Monthly Archives: September 2023

My Tech Habits

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Greetings!

For this blog post, I will be responding to the following prompt:

“How do you strike a balance between screen time for academic purposes and personal well-being? Are there any strategies or boundaries you’ve established to ensure a healthy relationship with technology?”

I found this question particularly interesting, as I used to really struggle to balance screen time between productive purposes and other personal uses, and it began to form a very unhealthy relationship with technology – particularly with my cell phone and social media.

Whether it be through silly iPhone games, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc., I found that I was constantly getting off task from the more productive things that I needed to be doing as a result of the distractions found on my phone. As a result, I was really struggling to manage my time.

I would constantly remind myself:

“What am I doing?”

“I need to get this done.”

And eventually, I realized that social media was beginning to be more of a hinderance than anything, so to re-establish a balance between productivity and self-indulgence during my screen time, I began to deactivate many of my social media accounts in early 2023. The only one I have left now is Instagram, which I seldomly use.

My baby-boomer Dad hates that I am not on Facebook, which kind of cracks me up. Personally, I have not thought about it since I deleted it. I have definitely felt like this change has increased my productivity, and having trimmed down my social media accounts quite a bit, I find that social media has become more enjoyable in itself. It has become easier to moderate. I no longer go from Instagram to Facebook to Snapchat and then back to Facebook and then realize that I should instead be panicked about upcoming deadlines. I get my stuff done in a timely manner, and still find time to use technology in a more leisurely, less addictive manner.

This is what has worked for me, and I used to be under the impression that giving up, or reducing social media usage is something that would be incredibly difficult in this day and age. In my experience, I have found social media to be very easy to ease up on, and I have found this experience to be rewarding. I still am able to keep in touch with all of my friends, and do not feel the “FOMO” that they associate with being off of social media. That is not to say that this is what everybody would find healthy, however in my case it was a great solution to managing my time more wisely.

If you are reading this, I am curious:

Have you ever deleted a social media account, or even thought about it? What was your motive, and if so, did you return to the platform eventually?

Thanks for reading!

“Un point sur mes études” – An update on my studies

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Greetings!

Here is my first update on how my French language-learning process has been going so far.

So, if you read my last post, I was trying to decide between two websites (busuu.com and babbel.com), when a classmate suggested that I try DuoLingo, which is a smartphone app of a similar idea to the websites I had been looking at. Even better, it is completely free to use!

I decided to give it a try, and in what felt like a short time, I suddenly realized I had been on the app for 45 minutes. I was really enjoying the app in my first impressions.

It has some cool features that I noticed:

It keeps a streak of how many consecutive days you have used the app (similar to how Snapchat uses streaks), I feel like this encourages people to continue learning through not wanting to break a streak.

The app is laid out in sections/units, from rookie, intermediate, and onwards. You can “progress” through levels in the app, making your learning feel like a game. If I suddenly feel like what I am doing is too easy (not likely at this stage), I like that it gives me the option to skip ahead.

I also like that the app uses encouraging language, and gives you chances to make corrections when you make a mistake…

However, this leads me to the only thing which I dislike about the app in its free-to-use state. The 5 Hearts.

Similar to apps like Candy Crush, where you have 5 “lives”, DuoLingo in its free-to-use form uses this system. Once these lives are depleted, they take a long time to replenish. Of course, this can be navigated around in a couple of ways:

1) Never make mistakes

or

2) Pay the subscription

With these options provided, I think I am going to try my best to not make mistakes when playing around with DuoLingo. In just my first time using the app, I made it 45 minutes in without making running out of lives. If I am using this app for 45 minutes daily and can see myself making progress without having to pay, and without feeling hindered by having 5 lives, I see that as a win.

In the early stages of me using the app, it introduced me to pretty basic words. Here are some phrases/words that I learned, or perhaps re-learned in some instances through DuoLingo:

Chat – Cat         Chien – Dog               Garcon – Boy           Fille – Girl

Homme – Man        Femme – Woman              Un – A             Et – And

Tu es – “Are you”     Mange – “Is Eating”

 

…And the list goes on!

Most of my activities involved using these words in phrases, or translating phrases which used these words, and through repetition, I found this to be quite effective. Below are some images for examples of what these activities entailed.

I have been really enjoying my experiences with DuoLingo, and I really would appreciate receiving feedback on what others think of it…

Have you used it before? If so, did you find it effective for you?

Thanks for reading! Have an excellent week!

 

 

Learning Project – The Start of My Journey Relearning French

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Hi everybody reading this!

My name is Darian Zadorozniak, and this is my introductory blog post for EDTC 300, where I will be frequently updating readers on the progress I have made in my learning project assignment throughout the semester. Before we get into the thick of it, I figured I should start with a little bit about myself!

I am from Weyburn Saskatchewan, where I am also currently located. I currently am taking my fourth year of studies, pursuing a secondary education degree with a major in social studies, and a minor in english. For hobbies, I generally enjoy watching football, playing some video games, or just hanging out with my grey tabby named Taco. Going into this course, I would have to categorize my general knowledge and experiences with educational technology as limited, and with that, I am excited to learn many new things this semester!

Moving onto the subject of my learning project, the goal which I have decided to set for myself is to “re-learn” and enhance my skills in the French language. Back in high school, I stopped taking French classes as soon as it stopped being mandatory. I can remember that French was pretty much always one of my least favourite classes, however in the ten or so years that it has been since I have taken any additional language classes, I have begun to recognize the importance of bilingualism/multilingualism, particularly as Canadians, one of the most notable officially bilingual countries in the world. Being located in Canada is also the reason why of all languages, I have chosen French to be the one I will attempt to learn.

My knowledge of French is severely limited. I could probably give you the names of colours, fruits, and tell you that my name is Darian in French. That is pretty much where my knowledge ends, so this should be an interesting goal for me to take on.

I am thinking the best way to tackle this goal will be through the use of the internet. I have heard of programs such as Babbel (babbel.com), which are not fully free to use, however I am willing to pay for a subscription to achieve this goal if I find that free-to-use softwares are not really clicking with me. Another one I have fiddled around with is a website called busuu (busuu.com), which allowed me to take a test before showing me a paywall. FYI, the test told me that I was a level 1 beginner in the French language.

At this point, I get the feeling that I am going to have to fork over a few dollars if I really want to progress in this goal, which again, is completely fine with me. Overall, these websites all seem very intriguing and are going to be the direction I likely head in, as they engage the user in real tests and will likely provide me with more tangible methods in terms of actually tracking my progress in achieving this goal.

Other resources out there that I explored are YouTube videos. There are tons of resources on YouTube when it comes to learning languages! So many, in fact, that I found myself a little bit overwhelmed when looking at all of the options. One thing I find with these videos, is that they were not as engaging for me as my earlier experiences with websites like babbel.com and busuu.com. I think this is because these video resources do not provide viewers with a chance for practical application of their skills like some of the other softwares do, so I find myself zoning out and not really getting as much out of it.

Long story short, I found that websites like Busuu and Babbel allow for the users to plan out how much time they would like to spend daily on learning their skills, and help the users plan out when and how far they would like to take their language studies. Therefore, I am going to go with one of these. So, before I start my subscription to one of these, if anybody has any experience with either of these apps I am certainly open to any feedback, recommendations or suggestions that people have!

Thank you for reading my first blog post!

Darian Zadorozniak