Linking Assignment
Task 1: What’s in your bag
Richard Wong
I really enjoyed the artistic element to this task and I found that Richard’s integration of digital mediums extended its use as a get-to-know-me tool really well. From my experience, it appears Richard used Keynote for his work in this task. He used a combination of pictures, words, coloured boxes (highlighting), and video to show his face and for voice commentary.
If I am correct that he used Keynote, Richard would have had the privilege of being literate in Keynote. Further, this mode of presentation would increase the privilege of access. Unlike my “What’s in my bag” task (that just had a picture and typed words) Richard’s creation included multiple literacies for accessing the information he shared because of the highlighted and isolated visuals, the clear and simple labels, and the use of oral commentary/story-telling.
Task 4: Potato Printing
Delian
https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540delian/2021/10/03/task-4-potato-printing/
Delain’s experience differed from mine in that she chose to complete the Potato Printing option for the task, where I chose to manually write a script. In typed writing, she very clearly documented and explained how she prepared, crafted, and produced her task, as well as provided a reflection on her experience.
I also really appreciated Delian’s “bit of digression” where she made a connection to hand-written cursive text and how this, like potato printing and stamping are “going out [of] fashion in the push for everything to be shared digitally.
Similarly to what was conveyed in the video “Upside down, left to right: a letterpress film”, these non-digital methods still have a place in our otherwise very digital world. For example, I have been asked/hired to manually create many items such sign boards, invitations, labels, etc. using my hand-written cursive and printing skills because I am literate and skilled in creating in this way. With that, however, I also recognize the digital link to this in that the demand for hand-written signage increased with the popularity of hand-created text found on digital social media platforms such as Pinterest.
Another think that I found interesting about Delian’s style within many of her posts, was that she uses bolded words and sentences in the architectural structure of her writing. I found this extremely useful when navigating through her post(s), as it purposely drew in my attention as a reader, and it especially helped when scanning and re-scanning for her key ideas. I hardly ever use the option of bold when I am writing, and this was an excellent reminder of how it can be used effectively and to enhance meaning in text.
Task 6: Emoji Story
Esther
https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540yang/2021/10/16/task-6-emoji-story/
The architectural choices of the Emoji Story task were constrained because we were required to use only emojis. We were given choice within this task with freedom to choose the story, however I appreciated that Esther also brought up that her story (and mine and many others’) was presented from left to right and from top to bottom and that this is reflexive of our English/Western culture and language.
Esther quoted Bolter (2001) sharing how two readers could use different words to explain the same message and different language speakers could have a similar system of picture writing. The very fact that emojis are used by different language speakers connects to this, and it also made me think of different generations within cultures and how they might use emojis similarly or differently. For example, my teenage niece doesn’t use emojis in the same way I do or to mean the same things and she even once laugh at me and say “Auntie, emojis are so formal” where I think emojis are informal.
I particularly enjoyed Esther creation because (beyond the more obvious choice of Squid Game because the squid emoji gave it away very easily) I was so happy to find an emoji story where I felt I was correct in guessing the title and plot line. I also connected to this because it made me think of how we gravitate to the literacies we understand most easily, literacies we can connect to and that make the most sense to us. If I think about the ELL learners in my class, they always gravitate to the other ELL learners that speak their same language as friends first. Also, in teaching the younger grades, the use of visual literacies are so important to help the children understand what they are learning and how often they choose books with the most amount of pictures until a certain level of reading develops.
Task 7: Mode Bending
Ellen Reid
https://blogs.ubc.ca/ereid/soundscape-whats-in-my-bag/
Ellen’s experience of mode bending was very similar to mine, whereby she created sounds to represent and give voice to the items in her bag. Listening to her soundscape was especially interesting because it provided an additional opportunity to extend my own knowledge of soundscapes through the First People’s Principles of Learning (holistic whole-body listening) and what might also be considered an additional multiliteracy: “sensory design”.
It seemed as though Ellen also connected to the wonders of whole body-listening “How might we hear electricity? Or the sound of fresh air to represent gum. What song do I hear when I see the wildflower journal?”, but her approach was to connect the items to words and search for those sounds through her browser. For me, this was a great example of a similar yet slightly different interpretation of multiliteracies and how they both relate and vary from person to person.
Task 8: Golden Record
James Martin
https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540jamesmartin/2021/10/26/task-8-golden-record-curation/
I selected James Martin’s task 8 because, upon knowing what this task was, I was really interested in hearing what he had to say for this task. In his first task, James stated that he is “an elementary music and band teacher”. Being that his experience as a teacher is different than mine because, I figured his perspective and approach to the task would be entirely different to mine. And I was right.
James is much more literate when it comes to music and is considered a music “professional” who has a highly trained understanding of music and music composition. My favourite line that he wrote was that he selected “tracks that featured the widest possible combinations of diverse musical elements” and I was so impressed that he created a spreadsheet of his considerations. Not only did it help me understand the music better, it clearly communicated his reasonings for choosing the tracks that he did.
In my minimally trained understanding of musical elements, I wouldn’t even know how to do this or what to look for. For my task, I choose tracks based on what I and the learners in my care liked versus what we didn’t. James, on the other hand, offers more privilege in his perspective as his selection is based on a much greater complexity of criteria.
On other thing that I found so interesting was that James would not “satisfied with [his] selection without the addition of another 4 or 5 tracks, where I didn’t even want to include 10 of these. For me, this was an excellent example because it not only showed the difference in our “literacies”, it also reminded me that I give privilege to the opinions of peoples that I believe are “experts” on a subject more that I would to someone else who just has an opinion.
Task 10: Attention Economy
PJ MacGregor
https://blogs.ubc.ca/pjmacgregor/2021/11/10/task-10-attention-economy/
One thing I noticed right away with Pamela’s experience was that she was able to successfully complete the game, which was completely different from mine because I didn’t complete the game. I knew this because the image that posted to her blog showed an image that she completed it (and in 4:40 at that!).
In addition to the image, Pamela used written text to reflect on her perspectives of “unconscious control” and her experience of the game. Like Pamela, I noticed how minimizing the box was very slow and that use of colour was opposite to what I would have expected it to be. Being that this was an example of how online experiences are purposefully created and curated as a way to “steer people’s thoughts” (Harris, 2017), I wonder if the purpose of something like a slow speed might make one second guess their choice, keep one longer on the page to look at more things, or was it just a tactic because the author of the page could do it and therefore was a way to control the user?
Pamela cited Tristan Harris and discussed the theoretical concepts of unconscious and ethical control. One way that I connected to this was when I was purchasing a coat online. I have been researching for this type of coat for about a month, and it was exactly what I was looking for in the exact colour I was wanting. When I clicked on my size, a yellow box popped up stating “Hurray! Only a few left in this size.” One part of my brain understands that there are a limited number of stock and items do sell out, but the other side of brain acknowledges that that little yellow warning gave a little internal “zing” and, admittedly, I ordered it that evening. The designer of that website and that little yellow box most certainly help steer me towards the purchase, as Pamela so eloquently stated.