February 19, 2023 · 11:00 am

An Emoji Story

 

Reflection

At the beginning of this task, I took some time to reflect on the shows and movies I’ve seen recently, as well as the books I’ve read. I was careful to select something that would be easy enough to simplify, but that also had elements that are more identifiable and a plot that was not terribly redundant. I will admit that I spent some time last night watching some trash television; Netflix’s Too Hot Too Handle (2022). When I reflected on how easy or challenging it would be to translate the story, I realized that the extent of the plot is: ????????????♻. I decided to go with something a little more complex, but realize that this plot is sadly one that is not unique and could be one of many hundreds of TV episodes, however, still  possible to identify through careful examination of the title so I found it important to start there. 

Overall, I found this task to be fun and challenging as well as a great way to illustrate Bolter (2001) and Kress’s (2005) conclusions that hypertext presents a move away from more linear forms of text, such as print. Although the plot of the television show I was attempting to recount is linear, I find that the translation to hypertext does make the text less so, and provides the reader opportunity to explore the text by going forward and backwards to confirm suspicions as to what is taking place in the story. I myself moved emojis forward and backwards in their place in the story, reconsidered which variations of emojis worked best, and found that oftentimes the plot turned out to be flexible and could be presented in many different ways. 

Translating the story into hypertext certainly challenged me to make new connections and meanings in the story that I may have originally overlooked when I first watched this episode last night. When choosing from a limited selection of emoji’s to express the plot, I found myself needing to think about the next closest thing to what I was trying to represent, and reflect on whether or not others reading the story would be able to make those same connections. Although I did not think about it while completing the task, it was done primarily through the analysis and selection of emojis that represented the people, places and things in the story, as well as emotion as an important focus in the story. This also happens to be the way that the emoji keyboard is organized (people, places, things, symbols etc.), which would lead me to conclude that nouns are most easily identifiable in hypertext, helping readers with interpretation of what they are seeing more than a verb or adjective might. For example, I used a police officer and police cruiser to represent a pursuit, rather than any emojis that represent the action of pursuit but still feel that the message comes across.

I am hoping that if you had the chance to read my emoji story you are able to accurately interpret the plot. Does anyone have a good guess for the title? Hint: it’s a new release on Netflix.

Let me know in the comments! 

 

References 

Bennett, C. (2022, December 7). Too Hot Too Handle. whole, Netflix. 

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

 

Kress, G. (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 2(1), 5-22.

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February 5, 2023 · 5:27 pm

Manual Scripts

Reflection

As a teacher, I originally thought that this task would be easy as I often write by hand to write jot notes, provide feedback on student assignments and state directions or notes on the classroom whiteboard. However, once I got started on the task, I almost immediately found it to be arduous and was surprised to find that my hand was cramping up not even 50 words into my writing. 

After comparing the experience of writing by hand, and typing this reflection, I can definitely conclude that typography is my preferred method of written communication. This is likely because I type for a good portion of my working days as a result of the technological world we operate in. A large portion of professional and personal communication happens largely through emails and various forms of social media. 

The primary reason that I prefer typing is that it is significantly faster. For example, I have written 200 words of this 300-word reflection in a fraction of the time it took me to manually write the same amount of words. Secondly, it leaves significantly more space for modifications and corrections.  I actually made a lot more mistakes while composing this reflection than I did while writing by hand, but was able to fix them a lot more easily. Perhaps because of this, my thoughts seem to flow more smoothly on a keyboard than with a pen in my hand. 

With that said, I would not say that writing by hand is completely without its benefits; it does provide a more personal and unique experience, it caused me to reflect more deeply about my words before I wrote them, and ultimately feels more like what I wrote ‘belongs’ to me.

References

Hitler, A., 1974. Mein Kampf; with an introduction by D.C. Watt, tr. by Ralph Manheim. London: Hutchinson.

Lamb, R., & McCormick, J. (Hosts). (2020, May 26). From the vault: Invention of the book, part 1  [Audio podcast episode]. In Stuff to blow your mind. iHeart Radio.

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January 29, 2023 · 5:44 pm

Voice to Text

The Story

“When I first graduated from University I took my first teaching job in Cairo Egypt it was really awesome experience because Egypt is so centrally located that we got to go on lots of trips within an outside of Egypt today I’m going to tell the story of one time when we got in a little bit of a dangerous situation when we were traveling around and seeing what you just had to offer so a couple people that I worked with at the international school and I decided we were going to go on a desert tour this was basically a 3-day trip through that What’s called the Pharaoh Oasis is where we started and then we are going sand boarding and dune bugging in the white and black deserts and at night sleeping under the stars having meals with bed winds very cool experience so the first thing we get there is really excellent or going around we’re seeing the desert or in these four by fours very cool we have dinner by the fire we sleep under the stars in the desert really cool experience the next day we are going sandboarding in the white desert now the sand dunes are super deep with really soft kind of sand and these vehicles are ripping around we had three different Vehicles each holding about 10 people I was in the first car and we are going up really steep Sand Dune and then down and I turn around to see that the car behind us had actually flipped coming down one of these sand dunes at first it was pretty surreal I couldn’t believe it really what was happening but the tables and all of the things I have been strapped to the top of the vehicle are now left right and center the car is on its roof when we get to the vehicle we see that the person who was in the front seat was now in the back many people had kind of some gas is some cut some injuries there was both foreigners and bedwins in this vehicle so some of the injuries were harder for us to assess from the bed wins in particular who only spoke Arabic so I’ve been trained in first aid since I was about 13 years old and they always say you know if something happens you’ll know what to do your first aid training will kick in however that was not the case for me and I kind of froze I didn’t really quite know what to do but luckily there were some people on the trip who were very well versed in kind of started delegating tasks you deal with this you deal with this in the end there was some a bit of like head injuries but nothing too serious gashes but there were broken collarbones broken ribs it was a whole kind of first aid operation because we were so far out in the desert that when essentially one of the bed ones who was not injured said he was calling for help what help actually was was another group of bedwings to come out with a new vehicle so that took about 2 hours for the new vehicle to arrive at which point the people who are injured were in the new vehicle and they were driving another 2 hours back to the closest Village that had a doctor now that said this doctor would have been someone working out of their home and it was another about 5-Hour Drive pyro so in the end most of the people on the trip ended up leaving either to go seek medical help or to be with those seeking medical help on the other hand didn’t actually know anyone who was in the second vehicle so we ended up staying and continuing on for another day of sand boarding but it was certainly a story that I will remember from my time in Egypt.”

 

Reflection

The first thing that is noticeable upon reading the output of the speech to text story that I recorded using  Speechnotes, is that it is almost completely lacking any sort of punctuation or organization. This particular program does not recognize pauses as opportunities to insert commas, periods, or breaks in text. This lack of punctuation also led to some really funky choices in capitalization, making it more difficult to interpret nouns, and placing emphasis where it shouldn’t be. I feel that reading back to this text to speech story makes it obvious why we have conventions in written english; because it makes text easier to interpret and understand. I would consider the lack of punctuation throughout the story to be ‘mistakes’, because their lack of presence in the story makes it significantly more difficult to read and understand the cadence and sequence of the events in the story. This makes the experience of reading the story back to be quite jarring and led me at points not to understanding what was happening in my own story. 

With that said, the speech to text did actually give me some grace, in that it did not relay the long pauses in my story where I stopped to gather my thoughts and remember details from the story. This could perhaps be something that could be considered ‘right’ within the text, along with general spelling conventions that lapse only occasionally. The spelling in the text is mostly ‘right’ except for when it comes to names of places that are not English. For example, “Baharaya Oasis” was changed to “Pharaoh Oasis” (noticeably still not an English word, but perhaps one more commonly used in English), and “bedouins” was changed to “bed wins”. It makes sense that the speechnotes program would recognize English being spoken and try to interpret all speech sounds in the same language, this may actually be something considered to be ‘right’, although in the context of the story it is ‘wrong’. In telling this story, my speaking style is very casual, especially considering the ad-libbed nature of the story. It is one that I have not told in many years so it felt quite off the cuff. This casual speaking style is really reflected in the written output. If I were to edit this written output and make it “right”, or if it had been scripted, I would make it sound more formal – as writing typically is. I do however understand that what is considered ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ for me are largely directed by cultural ideas of how writing should be. 

Oral storytelling is very important in many Indigenous groups because it connects people and communities in a way that written storytelling does not. Oral storytelling is a group activity, where as written storytelling is primarily an individual activity. As Gnanadesikan (2011), Ong (2002) and Haas (2013) all explain, the first form of storytelling was oral, and limited to the immediate audience. Writing technology then revolutionized the communication of stories and made them more permanent and therefore available to much broader audiences. This is perhaps why I felt the urge to edit the output of my oral story and make it more formal and edit the writing conventions. When telling a story, I am not worried about little mistakes or perhaps lapses in accuracy because the story feels like it ends as soon as it is told. When we write a story on the other hand, the feeling of permanence that comes with composing writing, makes following conventions feel more necessary. 

Schmandt-Besserat and Erard (2007) argued that oral storytelling is ephemeral and relies on the audience’s memory. I thought this was interesting and it caused me to reflect on the story and how much of what I remember may have changed since the events occurred. I feel that if I had written down the story, the specifics would be more accurate and detailed, where the reality of not having written down the events after they happened, parts of this story have likely been elaborated, diminished or changed as the story relies on my memory alone. These mistakes or changes in the story make it ‘wrong’, but this is also perhaps part of the beauty of oral storytelling, that it evolves over time through various tellings of the story. 

 

References

Gnanadesikan, A.E. (2011). The first IT revolution. In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet (pp. 1-12). John Wiley & Sons.

Haas, C. (2013). The technology question. In Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy (pp. 3-23). Routledge.

Ong, W.J. (2002). Chapter 1: The orality of language. In Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (pp. 5-16). Routledge. 

Schmandt-Besserat, D., & Erard, M. (2007). Origins and forms of writing. In C. Bazerman (Ed.), Handbook of research on writing: History, society, school, individual, text (pp. 7-26). Routledge.

Speechnotes.com

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January 18, 2023 · 11:38 am

Does language shape the way we think?

As I watched the lecture by Dr. Borditsky on the power of language to shape the way humans think, the following statements resonated with my own personal experience with constructions of  language, culture and relativism:

Firstly, Dr Boroditsky discusses several times throughout her lecture how language is a “magical” ability that humans possess and that diversity in language is a testament to the diversity and capabilities of the human mind. 

  •  [0:35-0:47] “language is one of these magical abilities that humans have, we can plant ideas in each-other’s minds using a finite set of words that we recombine into an infinite set of new meanings” 
  • [45:00-45:20]  “The fact that there are so many languages and they differ so much, this linguistic diversity is a real testament to the ingenuity, sophistication and flexibility of the human mind. We are able to invent not one perspective on the world, but 7000 and many more because we are constantly changing, inventing the language and moving in new directions” 

I think that this is something important to consider, that although we are wired through culture and relativism to consider language and resulting perspective as something that is static, we should instead consider how language frames what we see and without these constraints the human brain is actually capable of so much more and that languages can actually promote or impede certain abilities (like differentiating a wider variety of colors or counting exact numbers). As a Social Studies teacher, one of the primary skills that we encourage in students is to consider events and ideas from all sorts of different perspectives. Students often have trouble doing this; they can usually  identify the perspective of the speaker in a given source, and can often also identify the opposing viewpoint, but struggle to identify any other viewpoints that, for example, agree with parts of the perspective, and disagree with others. There are so many different ways of looking at the historical and contemporary world, but our cultures and language constrain us to look at the world primarily in one way because we “don’t think to dig out of the trench and see what other possibilities are” [44:54-44:58]. Dr Boroditsky elaborates on this idea by highlighting that language actually creates limits to our beliefs about the way the world works and the proper way to go about doing things: 

  • [44:30-44:50]  “cultures reduce cognitive entropy… we are able to think about the world and conceptualize it in many different ways, but we don’t always do all of those different ways, we just do things in the ways that we are used to doing them.”  

This is an interesting dichotomy, where language proves that the human brain is infinitely dynamic and flexible, yet it also constrains us to a specific cultural worldview. In this way, language is a really strong demonstrator of how culture frames the way that individuals see the world and is a reflection of what different societies prioritize and deem to be important.

  • [32:35-32:40]   “Speakers of different languages witness exactly the same event, but come away remembering different things about this event” 

Many Indigenous groups hold traditions that reflect the belief that nature should be regarded with deep respect, and that nature is inseparable from place and belonging. The Yupik language reflects this in that there are 40-50 different words for various forms of snow, a reflection of the importance of snow for Inuit society. Alternatively, Borodistky explains that the English speakers emphasize time, demonstrating the value and emphasis that Western societies put on time.

 After graduating from my undergrad, I moved to Cairo, Egypt to teach at an International School.  Over the two years that I spent in Cairo, immersing myself in the language and way of life, the more I came to see this same idea that language is a reflection of culture and world view. My biggest pet peeve while living in Egypt was what we referred to as “Egyptian time”, a concept that is familiar in many hot climates around the world. As a Westerner who is very time oriented, it drove me up the wall to be told something would be done right away and have it be completed weeks later, or that someone would be around to pick me up at 9:00PM and arrive at 11:00PM. Over time I came to understand how to interpret what was being said differently, based on the cultural environment, where the exact words being said were not the focus, but the culturally contextualized meaning behind the words. Boroditsky refers to this phenomenon by studying how teaching people different metaphors for time impacts how they think and speak about time.

  • [18:00-18:30] “When you teach people to talk a new way, you are teaching them to think a new way” 

Language speakers, then learn to prioritize values based on the value of words in their language. By expanding knowledge of different languages then, humans are able to expand their understanding of what is valuable or important. By this interpretation, I would agree with Charlemagne and Charles V, who note that learning more than one language has the capability of giving one person the knowledge and wisdom of many. 

  • [8:28-8:35] “To have a second language is to have a second soul” – Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor
  • [8:38-8:40] “A man who knows four languages is worth four men” – Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 

Dr. Borditsky’s lecture is an excellent means of promoting learning as many languages as possible, as this would be an incredible means of opening up our minds and means of interpreting our surroundings. I grew up in an English speaking family but attended French Immersion schooling from kindergarten to grade 12. The thing that I most noticed about learning French is that I began to associate grammatical gender with objects that I was interacting with. This was actually an interesting experience for me as I never particularly excelled with French grammar or remembering which gender was associated with which object. Even to this day when speaking or writing in French, I need to look at objects and think to myself, “does that chair look more like a girl or a boy?”. This is objectively ridiculous, in that a chair does not have a gender, but miraculously enough, my brain is most often able to search the annals of my primary school mind to find the gender the French language has associated with the chair.  Boroditsky notes that in this way, genders become more meaningful for cultures that place linguistic emphasis on gender. I wonder then how the transition to a more genderless world will be reflected in societies which place so much importance on gender. 

  • [23:48- 23:55] “People have done a lot of studies looking at how people perceive and think about objects based on a grammatical gender.”  

Though I don’t often make use of my French anymore, I have found it to be useful in my travels, and have often found myself thinking that it would be a great superpower to be able to speak many languages fluently. Particularly in Egypt, but also while traveling in other parts of the world I have thought about how much easier it would be to get around, complete transitions and make friends if I could somehow be blessed with the gift of language and be able to speak fluently with people all over the world. This lecture has encouraged me to extend that thought to include how knowing many different languages would not only allow me to communicate more broadly, but also to see the world in a more diversified way, to see it from the perspective of people who speak all sorts of different languages and have all sorts of different worldviews. 

  • [45:25-45:50] “[Think] about linguistic diversity as an aspiration; [think] about how you can think about things differently, all of the things your mind can do.”

References

SAR School for Advanced Research. (2017, June 7). Lera Boroditsky, How the languages we speak shape the ways we think. YouTube. Retrieved January 17, 2023, from https://youtu.be/iGuuHwbuQOg

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January 9, 2023 · 6:05 pm

What’s In My Bag?

My Glove Box 

My name is Amy Stiff. I am a High School Social and Legal Studies teacher on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes the Siksika, the Piikani, the Kainai, the Tsuu’tina, Stoney Nakoda First Nations, and the Metis Nation Region 3 (Calgary, Alberta). 

The bag I have chosen is not a bag, but instead the glove compartment of my SUV. The reason I have decided to explore the contents of my glove box, rather than a bag, is because I very rarely carry a bag. In my glove compartment you will find my wallet, disposable masks, a pen, a reusable straw, a co-op receipt with a car wash code, a pack of gum, lip balm, a portable lint roller, body spray and several packages of condiments. 

The item that stands out most in this array is my wallet, an item that most people would keep in a more secure place that is less susceptible to theft. I have considered the risks of keeping my wallet in my glove box, but have ultimately decided it is the favorable alternative to needing it and realizing it’s been left at home, at work, a restaurant, a friend’s house, wherever I was last… something that has happened to me many times as I can be quite forgetful, particularly when it comes to misplacing items. 

This one component of my identity (being forgetful) however, contrasts with who I feel I am in other aspects of my life. The other items in my globe box are an example of this; included are just the necessities, all with rhyme or reason as to the necessities of day to day life. The masks, gum, lip balm, lint roller, body spray are all the necessities of any busy person on the go, and the ketchup packets are an important part of the sausage breakfast sandwich that I order every so often where ketchup is very rarely included in the bag. While not unlike the glove boxes of many other working women and men in the global north, I feel that these contents are a fair representation of the image that I project. 

Text Technologies  

The payment and membership cards in my wallet could be considered digital technologies. The ability to manage and use these various cards demonstrate a technological literacy, and an ability to communicate with and through 21st century society. These cards may also point to financial literacy. Other items in my glovebox, though not digital themselves, are digitally produced; the print on my disposable masks, the gas station receipt, and all of the labeling on the remaining items such as the chapstick, gum, body spray etc. This demonstrates that I live my life in a world which emphasizes technology and digital print and that to navigate my world, one must likely need technological literacy. 

The print on these items also point clearly to the fact that I live in a bilingual country. The labels on many of these items are both in English and in French. A cultural archeologist might venture a guess that I am also bilingual (English and French), and they would be correct. They may also remark that I live in an area that has been thoroughly globalized, with each of the items in my glove box being sourced from various countries around the world; Canada, China, Cambodia, and the USA. On the note of globalization, the masks in my glove box would also point to the fact that I am alive during a global pandemic, and am scientifically literate enough to understand how the coronavirus can be transmitted. 

Completing this exercise has caused me to reflect about the stories that our belongings tell about us and the worlds in which we situate ourselves. How others might interpret the lifestyle attached to certain belongings and what that says about the individual, their literacies, hobbies and lifestyles. 

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