Week10: CST 205

Jython will be used to manipulate digital images with Python using JES. In digital imaging, there are many components of a picture. The pixel values are assigned a tonal value that can have many values. The bit depth is the number of bits used to define each pixel, for example a 24 bit depth picture is 8/8/8 for r/g/b. The resolution is the ability to see detail in a picture and is related to spatial frequency in DPI/dots per pixel or PPI/pixels per inch.

            There are many types of digital image files such as JPG, TIF, RAW and GIF. In file types there is lossy vs. lossless compression where some or no data is discarded when compressing. TIFF is used as a lossless image format but the files are large. GIF uses only 256 colors and matches similar colors to the ones it uses. It reduces the colors used and replaces common patterns in large areas. JPG is the best for photos and stores them in 24 bit color/16 million colors but discards info the eye can’t see. RAW is lossless and smaller then TIFF files but they vary by manufacturer.

            In pair programming, two programmers work on the same design to make one code product. The driver codes and the navigator finds problems, asks questions, and helps. This leads to better scores, friendships, and understanding allowing each to be both the teacher and the student. It is an Agile software development technique where each line is reviewed as it is typed and improvements are suggested. There can be disengagement if the two have bad teamwork or communication. Online tools can be used to facilitate the pair programming process such as Github, Zoom.us, Hangouts, Slack video chat, and Team Viewer.

Week 9 CST 205 Multimedia Programming and Design

I learned that I will need 8-10 hours to get familiar with python. So far, I have installed PyCharm to at least have an IDE for python. I have had some trouble with it. I decided to reset my python progress on codeacademy.com since I did it more than a year ago. Learn Python on that website is actually python 2 according to my research. I am going to a few used bookstores to see if I can get a book to help me with python. I like to have a paper copy so I can underline and write my notes in the book. The material will be released and due on the same days as the other course. There will be two peer evaluation sessions, so I can get more feedback on my skills from my teammates.

In this course I hope to learn how to work with python and maybe the adobe creative suite since it was free through the school.  It will be a challenge for me to learn the basics this week. I planned out a 15h primer which includes 5h of codeacademy.com, 5h of geeks4geeks.com to learn basic functions, and 5h of translating the Java data structures in my Cracking the Coding Interview book to python. It is ambitious but getting some learning done is better than none.

Week8

·        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxJC6w-cibE&feature=youtu.be

·        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHmqI9gOAtk&feature=youtu.be

o   SCSI Logic

o   Sara Kazemi Nathan Warren-Acord Ryan Dorrity Cody Young

·        is the topic well covered? 

o   yes

·        is the presentation clear?

o   Yes

o   At 2:24 the chart wasn’t up long enough to read

·        how is the quality of the research?

o   good

·        how is the quality of the video production?

o   Very good. The pictures were informative and the music was not too distracting.

·        is the video engaging and interesting?

o   Yes, it had many interesting pictures but it would have been nice to have an intro so we knew what we were going to learn.

·        is the team work evident?

o   Yes, all team members had time to talk

·        is the video appropriate to the audience (either general public or technology professionals)

o   yes, it was easy to understand even though it was a difficult topic.

o   I think the general public video was good because it used a lot of imagery kids like , like memes or meme like images.

·        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y496hOyrLmE

·        https://youtu.be/WEGIUfzYdX4

o   JAAZ Software

o   Aaron Newman, Anthony Davis, Jacob West, Zachariah Thomas

·        is the topic well covered? 

o   yes

·        is the presentation clear?

o   Yes, it was clear because the graphics and words were simple.

·        how is the quality of the research?

o   Blockchain might be secure but the exchanges are not when the point is to get your money in real life eventually.

o   I thought it would be good to mention the darker side of bitcoin/crypto eg kidnappings, murder, drug dealing.

·        how is the quality of the video production?

o   Very good, there weren’t errors or jumpy places.

·        is the video engaging and interesting?

o   Yes, I found it interesting and learned a lot about blockchain.

·        is the team work evident?

o   Yes, all of the team members were able to talk.

·        is the video appropriate to the audience (either general public or technology professionals)

o   No, I think it was appropriate for the general public but not academically rigorous enough for technology professionals.

·        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxYsEzS6Zsw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMA1UXpb9lI

o   Northwestern Technology

o   Brian Sheridan, Kevin Bentley, Craig Calvert, Samuel Pearce

·        is the topic well covered? 

o   yes

·        is the presentation clear?

o   Yes. It gave a lot of info about how many there are and what its growth has been. It also gave good info on the monetary cost of replacing a worker. I always thought it would be a lot more money to install one. In my city, of Merced I’ve only seen them in one Mcdonalds and one Walmart but not Food4less or Savemart.

·        how is the quality of the research?

o   I would say they are not as fast as the checkout clerk because they tend to need a clerk to help fix problems. If I’m buying more than 5 things, I need help with the self checkout because of a weight error or such.

·        how is the quality of the video production?

o   Very god

·        is the video engaging and interesting?

o   Yes. I liked the drawing in the videos.

·        is the team work evident?

o   yes

·        is the video appropriate to the audience (either general public or technology professionals)

o   yes

Part 2: Keep Up With Your Learning Journal

Add the last entry about what you have learned in the class. How have your team communicated and/or collaborated? What can you do to make that collaboration more effective next time? 

            In our team, we did not stick to the schedule as in recording the video on Thursday. We ended up recording the video at 10pm on Saturday. I would say we had decent communication, we knew who was going to be available when and for how long.  I think we would need to divide the time equally by the person because a lot of my parts were examples and not exactly core content. A lot of my work was cut in the final edit so it looks like I wasn’t doing anything. I think we should have separated the sections by topic so one person has the first 3, the next has the next 3 and so on. We could then edit it on our own to fit our time allotment and then combine them at the end.

Our Team Videos

youtu.be/cFQPIlNsJAQ

youtu.be/qc1yVGediX0

7.1 The 7 Habits

Julie Asato

CST 300 Writing Lab

October 16, 2018

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Book Report

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a book that focuses on the seven habits that can make a person highly effective: be proactive, begin with the end in mind, putting first things first, think win/win, seek first to understand then to be understood, synergize and sharpening the saw (Covey, 2003). The main focus today, will be on the skills and ideas that can be learned and cultivated to make a more effective computer science student who then becomes a more effective computer science professional. The author starts with the idea of Character Ethic and how it relates to Personality Ethic. He then writes about the inside-out approach contrasted to the outside-in approach. He discusses the Maturity Continuum and how it relates to us and others. He coins the P/PC balance in management and how it relates to us utilizing our assets responsibly.   He introduces the idea of solution selling and how it can be used to become a useful person. He touches the idea of proactivity and how it relates to our behavior.

The author introduces the older idea of the Character Ethic as the foundation of success which included "integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice..." (Covey, 2003).The book focuses on working on these qualities rather than the newer Personality Ethic: "public image, attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques" (Covey, 2003). He then introduces the idea of a paradigm which is a model or frame of reference by which we view the world (Covey, 2003). If we can change the paradigm or model of how we view the world, we can create change in our lives.

The inside-out approach focuses on making and keeping promises to ourselves a priority before promises to others (Covey, 2003). The author states that this leads to more independence and more effective interdependence (Covey, 2003).  If someone wants others to recognize their talent, they should focus on having a very good character. This contrasts with the outside-in approach which focuses on the weaknesses of other people and the circumstances that lead to their failure (Covey, 2003). The main belief of the outside-in approach is that they are not the problem and if the outside force is fixed, then the problem will not be there anymore (Covey, 2003).  To illustrate the outside-in approach, if a student was going to learn algorithms doing the bare minimum,  they might blame the teacher for not teaching them anything. In the inside-out approach, if the same student does extra readings outside of class, practices algorithms on whiteboards, and finds outside resources to practice algorithms they would succeed in learning algorithms.

The Maturity Continuum incorporates the paradigms: dependence, independence, and interdependence. The dependence paradigm focuses on other people, when there is a failure it is another person's fault (Covey, 2003). The independence paradigm centers on the self to get work done (Covey, 2003). The paradigm of interdependence is of us; you and I to work together to achieve the most success (Covey, 2003).  The worst paradigm to be in is dependence and the best is interdependence. When we are interdependent, we combine our efforts and skills into one grand project. An independent paradigm is good but the author purports that they will not be able to be good leaders or team players because that is interdependence (Covey, 2003). A dependent person can work on the first 3 habits to become independent, then the next 3 habits to become interdependent. The last habit is constantly happening to ensure the process keeps progressing. In an online computer science group, all team members should work together in the interdependent fashion so everyone's talent can shine through rather than one independent person doing all of the work not letting others learn or contribute to the team.

Production/Production Capability Balance is finding a balance between the results and the asset that produces those results (Covey, 2003). To understand this, he introduces the idea of assets: physical, financial and human. These assets are part of the production capability; the assets that produce those results. For instance, if a computer science group all had terrible computers and had to work at the library during library hours (physical), they may not see much production or results. Likewise, if the team leader wanted everyone to put 200% into every assignment, they are sacrificing their human asset for production.  The team would slowly put gradually put less effort into the assignment eventually burning themselves out.

Covey introduces the idea of solution selling; studying an industries specific problems and showing how your abilities can solve their problem (2003).  In his example, the author told the story about the very independent boss and the interdependent worker.  The very independent boss would just tell people how to enact his plans which were generally good but did not ask for input from others (Covey, 2003). The interdependent worker focused on working with the bosses strengths and counterbalancing for his weaknesses by finding his concerns and presenting his analysis and recommendations. The worker was able to study specific problems and using his abilities to solve them. A computer science student could live this idea by finding the strengths and weaknesses of each team member and having everyone contribute with their strengths.

Proactivity is taking action and choosing a response for your life no matter the conditions (Covey, 2003).  A computer science who is proactive will be able to take initiative for projects and work no matter what is going on in their personal lives. Their behavior is based on the values they choose to have and not what was instilled in them as a kid. People who say "that's just how I was raised" are not being responsible and are choosing to behave in the way they are.

In conclusion, the author gives useful tools in the 7 habits of highly effective people. He rejects the idea of Personality Ethic as the foundation of success and supports the idea of Character Ethic as the foundation of success. The author believes the outside-in approach is the source of many conflicts and people should step away from blaming others for their failure. The Maturity Continuum is a model of dependence, independence and interdependence where the 7 habits can create interdependent workers out of dependant workers. P/PC Balance needs to be upheld or the assets will deteriorate. When working on a team, members should work interdependently compensating for the weaknesses of others and utilizing their strengths. When living, people can choose to be proactive and choose their responses based on their values.

Critique

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change is written by Stephen R. Covey, a writer and professor who specializes in organizational effectiveness. This book was tied for #1 Most Influential Business Book of the Twentieth Century by Chief Executive Magazine's readers as of 2003. The purpose of the book is to use principles to solve personal and professional problems (Covey, 2003).  The seven habits of highly effective people is a book that focuses on the seven habits that can make a person highly effective: be proactive, begin with the end in mind, putting first things first, think win/win, seek first to understand then to be understood, synergize and sharpening the saw (Covey, 2003).I enjoyed this book and I have seen these principles in people in my life. I can see where certain people I know fall in the Maturity Continuum. It is difficult to see where I personally fall in it, probably somewhere between dependant and independent.

The author gives useful tools in the 7 habits of highly effective people. He rejects the modern idea of Personality Ethic as the foundation of success and supports the older idea of Character Ethic as the foundation of success which the 7 habits are based on. The Maturity Continuum is a model of dependence, independence and interdependence where the 7 habits can create interdependent workers out of dependant workers if they work to change. When working on a team, members should be understanding of the weaknesses of others and utilizing their strengths. P/PC Balance, like the work/life balance needs to be upheld or the workers will burn out. The author believes the inside-out approach is the solution to the outside-in approach, where people should improve themselves to avoid failure. When failure does happen, people can choose to be proactive and choose their responses based on their values.

References

Covey, S. R. (2003). 7 habits of highly effective people:restoring the character ethic. New York: FREE PRESS.

Week7

·       Part One

o   Our team collaborated with Slack and Zoom. During the weekly Thursday meeting on Zoom, we decided to meet on Sunday to divide the assignment after we had a better idea of what we were going to report on. The presentation will be done over Zoom with a PowerPoint. It will be edited with an editing program later. Raymond reminded us that the adobe suite is free for students through our school email. I downloaded as much as possible and will probably learn how to edit videos where it is needed. We're going to meet Tuesday night to talk about what info we have found for our sections of the presentation. The presentation is still in progress. For this project we're going to have to meet multiple times and it may not work out for our entire team. I'm not sure what we should do next time.

·       Part Two

§  From the Ted Talk on "How to Speak so People Will Listen", very simple graphics and words on the screen can be very effective. The graphics on the screen lent to the emotion or feeling that can be experienced when committing the sins of public speaking. The words on the screen that he used didn't take more than a second to read contrasting with formal PowerPoint's that tell more about the topic but can leave the viewer reading the entire time and not listening to the content.

From "20 examples of great powerpoint design", I liked the idea of using a color filter over a stock image. Adobe CC has a lot of very pretty stock images I can use, so I could use photoshop to make these filtered photos. Number 13,IMPACT branding and design does this. This photo is a person in a kayak going off into the sea and the quote implies that they're trying to get something done or go somewhere. 

o   Review ted.com video reflections

§  Interest or passion.

o   Content of the talk

§  Computing a theory of all knowledge

·       Mathematica

o   He wanted to look at the computational universe

·       Wolfram alpha

·       A new kind of science

o   Presentation/style of the talk

§  He used simple graphics.

§  He used an interactive program in Mathematica to demonstrate what it could do. He could interact with the graphics by clicking premade buttons and zooming in with the user interface, which is not done easily with other languages.

§  He used his hands to do some gesturing. I didn’t think he did it as effectively as the speaker in the other video.

§  He had a funny section to demonstrate the program’s versatility; he wrote “spikey” and it gave a pointy polyhedron. This really demonstrated the entire point of the video; you can give the program simple language and it will guess at what you meant.

§  academic study

o   Content of the talk

§  How to speak so that people want to listen

·       He opens with the 7 sins of speaking which involve complaining, gossip, judging, ect. At the end, he lists them in order to reiterate the 7 bad ideas in red with a black and yellow construction like tape to indicate that they are not good.

·       He has an acronym that he uses to teach the audience the concept. It is yellow lettering with a black background.

·       He associates words with a toolbox in order to tell the audience what they need to do in order to fix the main problem.

o   Presentation/style of the talk

§  He has clip art on the screen with no words then talks about them.

§  He later has an acronym where words come on the screen as he is talking.

§  He makes an effort to use his hands to gesture occasionally.

§  The speaker has the audience stand up and enact the 6 things he does to warm up before publically speaking.

§  He finally has a simple chart that can be easily read. It uses yellow words on a cyan background.

o   Presentation skills reading/video

·       what not to do in powerpoint

o   putting every word you will say

o   too large or small font size

o   no moving font

o   no, using all small letters means you're lazy not that your're quiet and shy.

o   excessive bullet pointing

o   pointless animations

o   excessive acronyms

o   excessive graphs

·       toastmaster 12 tips for 12 public speaking

o   delivering technical briefings

§  a speech that conveys technical information to a specific audience

§  allows audience to understand and apply critical information.

·       know your audience

·       state the purpose

·       arrange the material

·       summarize the main points

o   giving sales pitches

§  a sales pitch or proposal seeks to persuade. the objective is to sell a product, concept or idea. its purpose is to open the door to professional opportunities. use an inverted pyramid to give the audience the most important first (money saved, lives improved) then support with claims of logic or evidence. End with a call to action. use simple high quality visual aids; one per main point. then offer a question and answer where you get feedback of the effectiveness and clarify questions.

·       anticipate questions

·       provide answers

·       disarm loaded questions by asking further explanation of questions

·       divide complicated questions into several parts before answering them

o   preparing a speech

§  organize speech: opening, main points, summary

§  practice and rehearse

§  become familiar with the stage

§  choose comfortable clothes

§  use visual aids

o   speaking to diverse audiences

§  enunciate clearly

§  don't speak too fast

§  be careful with metaphors

§  know meanings of words outside your native language

§  avoid slang, jargon, and idiomatic expressions

§  be mindful of body language, eye contact and personal space

o   gestures and body language

§  eye contact

§  control mannerisms

§  put verbs in action

§  avoid insincere gestures: involve the entire body and matching facial expressions

§  move around the stage

·       20 examples of great powerpoint design (there is 21 in my notes unfortunately)

1. o   colorful doodles and bold text
2. o   usually b&w photos occasionally with color
3. o   blurring effect with a shaded filter
4. o   color coded index of the start and finish of a section
5. o   hand drawn illustrations
6. o   clean design and simple color palette
7. o   doodles again
8. o   images and graphics and clean text
9. o   many fonts and big bold numbers
10. o   spotlight design and characters are blacked out but still recognizable
11. o   colorful graphs and charts
12. o   background color that goes with the company
13. o   visual tutorial
14. o   color filters over picture
15. o   minimalistic, large text and high quality images
16. o   different colors on charts and color graphics
17. o   consistent color pattern and leverages bullet points
18. o   text and image side by side in a split screen
19. o   unified font and color palette
20. o   storybook doodles
21. o   unique design