Human Spirit and Growth

After four months of hard work, IS101-3022, Fall 2020 is winding down.

Yesterday, the CIT Department saved the day by giving me three Certiport exam voucher codes when our Certiport exam inventory expired on 12/18/2020. Stephanie claimed the first voucher code and joined Adrian in earning her MOS Outlook (MO-400) certificate, mirroring his score.

Today, a past student used the second exam voucher code and Linda secured her MOS Excel (MO-200) certificate with the third. Adrian was sidelined by an emergency. With his preparatory work, I believe he has a strong chance of conquering MOS Word Expert (MO-101) in January. In parallel, I await my own battle with MOS Access Expert (MO-500).

Until then, I look forward to continue helping Linda in finishing IS101-3022 strong and work with each of her classmates to publish their homepage, convert their slideshows to webpages, and assemble their website.

With the heavy lifting behind us, I would like share this penultimate blog post that I wrote month ago:

*************************

"They want to understand what understanding is. And maybe that is truly what it means to be human."

Robots/software conducting interview evaluations, Skynet but good, unconventional databases for extreme opposition research: the nascent technology of artificial intelligence (AI) gave my students and I much food for thought and a stomachache for some! Hopefully this poignant documentary film of human spirit and growth will soothe that ache and warm one's heart and eyes (as it did for me) ^_^

Newsflash: "Artificial intelligence researchers have solved the game of Go a decade earlier than expected. The computer named AlphaGo, was able to beat the European human champion."

The then European champion Fan Hui joined Google's DeepMind team, developer of the computer program AlphaGo, to further hone and test its abilities against the world Go champion Lee Sedol.

Go, the longest continuously played board game, contains "more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe". "The game of Go is the holy grail of artificial intelligence." said one of the team leads that has been working on this for the past twenty years.

A computer program defeating the top human professional player at a game is not news. In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated the then world Chess champion Garry Kasparov. However, Deep Blue was programmed by expert human chess players whereas AlphaGo learned on its own via machine learning and reinforcement learning. AlphaGo's programmers have no idea what moves AlphaGo may come up with.

In 2016, AlphaGo and Lee Sedol met for a set of five (5) games of Go with over 60 to 80 million people around the world watching.

Game 1: AlphaGo won. Lee Sedol was surprised.

Game 2: AlphaGo won. Lee Sedol was speechless.

Game 3: AlphaGo won. Melancholy set in for the world.

This is where you, my students, join in -- with 30 minutes of the movie remaining. Please watch until the end credit rolls.

If you watch the entire 90-minute movie, I think your mind and heart will be moved :-)

Was there a challenge in your life (academic, professional, personal) that you overcame or grew from?

Will you share your story of human spirit and growth with the world in the comment section of this post?

Final Gathering and Heading Into Deep Space

Today was an optional final class session. I am pleased that majority of students was able to attend :-) This afforded me the opportunity to walk through the answers and rationale of the final bonus quizzes, illustrate the difference between our first class session and this one, further entice students to pursue Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) certifications beyond MOS Associate, and re-iterate everyone's support for Bridget and Linda in their efforts to join their six classmates in finishing IS101-3022 strong.

After class, I tried to proctor a re-take of MOS Word (MO-100) for a past student but encountered error messages about CSN's exam session inventory license in Certiport. Another faculty confirmed the same when she tried to proctor my MOS Access Expert (MO-500) exam.

I expect this issue to be resolved Monday. My students and I will catch the last two days of exam sessions I scheduled for Tuesday, 12/22 and Wednesday, 12/23, each day at 12 pm, 1 pm, 2 pm, and 3 pm.

As of this blog post, I have seen preparatory work from Stephanie and Adrian on their pursuit of MOS Outlook (MO-400) and MOS Word Expert (MO-101) respectively. Anthony and Nnamdi both indicated that they want to pursue MOS certifications beyond MOS Associate. Tukta declined but I wish she will reconsider. Matthew was uncertain whether he would be able to devote the time and energy in the this pursuit as he took on additional military logistical support responsibilities in distributing the COVID-19 vaccine. Thank you Matthew!

I wish everyone success next Tuesday and Wednesday as the space shuttle 'Section 3022' travels into uncharted territories for IS101 ^_^

3 More MOS Associates and Overtime

Today is the deadline for me to submit students' final grades. Before the day ended, a trio of students passed Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) PowerPoint (MO-300) and earned the coveted MOS Associate distinction :-) I am so proud of them!

As I help two students in their semester extension to join their six classmates, I see at least one of the six has already taken advantage of the free MOS testing opportunities and the GMetrix preparation materials in pursuit of MOS Outlook (MO-400).

I hope others will prepare for and challenge MOS Word Expert (MO-101) and MOS Excel Expert (MO-201). I deployed Cengage project materials and included my A8 Workbook Investigation and A9 Mail Merge Query Options to help those who hunger for the MOS Expert distinction.

This Saturday after class, I will challenge MOS Access Expert (MO-500) myself. I will do the Microsoft Access Cengage projects after I check on my two students and prepare for this Saturday's class ^_^

Two More MOS Associates and MOS Outlook

The end of this weekend marks the end of instructions for Fall 2020 semester IS101-3022 but I have until end of day Wednesday, 12/16 to turn in students' grades.

Yesterday (Saturday) morning, two more students followed Matthew's lead from last Saturday in earning their coveted Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Associate distinction. Anthony is my only student that falls within the MOS Championship's age requirement. Even if MOS Championship does not send the young man an invitation to represent Nevada to compete in the MOS World Championship, I am still proud of him :-)

Adrian made me proud by conquering MOS Outlook (MO-400) based on his own experience as IS101 does not have lessons and projects for Microsoft Outlook. The next morning (Sunday) the future HR professional came back to claim his MOS PowerPoint (MO-300) despite having already earned the MOS Associate distinction.

For Stephanie and Bridget, I believe MOS Outlook will greatly help strengthen their resumes. I hope Adrian's example inspired them -- and the rest of Adrian's classmates -- to take on MO-400 after they earn their MOS PowerPoint!

During class, students took Bonus Quiz 8 OLE, IPOS Perspective, Bloom’s Taxonomy, the most telling event of my IS101. Linda gave her presentation on her hometown, San Lorenzo, Chihuahua, Mexico and shared not only the history of her hometown but happy photos of her family. I gave my customary student recognition presentation. I concluded the class by walking through the wonderful opportunities and free preparation materials for students to earn more MOS certifications, including three Expert level badges!

For the rest of the weekend, I continued to help students in finishing their PowerPoint projects and polished homepages for Adrian and Linda.

Three more students will take on MO-300 to earn their MOS PowerPoint this Wednesday, 12/16 before I turn in students' grades. Two other students will have the opportunity to use the days after 12/16 to finish their PowerPoint and/or Excel projects. I am pleased to hear the other students express their support by agreeing to attend the optional class session this coming Saturday and continue their blog activities until the last student crosses the finish line ^_^

Story of Electronics

Everyone have a story.

Each student has a story.

This course, IS101-3022 Live-Remote, Fall 2020, has a story.

Computing devices have a story too: https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-electronics/.

I wonder what each of my student thinks of this 7:46 min video:

First MOS Associate Earned and 7 Becomes 8

Badges, badges, badges this weekend!

Before class yesterday (Saturday), the seventh student took on MOS Excel (MO-200) and won ^_^

In class, I reviewed answers to bonus quizzes, demonstrated step-by-step the correct way to fulfill A7 Mail Merge, walked through a calendar for the home stretch and overtime of IS101-3022, and showcased two homepage designs.

During that time, the eighth student reached out to me after a long absence. After class, I connected with the student and reassured her that she has the potential to finish strong even after the official end of the semester.

This morning (Sunday), Matthew completed all PowerPoint-related coursework and lead the charge against MOS PowerPoint (MO-300). Also at the same exam session is the seventh student returning to face MOS Word (MO-100) and a student from another professor's class re-taking MO-200. It was a rare occurrence proctoring three different certification exams in the same session. All three succeeded -- doing a happy dance -- and the leading student of IS101-3022 became the first to earn the coveted MOS Associate distinction :-)

Afterwards, Matthew and I discussed the optional assignments (OA) and what is beyond MOS Associate. OA9 Object Linking & Embedding Query Option is a direct continuation of A7 Mail Merge and the least amount of work of the three OAs. I will elaborate on what is beyond MOS Associate after more students have earned their MOS Associate distinction.

I wish my students success in their final push.

Facial Recognition

Earlier in the semester, my students worked on A3 Tailored Cover Letter and Resume where I shared a video: Artificial Intelligence: The Robots Are Now Hiring. A follow-up to that is this video Facial Recognition: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO). The video may be from seven months ago and the topic is at least a few years old but the implications are just beginning to be vetted.

Note 1: View discretion is advised as the 21-min video contains strong languages and John Oliver's brand of humor. If you are under the age of 18 and cannot obtain your parent's permission, let me know and I will give you an alternate assignment in place of watching this video.

Note 2: When I tried to search for this video through Blogger's YouTube video search/insert function, Blogger (owned by Google) would not return it -- along with almost all of John Oliver's videos -- as a search result. Hence, I inserted a screen capture of his video and pointed you to the URL. If that doesn't work, visit https://youtube.com and search for the title his video.

The five statements that stood out for me are:

 (1) Driver license photos from residents of these states (includes Nevada)

 (2) 'Skynet but good'

 (3) Only 8 out of 42 matches were verifiably correct

 (4) "...argues that it has a First Amendment right to harvest data from social media."

 (5) "...'unconventional databases' for 'extreme opposition research'..."

These funny lines stood out for me as well: 'loser fish', 'your brain autocompleted the rest', and 'accidentally made tennis interesting for a day'.

Students, please share your professional thoughts on what you learned from his video in your comment to this blog post.

Mat Honan's Epic Hack

What would you do if you lost access to your devices such as computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone?

What would you do if you lost data such as family photos, financial information, sensitive documents on your devices?

What would you do to get them back?

What would you do to prevent this from happening?

What would you do if someone else gained unauthorized access to your accounts and began sending/publishing information as you?

This rare gem of a first-hand walkthrough by a technology journalist from 2012 gave me and my students much food for thought!

How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking

By Mat Honan 08.06.2012 08:01 PM

https://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/

In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. Here's the story of exactly how my hackers created havoc by exploiting Apple and Amazon security flaws.

My students answered those questions in Discussion Thread 10. I hope they will share some of their answers in the comment section of this blog post :-)