Extended Intelligences¶

Deliverables¶

Presentation¶

Can I fart? by Marielle Wall

Report¶

Reflection¶

Ok, not going to lie here - this week did not hold me in its grips how I wanted it to. This is for a multiplicity to reasons

I went through IT these last two weeks (check my “What I Created” section)
It was a lot of long sessions without breaks and my attention-deficit-self can’t handle people speaking at me for 2 hours straight (honestly give me a 5 minute-break every 45 and I should be good)
It was too much content without enough hands on learning

Now number 3 isn’t here to call people out or anything, just some real-talk from one facilitator/educator* to another. Lots of people in this course came here to learn some hands on skills to bring back to our communities & sitting in a classroom learning about the theoretical isn’t really it. We went to our undergrad, we sat through lectures where profs talked at us, we listened to the people who loved university a little bit too much (cough cough this was me 🙃 - I talked/talk too much). But we came to this masters to learn hands on skills - like honestly that is what was sold to us - and I just don’t think we got it out of this week, you know?

Now, I am actually a person who loves theory. Big reader, listener, writer (feeling haver, etc.) but I came out of this week with still no real practical skills around creating my own algorithms (big ask), tweaking existing algorithms (medium ask), or experimenting with multiple different algorithms (doable ask). For me, a lot of the stuff we delved into was pretty high-level. Even as a child of the internet (thank you tumblr), I found following along very difficult - add having no breaks for almost 2 hours = impossible task.

So if I am to organize my thoughts for a brief moment, here is a list of things I think would be great to tackle when you do this the next time around

Honestly, assume that most of us have no knowledge on AI and go from there.
Maybe even ask beforehand if people in the class have background in computer-science and use them as peer-resources
Challenge yourself to explain AI in one slide or less
then add complexity (start simple and build BABY)
I would actually try to do this challenge with each topic TBH
Sit down and think about how we could practically learn the skills and ideas that were put on the slide.
Here are some quick ideas
- find a really buggie AI, let us play around with it, and then have us talk about the pitfalls
- Teach us about the “if” & “else” statements that make up AI, give us a really simple one, get us to guess what the simple algorithm could be

And these are just some content based things that come off the top of my head! I honestly am not paid to help build course content (but I could be 😉), so I’m going to stop there because I have to keep some secrets to myself.

BUT also, I do have some accessibility tips (free of charge)

Give a specific outline of what you’re going to go over
Add in lots of breaks for people to digest the information
Add trigger warnings on videos/sounds that might be harmful
I am looking at you Threshold Video! As someone with visual sensitivities, I definitely could’ve used a heads up there - it actually sent me into overstimulation and I had to take a break for 30 mins and lie on the floor to calm down. Even though I was really interested in this presentation

Know accessibility can be the last thing on people’s minds when you do presentations - but please try to think of it throughout! When something triggers someone, you have no idea what it could cause someone. For me, it often means I have to leave class and self-sooth, meaning I lose out on class even if I want to be there (which is REALLY often).

OK, now to give credit to where credit is do (Should I have used the sandwich technique?). I did leave this week with the following knowledge:

AI is not like a human, it just mimics
AI is not a thing we should be scared of
How to use CoLab
There is AI everywhere
The formal definition of Datasets
It’s really fun to think of silly AI and go through the mental steps to build it
Ramón is a chill guy who likes to side eye 👀 silicon valley (same Ramón, same)

I think that’s really it on my reflections - I hope it wasn’t too harsh. It honestly was really interesting, just wish it was a little more digestible and a lot more hands-on!

sorry my about me page isn’t filled out!! But I worked as a facilitator back in Canada with folks who have cognitive disabilities. I’ve spent a lot of time breaking down complex topics to digestible bite-sizes, and honestly it’s my favourite thing to do. Mainly because as someone with learning and communication differences (babes, it’s a disability…), this is what I have to do for myself to learn 🤷🏻‍♀️