Tip #4: A quick way to get back into files or folders you’ve recently accessed is by looking at the top-left and clicking on “Recent”, a list of all the things you’ve recently accessed should pop-up. Tip #5: Files moved into the trash are not immediately deleted. So if you accidentally deleted something, it is possible to retrieve them before they are automatically removed in about 30 days.

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RA No. 10175 & Reasons to Follow It.

The Republic Act No. 10175 aka the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 is essentially a law enacted to keep peoples’ online data (personal information, posts on social media, etc.) protected by making all forms of misuse of said data illegal and punishable by law. The penalties range from small fines to million-peso fines and imprisonment of at least 6 years up to 12 years, depending on severity of crime committed.

There many reasons to follow the Republic Act, one most obvious reason is to avoid punishment and tarnishing of one’s “good citizen” record – Nobody wants to branded a criminal of any sorts, much less a cybercriminal, plus I can assure you the fines and years of imprisonment are great deterrents as well.

Second reason, think of the harm you do to the victims. You’d think that because it’s a “cybercrime” you’re not really doing any harm to the people you commit these crimes to, but I’m talking about psychological and/or emotional harm. For example, the backlash that victims of identity theft receive can be really hurtful because literally it would be people telling to die among other things. All of that is very unpleasant for all parties so why commit cybercrime in the first place?

My final and more optimistic reason for following RA 10175 is to promote a healthy cyber-environment. Everybody wants experience the internet and we should all have the good in ourselves to make sure that everyone has a good time in the cyberworld, something as big as the internet is meant to be shared to the world. If we become the reason why people want to stay disconnected then we aren’t helping anybody, so have a heart and be a good netizen.

Sources:

Toral, J. (2019, February 10). 16 Cybercrimes covered under Cybercrime Prevention Act - Republic Act 10175 - DigitalFilipino: E-Commerce in the Philippines. Retrieved August 25, 2020, from https://digitalfilipino.com/introduction-cybercrime-prevention-act-republic-act-10175/

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On Internet Safety

In this day and age especially in this pandemic, people have become heavily reliant on the cyberworld, that is the Internet. And just like the real world, the internet has its own set of hazards and dangers. In this blog I’ll be talking about the dangers that I commonly encounter as a netizen myself and 8 safety tips that I personally use to ensure that I stay safe despite all the “questionable” things I do online.

·         > Advertisements – normally you’d think “oh cool, this website has ads, they’re trying to make money” and yes for most websites that is what they do with their ads. But there's more to this than meets the eye, if you think pop-up ads are annoying, then you’ll hate ads that come with malware.

·         > Posting Private Information – for most of us it’s clear as day but for those that are only just starting to use the interwebs, you should know that once you post something online it stays online. Even if you “delete” it, there were always be some database or some weirdo out there that has saved whatever you posted so be weary.

·         > Cyberbullying – if real life bullying is “bad-bad” then cyberbullying is even worse. You might be thinking “well cyberbullying is nothing physical so why is that worse?” Well, it may not be anything physical, so on the outside you should look fine but you know as they say “words hurt more than wounds”.

The internet can be a really big platform for degeneracy, as I’ve said these are only the few that I commonly encounter. Now allow me to give you my personal tips that’ll help you avoid these hazards of the interwebs.

·         > Install AdBlock for web browsers – now, now, I know it may seem rude to instantly block out ads of websites that need ads to keep afloat and I totally agree with that but what’s the priority here? Your internet safety, right? So I justify that getting AdBlock is more of a safety net for yourself, besides there is a feature that allows ads to run for specific websites if you feel they are safe enough to browse with ads on.

·         > Install an antivirus – trust me, you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble if you decide to get that extra layer of protection on top of your computer’s firewall. At least with antiviruses, they can detect, quarantine and delete any malware or viruses that may slipped through you.

·         > Don’t haphazardly click on links – I get it, when you’re surfing the internet, you can’t help but go from one link to the next, it’s what makes the internet entertaining. But if I were you, before you decide to click on that link that says it’s for a “cat video” you better make sure that it goes to a credible enough website.

·         > Don’t be too friendly online – the internet is a cyberspace full of literal strangers, you don’t know who they are, who their friends are or what they’re capable of doing. So the best way to stay safe is to not at all engage with them unless you a certain they are normal people and not sociopaths of sorts.

·         > Don’t post things you don’t want LITERALLY everyone to see – okay, I might be exaggerating a little bit but trust, whatever you put on the internet, can be easily Google-d, saved and used for whatever malicious intent there is out there. So better watch what you say and do online.

·         > Don’t download freeware that seems too good to be true – yeah, I mean who doesn’t love free stuff? But more often than not, it comes with free malware! So I suggest you check if the freeware is worth the risk of it.

·         > Don’t add people you don’t actually know in real life – I agree that having many friends is great feeling but you have to stop and think: “are your ‘online friends’ really your friends?” just something you should watch out for.

·         > Don’t do anything private on public Wi-Fi – I’m all about being productive wherever you go but if you plan on doing online shopping or banking on a public network, that’s a big no-no, you don’t know who else is accessing that network or if they can monitor what you’re doing. It’s better to safe than sorry.

Aaaaaand that concludes this long-winded blog about Internet Safety, hopefully after reading through this you’ve gained some new information about how to stay safe out there in the cyberworld.

Sources:

Kaspersky. (2020, February 28). Internet Safety for Kids: How to Protect Your Child from the Top 7 Dangers They Face Online. Retrieved August 25, 2020, from https://usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/top-seven-dangers-children-face-online

Sunnucks, M. (2014, May 14). Why Annoying Online Ads are More Dangerous Than You Think. Retrieved August 25, 2020, from https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/techflash/2014/05/why-annoying-online-ads-are-more-dangerous-than.html