I am linking my Task 6 ‘Emoji Story’ to Stephanie Carr’s. When I first came across Stephanie Carr’s post and a few others like it I was in the middle of watching Squid Game so I did not read it at first as I was trying to avoid spoilers. I came back to it after I had finished the show because I liked the visual layout of her wordpress page.

Of the Task 6 ‘Emoji Story’ posts I read Stephanie’s experience seemed closer to mine than anyone else’s. It is clear that Stephanie enjoyed the activity and had fun doing it. Significantly, the story Stephanie is trying to represent with her emojis is an action heavy plot in contrast to the story I tried to represent which focuses on the characters relationships with each other. She manages to pack a lot of plot and exposition into a very small number of emojis. Similarly to me she focussed on representing ideas and identifying characters, rather than trying to work with proper grammar and articulate individual words. There is a sparse efficiency in how Stephanie has chosen to represent the plot of the first episode of the show. She lists in chronological order the significant plot points from the first episode and having seen the episode I am able to follow it clearly. Although I think I would struggle to piece together the story if I was not already familiar with the episode. Readers are expected to guess what the relationship is between one face and another. We might assume that we are moving from scene to scene as we scroll down through the list of emojis, but there aren’t many clues as to how much time has passed. I don’t know how someone would make sense of the numbers used without having seen the show. There are also very few clues about how the characters in this story feel about anything. However, having read Stephanie’s reflection I realise that some of this is by design, that she is leaving space for the reader’s own creativity to fill in some of the blanks. I like that approach as I usually prefer stories that leave room for the receiver to do some figuring out and interpreting on their own.

Referencing Bolter, Stephanie talks about the ‘linearity of reading’. (2001, p.54) This did make me reflect on how much we rely on the formats that are familiar to us from written text story telling even when telling stories without text. All of the Emoji stories I read relied on sentence like structures and paragraphs of sorts, which assume that the reader is familiar with text based writing. Both Stephanie and I spoke about how we did not focus on punctuation and other forms of grammar. Reflecting on it now I can see that even when we think we are neglecting grammar it still shapes how we tell our stories whether we are using text or not.

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Chapter 4. Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print(2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110

I am linking my ‘Task 3: Voice to Text’ to Delian’s. We both used speechnotes to capture our speech and told personal, origin stories of a sort. With their background in Applied Linguistics Delian brings an interesting perspective to the analysis part of this task. I appreciated how Delian began by taking a ‘look under the hood’ and exploring how the technology worked. Delian points out that 80% of what they spoke was captured correctly. It made me think of how I sometimes take such wondrous technology for granted; often focussing on what it got wrong and how it frustrated me. In my own post I do not think I gave the technology the kudos it deserves.

Delian has populated their post with references to that particular week’s readings. It was clear to me how some of the references illuminated or reinforced Delian’s points, but also some that I was less sure about why they were chosen. It’s clear, however, that there is an effort to apply what Delian has encountered in the weekly readings to the task at hand. In my own post there was only one reference and even that was only tangentially related to the week’s topic. I am often unsure about including references and quotes. I wonder if I am shoehorning in a quote for the sake of appearance or am I meaningfully connecting my thoughts with the authors’. I worry with my own writing if I do not use the quote properly it can be jarring and distract from the message. However, I do recognize and accept that all communication is in part performance. We are signalling our understanding of certain conventions and expectations, as well as respecting and acknowledging our debt to others.

While I mostly agree with Delian’s point that there are significant differences between oral and written communication, I do think that we have developed ways to communicate tone, rhythm and much else that might be primarily associated with oral communication in written text. Communication is more than the message and medium in which it is delivered. It is also the context. Telling our individual origin stories to friends, as Delian and I both imagined doing, would be different from telling these stories in a different context, for example in a court of law. In both instances we might orally recount our stories, but the care we take and emphasis we make could be quite different.

I am linking my ‘What’s in My Bag’ post to that of Grace Reid’s. Grace hooked my interest with her first sentence stating as she did that she was ‘…drawn to the themes of capturing and connecting.’ Like me, she indicated that she journaled; unlike me she appears to journal much more diligently and in a variety of formats. I was interested to read how different aspects of her life (work and school), thoughts and ideas are captured in different formats. It’s clear that the tools through which she transmits and captures her thoughts are significant for her. It is interesting to me to think about how she has compartmentalized her thoughts not just by topic or parts of her life but also by the tools with which she captures them (e.g., laptop, apps, paper notebook, special pens). I do this too, but did not think to express that in my own post. Significantly, there was no laptop in my bag and I am not much for putting down thoughts in my smartphone. 

Grace’s post makes me reflect on how we present different parts of ourselves and express ourselves differently through different mediums, even when what we are revealing or expressing is not meant to be shared with others. Even when communicating with ourselves (i.e., journaling) we attach significance to the medium. I know I still associate being personal as using  pen and paper, although I am sure this is changing for me too as I spend more time expressing myself in digital formats.

To a casual reader I would think her work is much more inviting than my own. The picture she provides of the content in her bag is much clearer and larger than the one in my post. The typescript is friendlier. Unlike me, she has included navigation tools at the end of her page. Overall, her post is pleasing to the eye and has a level of freshness and organization that I am envious of. In contrast I shared more biographical information about myself in my post, however I think there is more warmth in Grace’s post and greater insight into how she captures her thoughts through text. I see in her work a successful marriage of image and ideas (text). In my own post I think I have not complemented the text as well as I could have. This might also reflect the fact that I am sometimes guilty of being satisfied with ‘good enough’, rather than putting in a little more effort to elevate the work.

Watch “What’s in your bag? (Part 2)” here!

Reflection

My redesign is a fictional micro story told using voice-over accompanied by video and animation, or what the New London Group might refer to as a ‘discourse’ – ‘…a construction of some aspect of reality from a particular point of view, a particular angle, in terms of particular interests.” (1996, p. 78) The point of view is a fictionalized, or exaggerated, version of my own. The angle I am exploring is how certain types of power are wielded in society and how my relationship to that experience has changed. If there is a particular interest it is a brief reflection on social justice issues and how such interactions, as the one described in my story, play out differently for different groups in our society.

By telling a multi-modal story, by going beyond what the New London Group refer to as ‘mere literacy’, and including audio and visual elements and showing gestural meanings in, for example faces and hands, I am perhaps able to convey more meaning in a short space of time than I may have if this story was only in text form. However, the New London Group do not seem to give much consideration to the trade offs that are made when choosing to tell a story using multiple modes of expression compared to a more pared down form such as text. I am reminded how often lovers of a particular book are disappointed when the book is made into a film. By using the images I have chosen to tell my story with it might seem like I am even more forcefully imposing my view point on the person receiving my story and allowing them less opportunity to create in their minds their vision of the events. The casual viewer of my story would not know the images used to tell my story were not necessarily what I had in mind when I began to conceive of the story; they are simply what were available to me for free on Pixaby and Canva.

In the story I am trying to draw attention to the use of language, by reflecting on the different contexts in which a question like “What’s in your bag?” might be asked. The original ‘What’s in your bag?’ activity served as a friendly introduction to the ETEC 540 course. The New London Group describes ‘Available Designs’ in terms of genres articulating social relations and social positions. (1996, p.76). I took this as permission to do more than add additional grammars to the ‘What’s in your bag?” activity but to also try out the activity in different genres. ‘What’s in your Bag?’ could be a cheery daytime TV quiz show with contestants guessing the contents of each other’s bags based on their appearance and some small bits of biographical information. ‘What’s in your bag?’ could be a documentary telling the story of refugees who were forced to flee their homes and could grab only a few precious items to carry in their bag before leaving. 

However, I settled on my story, which I think might be described as a melodrama, because for many people someone asking to see what’s in your bag would in most contexts be quite an invasive and unwelcome experience. The likely scenarios in which this would occur would be demonstrations of power and authority. The story gives me a chance to reflect on how my experience of being asked ‘What’s in your bag?’ by a person in authority could be different from someone from a different culture or social group. It is also an opportunity for me to reflect on how I have changed over the course of my life and how my relationship to authority has changed. In my teenage years and early twenties growing up where I did I had a strong disdain for police authority and a misguided sense of my own invincibility. I grew up in a part of the world, the north of Ireland, as part of a community that viewed the police force as a foe. Even though a lot has changed for me since then and I live in a very different context now I wonder what remnants of the older version of me remain.

Reference

Cazden, C., Cope, B., Kalantzis, M., Luke, A., Luke, C., Nakata, M., & New London Group. (1999;1996;). A pedagogy of multiliteracies designing social futures. In B. Cope, & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), (pp. 60-92). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203979402-6

Click to view my emoji story:Task 6 Emoji Story

Reflecting on the Process and Challenges of Translating the Title and Plot into Emojis.

I am in general an infrequent emoji user. I have never previously tried to communicate more than a word or two using emojis. I often use the thumbs up emoji as a quick response to a text message, but little else beyond this. At the outset of this task I really did not know what tools I could use to communicate the title and plot I had chosen. However, once I started playing around with the emojis and trying out different combinations it was a little like tuning your ear into a particular English dialect. It starts out a little strange, but somewhat recognizable and after a while you begin to get comfortable and delight in its idiosyncrasies.

I only used syllables once (I think) and that was in the title. For the plot I relied on whole words to identify characters, their state of mind, relationships with each other, story locations, and action. I used symbols and hand gestures to indicate the passing of time.

I found it challenging to describe action, for example, how to describe people moving into a house. The emojis are useful when communicating a characters’ state of mind and the hand gestures are useful when communicating the characters feelings towards each other. I believe I found a useful way to communicate the passing of time, but really that’s up to those deciphering my emojis to say.

There is little subtlety when using emojis. These are big gestures used for communicating quickly. Which I suppose is part of their attraction. This limitation presented an interesting challenge and I found this exercise fun. I noticed that as I was translating the sentences in my head into emojis the sentences I was bringing up began to simplify; my thoughts shifted to a kind of ‘baby speak’. The speech in my head quickly dispensed with any attempt at proper grammar.

I chose the work simply because it was the last film I had watched. I think I got lucky because it is a story that takes place in only a few locations, and is a character study.

I asked my 13 year old daughter, who is an avid emoji user, if she could decipher what I had written. She did not get the title but she did quite easily translate the plot into words. Her conclusion was ‘I don’t want to watch this movie’.

Flight Delayed (4)

Reflection

I’ve come across Twine before in other ETEC classes, but never built anything using it. At the end of ‘The Temple of No’ game, which was amazing, there is a comment/question that asks if you have ever played a Twine game that was actually good, not just good for a Twine game. It is a little harsh, but has an element of truth to it. I have never come across any Twine game/story that was close to being as good as the ‘Temple of No’ game…admittedly I’ve only seen a handful. I shared the game with my wife and a comment she made stuck with me. Part of the joy of the ‘Temple of No’ is the way in which the story is paced, how the words and actions are revealed to the reader in different amounts…building tension, causing frustration, and adding excitement. Of course this is true in all forms of storytelling, but because Twine is interactive storytelling it enhances those feelings.

I like that Twine makes it easy to get started. The basic tools are user friendly and fairly intuitive. I decided to use bits of a very short story that I had written many years ago; something that I was never satisfied with in its original form. I think we all like to think of the moments in our lives when we chose a particular path; how things might have turned out differently if not for ‘fate’ intervening. The branching in Twine seems like a good way to tell this type of story and reflect on the different paths in a person’s life. The original story was meant to be lean, but I like that in Twine I could provide the option to the reader of additional information if they chose to view it.

Mine is still quite a conventional piece of storytelling. I would like to spend more time in Twine creating something that is more like a game. I hope to work with my kids develop some of their ideas in Twine in the near future.

Reference
Johann, D., Pugh, W., ‘Temple of No.’ Crows Crows Crows Games. Accessed from: https://crowscrowscrows.itch.io/the-temple-of-no

Text

Generated using https://speechnotes.co/

This is the story of how I met my wife. I’m at my wife many years ago in Australia while travelling. We were both travelling actually. I’ve been probably by myself for a couple of months of that stage and I was heading south from karen’s to Alice Springs. My wife was going in the opposite direction she just come up from Adelaide and arrived a day or two before in Alice Springs. It was the day after my birthday. I had plans to go on a trip to lularoe a large rock in the middle of Australia which is a famous tourist destination also a spiritual place for the Aboriginal people in Australia. I was meant to go on the day of my birthday but the people organizing the tour asked me if I’d waited a to allow a couple to go together because of limited spaces. I agreed to do so unfortunately for me my wife was on the tour that next day or my future wife I should say. I remember talking to her already. We exchanged pleasantries said elope she wondered if we’d met before I didn’t think so. I might have been about twelve people on that bus trip it was a 3-day overnight Adventure camping outside under the stars. From Alice Springs to Uluru what’s the full day of driving we got there late in the afternoon just in time to see the sunset over there I’ve never seen Rock. And then that night champs nearby my wife and I are in July channel guide shared stories. The next day we claimed Hillary. I regret doing this night by the time I knew. By the time I knew at the local local Aboriginal people would prefer the tourist did not claim it there was a holy place a special place for them and the thought of anyone claiming and falling it off off The Rock was. Play my youth Cinema ignorance in my ambivalence ignore that and my desire was just to get up the Rock and enjoy the view and hub. And my wife is of a similar mind at that stage two. So we claims me a little bit of head her catching up once in a while we could have fallen into a gigantic together at this stage not ignoring the rest of it but spending extra time with each other. The way she tells that I was annoying her cajoling her to move faster in my mind I was just being encouraging. We jumped again that night playing games singing songs sharing stories with the whole group. And we roll doormat next to each other and as the others kind of fell off to sleep we continue chatting flex tape we drove back to Alice Springs and that night all of us already a large number of the people who paid on the trip together decided for drinks and food and dancing. And it was somewhere in that mix of food drinks and dancing that’s why we had our first kiss.

Questions

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

If this story were told in conventional written English I would expect to see it divided into paragraphs. There would also be many commas and more periods. There are several confusing sentences; some running long, others ending abruptly.

What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

I was travelling from ‘Cairns’ not ‘karen’s’, but then I have to admit I sometimes have trouble pronouncing Cairns the way the Australians do. It reads as ‘she just come up’, when I think I said ‘she had just come up’. This stands out for me more than some of the other mistakes as it reminds me of childhood mockery and the ways in which we would make fun of each other, imitating someone who did not speak the language well. ‘Uluru’, which I would imagine is a difficult word for a software like this to get right, is captured correctly the second time I spoke it and incorrectly the first (lularroe) and third time (Hillary’). 

In the text it states ‘unfortunately for me’, when I in fact said ‘fortunately for me’. However, I think in this context most people reading the text would themselves autocorrect and not spend time wondering why I said ‘unfortunately’.

‘We exchanged pleasantries said elope’ – Here the software wrote ‘elope’ instead of ‘hello’. This dramatically changes our first interaction from something rather mundane into a wild romance where we decided to elope the moment we laid eyes on each other.

What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?

The most common mistakes are the unpolished sentences which lack punctuation. Pacing is a big part of storytelling. Punctuation and sentence structure (e.g., varying the length) help adjust the pacing. I tried to insert periods when telling my story, but I also forgot to do so on several occasions.

Problems with prepositions is another common mistake. Prepositions are missed or mistaken for something else (e.g., “by myself for a couple of months of that stage” and “bit of head her”). Prepositions help structure sentences and help make clear the relationships between different objects in a sentence.

There are also several words misheard and written incorrectly (e.g., ‘claimed’ instead of ‘climbed’, ‘Play my youth Cinema ignorance’ instead of ‘in my youthful ignorance’). It’s easy enough for the reader to guess it should be climbed instead of claimed, but in the other example even I had trouble figuring out what I had said.

As to why I consider these things mistakes…I don’t always write great sentences but I like to think I have an appreciation for a well written one. A well written sentence helps the story flow and does not draw too much attention to itself. Badly written sentences are jarring and distance the reader from the story. Is the simpler answer as to why I consider these things mistakes because I have been conditioned to do so. It is part of my job to perform quality reviews of documents and it is something I have learned to do over the course of many years of schooling and working. Maybe it is a form of elitism and I am signaling by recognizing these mistakes that my place is with the ‘intellectual class’.

What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

The story I told was not entirely unscripted, although I had no notes. I have told this story or versions of this story before, sometimes by myself and sometimes together with my wife. But I have not told this story for a while and so I am rusty. However, I think the biggest factor in telling this story aloud here is that I did not have an audience to respond to. It’s a different experience when I am reacting to whatever audience I am sharing this story with. I’ll emphasize different things. I’ll slow down and speed up in different places. I suppose I had some thought that this story is going out to my classmates and instructor, but there was none of the feeling of intimacy that comes with sharing a story face to face.

Given the fact that I have told versions of this story on several occasions before I would have expected to be more assured, confident and polished when telling it, but I did not feel that way. If I had scripted the story I would have felt more assured, confident and polished. As someone who has done a fair bit of presenting I tend to think of a script as a safety net. It is there to catch you when you slip and bounce you back to where you want to be. Knowing you have a safety net you feel free to take chances that you might not otherwise do and embellish the original story or invite audience participation.

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling? 

When listening to the Orson Welles’ audio clip from ‘Julius Caesar’ it occurs to me that what we think of as powerful oration often makes use of repetition and callback; a sense of building to a crescendo. There’s an understanding that the oral storyteller only has an audience’s attention for a short time span and that in order to sustain their attention they must create a sense that they are moving towards something; a satisfying pay off. It could be argued that there are similar expectations in written storytelling, the difference being that more room or time is given to get to the pay off. The repetition and callback in oral storytelling make it easier for the listener to follow along and keep track of where the story is going.

Reference

Welles, O. (1938). Mark Anthony’s Oration. ‘Julius Caesar’ (Mercury Theatre Company [Audio file]. Retrieved from URL:https://ia902707.us.archive.org/15/items/OrsonWelles-MercuryTheater-1938Recordings/MercuryTheater38-09-11JuliusCeasar.mp3

Read more : Task 4: Manual Scripts

What’s in My Bag?

I am Derek Doherty. This is my 8th MET course. I live in Vancouver with my wife and two daughters. I am cheating a little with this exercise; constructing from memory the items in my bag that I used to carry with me when commuting to work on transit prior to Covid-19. I have not had much use for the bag recently and at some point over the last 18 months or so I did clean it out. The bag itself is part of my story. I bought it in Beijing in a market when I lived there with my wife, sometime before we had our first child. It has fallen in and out of favor with me over I would guess, perhaps, 15 years. We have moved several times since I bought it and it has spent many years stuffed in closets, but despite regularly thinking I should, I have never gotten rid of it.

The first thing that these items remind me of is that I do not like carrying things in my trouser pockets. Keys, wallet, headphones and work ID which might be safer carried in my pockets I still prefer to carry in a bag. There is always a receipt or two in one of the compartments kept because I think I should and then eventually discard. Sunglasses and sunscreen for the days when I might need them. A book for reading on the bus and train. I still prefer when reading a novel to have a physical copy, although almost all other reading I do on a screen. There are very often small items from my most recent dental visit; gifts given by the dentist that I promise to use regularly and stay in my bag untouched for months. Bike lights and energy bar, as I try to alternate between taking transit and cycling to work. Pens and a notebook that serves as my diary; moleskin because that’s what real writers use! I am an infrequent daily diarist. There are sometimes weeks or months when I jot down diligently each day my experiences and thoughts from the day before and long periods when not a word is written. A random envelope or two, sometimes a bank letter or pension statement, that I am intending to put into the office shredder. Lastly, a picture of one of my daughters, which is actually a Father’s Day card from my wife telling me that I am a good ‘Baba’ (my daughter’s name for me). Not pictured with the items is my mobile phone (used to take the picture) but it would be there too.

There are items in my bag that I need on a daily basis. My wallet contains Driver’s License, Credit Cards and importantly my Compass Card. Without my Work ID being admitted to my building becomes an ordeal. There are other items that simply give me comfort or pleasure, such as the headphones on which I listen to podcasts and music, the book I am reading and the picture of my daughter.

It would be easy to assume from the “texts” found in my bag that I am primarily an English speaker, living in an English speaking community. The Compass Card would indicate that I am a city dweller and someone who likely commutes to work. The novel would indicate that I am part of a literate culture where reading for pleasure is popular. Inside the cover a price is written in pencil indicating that this is a second hand book suggesting that trade in such books is still active. The fact that the novel is a paper copy when viewed beside the smart mobile phone (not pictured) might suggest that my formative reading experiences took place prior to the internet becoming commonplace. The receipts in the bag are from Home Hardware and given the list of items on them… wall hooks, newly cut keys…an archaeologist might conclude that the person has recently moved into a new home. 

My work ID is an interesting text technology. The visible information on the card provides only my name, work number and company name, but the chip embedded in the card reveals much more, for example, when I started work with the company, the last time I visited the office, which parts of the office building I have access to and how much security access I have.

The diary would reveal thoughts and ideas that are often pretty mundane, hopes to be a better person, cyclical worries that ebb and flow, and attempts at savoring the life I live. It would be mortifying to me to have anyone else read it. But the writing sometimes helps ground me and get things out of my head. I think the diary would suggest that I live in a society where self reflection is encouraged. It might also, more cynically, hint at the fact that we live in an age when people sometimes think of themselves as the star in their own TV show; dramatizing their lives, mining moments for comedy or pathos. Some people choose to share this image of themselves very publicly online and some, like me, prefer to do it mostly in private and only a little online.

Read more – Task 3: Voice to Text

Looking forward to this course and learning from all of you.