Feel-Good Feb
Overall, a fun-filled month :)
February Overview
Getting lost down the river:
This month was really fun. I had a great time with my friends. One particular weekend we decided to go tubing down the river but we missed the planned end point by 2km! We got slightly lost and had to walk 1km to get back to the main road holding our tubes. It was almost 40 degrees. This was a crazy adventure and pretty memorable.
My friend battled the current when we got stuck in a rapid but unfortunately lost her shoe and hat. Here was our makeshift solution (a chips packet and hair tie). I went on a Waterpolo tour with my team this month. The team hadn't played together before the tour because it was the start of a new season. The tour helped us become a lot better at working together in the pool and it was a lot of fun. We also got a chance to get to know other teams from the western cape and I made a couple friends on tour.
I got through to the second round of the application process for UWC Japan and had to do the interview at midnight because of the time difference. I was quite nervous but it ended up being a comfortable conversation. It felt a little bit like the TKS interview.
I'll find out early March if I get accepted.
TKS Challenge
This challenge was tough. I was already friends with the people in my group and so we immediately dived into brainstorming. I really enjoyed our regular meetings because of the jokes that can only be made when you are comfortable with the other people.
We unanimously agreed that we wanted to do the Alexa challenge but it took us a while to choose a solution idea. By the third week (out of four weeks) we realised that committing to an idea and developing it was better than searching for all the possible options in hope of something “better”.
The solution idea we decided on is called Lingualexa: a voice assisted language learning tool that incorporates chat gpt. We found that Gen Z prefer interactive learning to lectures and one thing that is slightly lacking in online language learning is practicing conversation and pronunciation.
Feel free to take a look at our deck to find out more about Lingualexa.
It turns out that Duolingo was thinking about the same things we were around the same time because, right after the challenge submission deadline, Duolingo released a ‘max version’ incorporating a language chatbot and AI features.
Update on Goals:
I really enjoyed my Waterpolo tour, but I struggled in the water because I didn’t practice much in the weeks leading up to it. I jumped in the pool a couple times in the week prior to the tour to do some swim practice but it wasn’t as much as I had planned to do. The salt water in the harbour we were playing in helped me a lot with staying afloat.
I think that the consistent team practices coming up are going to make me a stronger player and so I’m looking forward to the season.
The TKS Challenge went pretty smoothly even though it was tough. We did only submit at 23.59 (the deadline was midnight) because of some last minute issues with the deck, but other than that, it was pretty smooth sailing.
I learnt that text-to-image artificial intelligence is not able to put text into the actual image yet because our attempts ended up looking like gibberish.
I also learnt that the people you work with have a huge influence on how much you enjoy working on a project because they can make it easy, or challenging.
Goals for March:
I would like to put a lot of time and effort into my visual diary and projects for art. I have really been enjoying the tasks and I think that I would benefit from spending time working on them.
I would like to make some progress on my Focus because I plan on finishing it by the end of the TKS Innovate course.
Concept of the month
Keeping up with the times
Our world is rapidly changing and technology is rapidly evolving. TKS has opened my eyes up to how big our world is and how easy it is to access things and information. So far, I have signed up to a daily newsletter (MorningBrew), participated in Challenges given by crazy companies, met countless people from around the world, and started to build up my portfolio.
When it comes to “Keeping up with the times”, sometimes you have to push yourself to stay updated. As a student, I know that some schools are taking chatGPT in their stride and others are trying to find ways to ban it. On one hand, in my art class, our entire project requires diving into AI-generated art and creating our own reference image using AI. On the other hand, my English teacher changed a writing assignment so that we were no longer allowed to bring planning for our descriptive essay into the test room. This is because the English department didn’t want students to use chat GPT to plan the essay for them.
I believe that we should view chat GPT and emerging technology as a tool that can help us reach our full potential. Ignoring and avoiding AI won’t benefit anyone because even if you don’t change, the world is changing. And fast. “Keeping up with the times” is no longer optional, it is vital if you don’t want to fall behind.