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Unit 13 Day 3

As the 13th unit wound down, my chat group used all the information we had learned about CBT to practice on each other. First we each read a few additional articles about helpful CBT practices. Then, we talked about how we felt about our upcoming term project that was due (this!) and helped each other change our negative mindsets surrounding the project. For me, most of my anxiety wasn't coming from the imminent due date but rather the lack of strict rules for the journals. Without a rubric, I was constantly anxious about the content of my journals and hoping that I was talking about the right things. After talking to my group mate that was also doing a whole course project, I felt a lot more assured and was reminded that no rubric was a good thing because I can talk about what I truly want to reflect on.

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Unit 13 Day 2

Continuing with the 13th unit, I started the next day off by learning about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This was a type of therapy that I knew nothing about so it was very interesting to learn about. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a type of therapy where you target and become aware of negative and inaccurate thoughts so that you can realize them and view situations in a more realistic lens. CBT helps people respond to situations in a more effective manner. The cool thing about CBT is that it can help with mental illnesses but can also help people without them too.

In reference to the Internet, it has been proven that online based CBT is just as effective as face to face CBT. This is important because it can be much more accessible being online because of its lower cost and flexible schedule. Even UW-Madison pays for a subscription for a CBT app so that its student and staff can help manage their mental illnesses and day to day stresses. This could help so many students, but I feel like not many people know about this on campus. I guess it's up to me to spread it around!

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Unit 13 Day 1

For the first day of unit 13, I learned about Internet addiction. More importantly I learned that Internet addiction may not actually be a true form of addiction. There is uncertainty because as with other technologies throughout history, people fear new technologies and these fears evolve into a worry about addiction. Back in the 1800s, novels were the new technology and were subsequently feared for their addictiveness.

With this fear in mind, many believe that Internet is simply a medium for addiction, not the actual addiction. Psychiatrists think that there may be specific addictions that are enabled by the Internet such as gambling, shopping, or pornography. But, people addicted to these Internet-based addictive activities may also be just as likely to be addicted to those activities offline as well.

Not only does this show that Internet addiction may not be a true form of addiction, this concept also goes back to the common theme that has been mentioned throughout the entire course: the fear of new technology.

To continue with the first day, I also learned about randomized controlled trials. Because these trials reduce bias by making experimenters blind to the participants treatment group, researchers are able to compare a treatment to a control group in the same environment. With this ability, randomized controlled trials have become the gold standard for experimental research.

To expand on what I had learned about randomized controlled trials, I examined an experiment using this method for anxiety and depression treatment of caregivers for dementia patients. Not only did I get to practice my skills of scientific reading and analysis, but I also got to look into a topic that I could personally relate to. As a CNA on a memory support unit, I understand the stress and work that goes into being a caretaker for this group of people.

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Unit 12 Day 3

For the last day of unit 12, I met with my group chat to further discuss what we have learned this unit. To start the discussion, we talked about the definition of "humblebrag" and how we feel when we encounter others that do it. Collectively, we agreed that humblebragging was really annoying and was never something that we enjoyed listening to.

After discussing this topic, we then dove into a paper that talked about different studies conducted about humblebragging. Ultimately, people aren't impressed with humblebragging and it backfires on the speaker as they are seen as insincere and annoying. Other people also respond a lot better to straightforward statements rather than humblebrags.

Not only did we learned about humblebragging and discuss our learning in depth, but we also got to practice analyzing research papers, a skill I always like to continue working on.

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Unit 12 Day 2

For the next day of unit 12, I learned about the history of selfies because they have been around far longer than the term was created. The rise of their popularity a few years ago lead to the term's addition into the Dictionary and has created new problems with its rise.

One of these issues that I investigated was about who owns the copyright to a monkey's selfie. After a monkey took some adorable selfies in 2015, PETA was fighting the photographer about the copyright of those images. Ultimately, the lawsuit ended in a settlement, so while it was pretty clear that the law was going to side with the photographer, there is still a possibility for animals to possess those rights. Personally, I don't think it makes much sense for the animal to have copyrights, they can't obtain it themselves and will never be able to deal with their money or legal team themselves.

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Unit 12 Day 1

For the start of unit 12, I first took two personality tests and learned about my Big Five personality traits. While many other personality tests are random and unreliable, the Big Five personality tests are based on scientific analysis and are accurate predictors of personality. The five traits rated in these tests are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. By using different trait clusters, this personality test recognizes that you are not just one personality "type" and that each person has each trait but are just on a spectrum of levels.

In addition, I learned about appreciating different personalities - specifically introverts. If we allow each person to be in their most effective environment, they will maximize their talent and quality of work.

Next, I learned about "proportion of variance explained" and applied it in the context of personality traits and the Internet. When you get results of a study, you will have an outcome score. The variance, or how much people can vary for their scores, can be calculated for the outcome. With a predictor variable, you can calculate what you think each person's score will be. Then you calculate the difference between the predicted scores and actual scores to see how much of the variance of overall scores can be explained by your predictor variable. For example, if the actual scores match the predicted scores, the predictor variable explains all of the variance in scores.

Something that is not surprising is that personality traits explain different aspects of Internet use. For example, extraversion explained significant variance in a handful of scores such as Facebook addiction, texting frequency, number of Facebook friends, and social media duration. While personality traits can predict Internet usage, there is not any proof that it predicts political orientation.

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Unit 11 Day 3

For the last day of the unit, my group met to chat about the digital divide within our country and discussed ways that we could bridge the divide. While we were going through this exercise, we realized that it is one thing to identify issues, but another whole issue in itself to find an effective way to address the issue. Overall, I was also very surprised at the size of the divide in our country, I knew there was a big divide between us and other countries but I did not realize it existed within our own country as well.

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Unit 11 Day 2

For the second day of unit 11, we continued with Internet learning but turned from child development to older adult effects. Like child development, the Internet has very positive effects on the aging of the elderly population.

Some important facts that I learned from this lesson are that the more older adults used the Internet, the less they cognitively declined (Berner et al, 2019). In addition, Internet use enhances social support and connectivity, reduced loneliness, and leads to better life satisfaction in older adults (Czaja et al, 2017; Heo et al, 2015).

From all of the studies that I read, I learned that the use of Internet and digital technology has a profound positive effect on the older adult population. For my grandparents, I am definitely going to encourage the use of the Internet for their daily routine.

In addition the research I read about, I also put it into practice by teaching an older adult about a new technology feature on their phone. While my uncle has seen my cousin profusely use the app TikTok, he had no idea how to use himself. With the lessons I learned from Kazimi's (2014) article and Nudd's (2014) article, I learned the best way to interact with the app and how to teach my uncle to se the app and interact with kids his daughter's age. By doing this, I helped bridge the gap between an older generation and a younger generation on social media.

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Unit 11 Day 1

At the start of unit 11, we learned about the Internet and its effects on child development. After watching professor Gernsbacher's lecture, I learned a lot of positive effects that Internet has on child development. One thing that I learned was that the more grade school children spent time on the Internet the more they improved their reading skills, which is a finding that was opposite to the information I was told when I was growing up. As I was growing up, I was told to get off the Internet and read a book, which does not have much statistical evidence as a stance now a days.

As I investigated this topic, I learned a lot more information about the beneficial effects of the Internet on child development. After reading multiple reports and articles, I learned that digital technology is beneficial for children's social relationships and has not had any profound effects on brain development (UNICEF, 2017; Mills, 2014).

In addition, I learned that preschool children have the highest emotional attachment to their parents and highest positive effect when they are given moderate amounts of screen time (Przbylski & Weinstein, 2017). With this, I found that parents who are mentors are the best facilitators of their child's online learning.

I never knew how good the effects of online learning were!

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Unit 10 Day 3

On the last day of unit 10, I continued to learn about judgment and decision making on the Internet by learning about the three primary decision-making heuristics. By completing activities for this lesson in multiple media, I was able to really understand and digest the lesson.

The first heuristic that I learned about was the representativeness heuristic. This heuristic explain that making decisions based on how representative an event or object is will cause more errors because the similarity does not make the occurrence more probable. For example, consumers are more likely to rank a generic product highly if it closely resembles the brand-name product. In addition, on the internet, shoppers are much more likely to base their purchase off of one very good rating than off of multiple bad reviews.

Another heuristic that I learned about is the availability heuristic. This error in judgment occurs when people base the prevalence of something off of how easily the event can be brought to mind. For example, a person that has a disease that runs in their family may overestimate the number of people that have this disease.

The final heuristic that I learned about is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic. This heuristic is one that I had not previously learned about before this lesson. This heuristic occurs when people estimate a number by starting at an initial value and adjusting that value up or down. But, the error occurs when different initial values are given because it leads to different estimates influenced by the initial value. This can be seen on the internet when an online product offers 3 plans with the most basic being the lowest price and the middle and upper plan being the same price. This causes people to chose the highest plan because they believe they are getting a much better deal based on the price.

After learning about these primary judgment heuristics, I then discussed all the new information with my group in an hour long chat. We discussed all the examples we had previously learned about and brainstormed to come up with some of our own.

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Unit 10 Day 2

For the second day of the unit, I had a lighter day assignment-wise. First, I read and learned about the other questions that students read and learned about during the first day. With this I learned about rumor debunking, the price of gossip, and other perspectives on the Wikipedia research. After reading the other students' posts, I responded to one student that read about the same question and one student that read about a different question.

The next activity of the day was one of my favorites thus far in the course. For this assignment, each student found a product on Amazon.com that had received satirical reviews. For my product, I found a t-shirt with wolves on it that had a slew of hilarious and fake reviews. While it was fun to complete this activity and read the posts of my classmates, I also practiced differentiating real and satirical information, a skill that is a little harder on the Internet.

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Unit 10 Day 1

To start off unit 10, I first learned about the correct way to spell "judgment". Who knew I (along with a lot of other people) had been spelling it wrong my whole life!

Next, I looked into the popular website Wikipedia and learned that the site is actually very accurate and has proven to beat out the accuracy of multiple textbooks. This lesson disproved another thing that I had believed my whole life. It shows yet another thing that I have been blindly taught but never had seen research to back it up. This was a lesson that I will surely be remembering far past the reaches of this course.

Finally, I examined an aspect of judgment and decision making on the Internet by analyzing an empirical article about online beer ratings. Through their study, the researchers found that social information already available did not effect the future ratings of the beer and that the quality of the ratings was not biased. Along with learning about the effects of Internet on judgment and decision making, I was also practicing analyzing empirical articles which is a critical skill in the psychology and research fields.

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Unit 9 Day 3

For the third day of unit 9, I met with my group for a one hour group chat. Because we got new groups this unit, we started off by introducing ourselves and our term projects. Then, we discussed apps/plugins for our technology that help manage our time and block distractions when doing school or work.

For my task, I had chosen to use a web browser app blocker to help me focus when doing work on my computer. While it worked well for my computer, I still had the issue of getting distracted on my phone. If I wanted to successfully do this in the future, I would also have to download a blocker app on my phone and iPad because I am commonly using those devices as well. I am considering doing this when the fall semester begins because I have previously had issues with getting distracted on my phone during class. If I were to create my own app blocker, I would create one that syncs all your devices and blocks other apps/website across them all. This way I won't get distracted on my phone when I'm working on my laptop.

Finally, for the end of the unit, I practiced the skills I learned in all the past units by doing the course review sheet and updating the professor on my progress with the term project.

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Unit 9 Day 2

For the second day of unit 9, I followed a false claim to see how easy fake news is spread throughout the internet. By looking at the claim that "human beings now have an attention span shorter than a goldfish", I saw how many different news sites reported this finding despite the lack of proof. While some of the articles talked about a study it was based on, there was never a citation or link to the actual study that was conducted. As I learned previously, our attention spans have neither decreased nor increased because of the internet.

By doing this activity and looking at the popularity of this false claim, I learned how easy it can be for false information to spread across the internet. Even news sources such as Time and The New York Times reported this "finding", which only proves that no one is immune to spreading false information. The only way you can know information is true is to check the source of information and look for true evidence. With all the fake news circulating these days, that is an important skill to learn.

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Unit 9 Day 1

For the start of unit 9, I first learned about perception and how it pertains to the 5 senses. It also includes proprioception, which is a set of sense that involve the ability to detect changes in body positions and movements. The process of perception using all of these senses allows for us to experience the world around us.

To dive deeper into the idea of perception, I looked into what CAPTCHAs are and how they work. This was an interesting activity as I got to learn about something that I had no knowledge of. I learned that CAPTCHAs are an advanced version of the Turing Test, which tests the ability of robots to think like human. CAPTCHAs are used daily when browsing the internet and can be seen in the form of blurry texts to decipher, clicking on certain images, or simply checking a box. When doing these activities, companies can weed out the bots and keep them off their websites by analyzing mouse movement patterns and speed.

Next, I learned about how the internet is effecting our attention. Contrary to some beliefs, the internet is likely not rewiring our brain and has not increased or decreased our attention spans. These claims circle back to an earlier theme learned in this course - the fear of new technologies. Long ago, when novels were a novelty, people thought reading was ruining and rewiring our brains much like the claims that are being made about the internet. We have not been become better at multitasking as a result of the internet, and the more similar two tasks are, the more difficult they are to do at the same time. This is why two things that require visual attention, such as driving and texting, are difficult to do at the same time (and shouldn't be done!). The final thing I learned about attention is that taking controlled breaks on the internet improves attention, so maybe answering a few texts in the middle of lecture really isn't such a bad thing!

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Unit 8 Day 3

For the last day of the unit, I did not meet with a group for a chat because I was creating a new group for the remainder of the course. In leu, I went back to the first unit and reviewed the skills that I chose to further in this course and thought about my progress so far. While I have definitely been advancing my analytical skills and interpersonal skills through many of the assignments, I have not had a lot of chances to work on my creativity. Looking to the remainder of the course, I am not sure that I will have any upcoming opportunities to work on my creativity but I am still satisfied that I am consistently able to work on the other two skills.

To finish the unit, I review everything that I learned and entered the information into the course review sheet.

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Unit 8 Day 2

To start off the second day, I responded to my classmates' posts from the previous lesson and got to see all of the different creative solutions that students created so that professors and students would have satisfied motivations with respect to laptop use in the classroom.

Next, I learned about my personal motivations for using the Internet. Not surprisingly, I was typically motivated by wanting to be sufficient in school and work and also by reflexes. The reflex to look at my phone when it lights up is a motivation that is probably a lot more popular since phones became popular. Now with an applewatch, I am also getting notifications sent straight to me even if my phone is not in eye sight. Talk about a distraction!