For my second link, I have chosen to reflect on Jamie’s Task 2 – Does Language Shape the Way We Think?
Difference in Approach
One of the key differences between mine and Jamie’s approaches to this task were the perspectives we held going into this task. I would consider myself monolingual, despite taking French all the way through school (unfortunately, I am still not able to hold a conversation in French). Jamie, on the other hand, is not only multilingual, but also teaches English to students around the world. This gives her a vastly different perspective than me when it comes to how language shapes the way we think. My perspective is limited due to my monolingualism, whereas Jamie is able to reflect on her various experiences with language and how being multilingual affects her own thought processes.
Our approaches to this task also differed in that Jamie provided two paragraphs of reflection to preface her video annotations. She then posted both the reflection and video annotations on her website, along with Dr. Boroditsky’s video. I, on the other hand, did not include this task on my website, as my annotations were embedded into the CLAS website. I also responded to several of my peers’ annotations within the CLAS website, and I thought this interactive element would be lost if I simply exported my annotations and posted them on my website. I considered this a design constraint, and I assumed that none of my peers would post their annotations on their website. To my surprise, a number of my peers did, in fact, post their annotations to their websites, along with a brief reflection. I remember feeling stressed when seeing this, and I actually emailed the instructor to confirm that this was not a requirement. Ernesto confirmed that we were not required to submit a link for this assignment, but it was interesting to see the number of my peers who did include this task on their website. Jamie’s decision to include this task on her website is the only reason I am able to link to it now on my own website, and it increases the longevity of her post. I will likely not return to the CLAS website again during this semester, whereas I will return to Jamie’s website and, likely, her Task 2 post. This alters my experience of Jamie’s work, as it turns her work on Task 2 into something I am able to revisit during the semester and consume in relation to her other tasks, rather than something I look at once as an isolated event.
Jamie’s additional reflection allowed me to glean some additional insight into her comments, and I feel that this helped me understand her annotations on a deeper level. I loved reading Jamie’s anecdotes in both her reflection and her annotations, as these reinforced the many fascinating examples provided in the video. While many of the examples provided in the video were brand new to me, Jamie’s experience was different, as she has significant personal experience with several of the topics explored in the video. This changed how Jamie and I were able to connect to the video, as we were in very different points in our learning journeys related to these topics. I really appreciated Jamie’s inclusion of additional resources throughout her post and annotations, as I found myself wanting to learn more about the relationship between language and thought after watching the video.
User-Interface Differences
It is also interesting to note that Jamie and I have structured our website using the same theme, but our posts within our websites look quite different from one another. It strikes me that Jamie must be quite comfortable with using WordPress, as her website and posts contain various features that I do not yet know how to use. All of my website building experience has been on Wix, so setting up a website on WordPress has been a learning process for me. I am inspired by Jamie’s design choices within her posts, particularly pertaining to her uses of images and tables, and I have already started learning more about the nuances of WordPress over the last few weeks of this course. I am excited to expand these skills further in the latter half of the course.
