So, Abe Kang is my final choice for this list. Why? Well, I really like his name, Abraham Kang; Abe; Abe Kang; maybe Kang to his buddies. I am always surprised when designers choose dark backgrounds with light text. Maybe it doesn’t matter if the text is particularly readable. I am text-bound, but not in the way one might think. I mean that I am always looking for the story. What’s the story of this space? this room? this town? this wall I’ve been staring at . . .

I got so sick of story that I stopped reading in 2005. I’d read Life of Pi, Fall on Your Knees, and some other horrifyingly Canadian horrifyingly fucking depressing fiction that summer. I couldn’t take it any more. So I just stopped. But I couldn’t stop looking for story.

So, Abe’s place. The title, TEXT TECHNOLOGIES, ETEC 540, dominates the space. On my little Macbook Pro, that’s about all I see on any page I move to. That’s a bit of an exaggeration. I also get the forward/back keys and the title of the page I’m on. Everything but what matters: what’s on the page. Typical site design. I have to scroll down to see the content, on every page, with TEXT TECHNOLOGIES, ETEC 540, screamed out at me as though I might forget by the time I get to the next page. Which I might. I’ve got a gap where my short term memory goes. It’s been a problem all my life.

When I was 16, I worked at Sears, as a teen fashion representative (laugh). People whispered that I got the job because it was a high school initiative and my dad was a aprincipal, but my father never did me a favor in his life.

I was dating a guy named Pat at the time, a darkly red-headed, body-freckled tennis player with a snub nose and white smile. I remember him as always wearing tennis whites, and his eyes always looked about to cross, somehow. He had his own ideas about funny, and he found my non-existent short-term memory hilarious. And he devised an experiment.

He introduced me to his friend, Jack, one afternoon. Later, he bet Jack that I would not remember him, and that Pat could re-introduce Jack and I would think I’d never set eyes on him.

Of course, it worked.

I can remember almost every phone number I’ve had since the age of 11 (and it’s a lot of phone numbers) but introduce me to someone and the next day they are lost to me . . . tell me your phone number and I might call you up in 30 years (but not remember who you are) . . . lol . . .

So, maybe that’s why I chose Abe’s space. His insistence on repeating the name of his site, TEXT TECHNOLOGIES, ETEC 540, reminded me of a happy time in my life, with a guy named Pat, who once sang, “You are so beautiful to me,” [to me] in a Big Boy Restaurant before asking me to be his girl.

540 Story Future

Scenario 1.

Nadia rubbed the thumb of her left hand gingerly. It had swollen up again, red and angry looking.

“Why there?” she stared at the spot, knowing she’d had no choice, massaging and gently moving her thumb back and forth to ease the pain.

“Another trip,” she muttered to herself. “You’d think they’d have this right by now.” Her hand reached to the back of her neck, fingers skimming multiple tiny scars, evidence of the surgeries—and the mistakes.

At the moment, though, she had groceries to get, and Jeremy had to be picked up on time today, or they’d start penalizing her.

“Never get a break,” she thought, moving with the crowd across the street towards My Town Foods. It was one of the few places that still took either cards or cash. So it was only people like Nadia, the bums, drunks and addicts, that shopped there. Anybody with any money had long ago turned to body scanning.

Not that Nadia didn’t have money; she was pretty good at spending smart and saving a little of what she made. But that money was always tagged by the government, part of its new system of forcing people to use injectables to carry all their personal and employment data. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Until the rejects started coming in. People who reacted to the metals in their body, limbs swelling and twisting, bursting with fluid, too late to save them. Watching an arm or leg suddenly pop like a balloon was gross, but when it happened in the brain, well . . . Nadia had only seen that once. The woman kept touching her head, looking around, her eyes scared and pleading. But who could help her? And the final few seconds screaming before her brains blew apart stayed with you at night, in the dark. Some of them didn’t pop for months, but in the end, they all popped.

They were everywhere; it didn’t matter where you’d go you’d see a gimp. Always begging, too, saying it’s the government’s fault or a conspiracy to get some of them.

“Well, let the fucking government pay then,” Nadia looked quickly around, afraid someone might’ve over heard her. She’d been doing that, more and more, talking out loud, to herself. She’d just got so fucking lonely, since the pandemic.

At first, it’d just seemed like a great vacation. At least for everyone else. Nadia’s work kept her online most of the time, anyway, which is how she likely managed to miss the first wave. So, even with a lot of countries slowing down and even with layoffs with her firm, Nadia’s research was pretty secure. Plus, she could do the work of the laid off crew, so double protection.

“Crap!” She glanced around again. She’d missed picking up her prescriptions when she went round. She’d have to get in line to go round again, or go without. Fuck.

Nadia rolled her thumb over the grapes. The reading came back: $23.50/lb. Jesus. That was like a buck a grape. Not today. Nadia moved on, keeping pace with the people ahead of her. The bots jumped in and out of line, ignoring the space limits. Fucking millionaires; they got discounts for staying home and having their bots shop.

Military lined each aisle today.

“Hmm, wonder what brought them out?” Nadia silently gave them the finger, then scanned some soft apples. Her thumb reading came back, $10.25/lb. She bought the least bruised one she could find. They’d just grab any one when they collected her list, Nadia knew, but it still gave her pleasure to think she actually chose the food she bought and paid for, not some packer.

In the end Nadia chose the apple, some frozen spinach, 2 potatoes (@ $7.00/lb she had to have two) and some protein powder. Protein always made her think of ham and beef and chicken. She’d start to salivate, but those were all gone now, their diseases wiping out millions of the creatures in just weeks, all around the world, followed by 6 billion humans in half a year.

“No loss there,” Nadia whispered to herself.

The bulk of losses were in China, Europe and India. Even most of North America went dark. Nadia felt relatively safe in Australia where the military kept most of its navy in the north to bomb, shoot, or drown the billions who tried to swim, boat or even parachute into the country. At first, Nadia thought the beaches were shut down because of the pandemic; then she realized it was so people couldn’t see the carnage washing up onshore.

She hurried out of the store, an insistent beep near her ear reminding her she’d got to get Jeremy asap. She couldn’t run, her gimp leg too painful for any speed. Lucky for her, people always made room. Nobody wanted that on their shirts, if she popped unexpectedly. But they could read her, so they’d lift their thumbs—a perverse salute—and read her registration and body temperature data and know she was okay for now. No one ever asked. Just get the reading, not look at her or her swollen leg.

She likely looked like one of those balloon shapes you’d get at the circus, bits blown up, twisted and bulging into a dog or bird or umbrella. Nadia smiled ruefully at the memory of a normal time. And now her thumb was swelling.

“Fuck. Can’t catch a break,” she thought again. There was Jeremy.

Perfect. Still. Smiling. Always. As Nadia neared, the pain began and she started screaming, screeching, her leg poppped, her thumb burst, her arm splotched open, all the time her eyes on Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy, as that old spot on the back of her head started to swell.

Scenario 2.

It is 2050.

Godot finally arrives to find that all humanity has metamorphosed into giant beetles and electric monkeys. Ooh ooh eeh ah . . .

Task 10: Attention Economy

I chose Brian as my #2 linking project selection because I could not get over how much he appeared to enjoy this game. I found it boring, predictable and tedious, but he found it exploratory, revelatory and amusing. I shall likely put this game to my English students, and have them reflect on their experience.

I saw this gimmick long ago, and ones similar; I don’t usually explore them as I am aware (too much) of the ways media manipulates me online. I often use my left hand to do tasks, for example, to keep me alert to difference, look at things through a mirror or from a back view; I find perspective a rather fascinating thing to toy with, and probably why I don’t feel too strongly about too many things (except unsalted butter in baking; simply no discussion). So I use masks and filters for much of what I do online to preserve my autonomy and anonymity, and I delve into a lot of communities to see how people respond by rote and get lost in unconsciousness. I listen to myself making rote conversation, and try to guess when I hear people talking, exactly what they will say. I am surprised at how often I’m right. We don’t say/do/think much that is original . . . what did Shakespeare say? There are only two or three lives . . .

In any event, I found Brian’s entries thoughtful and reflective, and I have enjoyed spending time reading his experiences during this course.

So this project might have some interesting possibilities. The first thing I did was look at the raw data and capture the choices from most popular to least:

Jaat Kahan Ho_M4                                                                               19

Morning Star Devil Bird                                                                      16

Fifth Symphony_M8                                                                            15

El Cascabel_M6                                                                                     14

Johnny B. Goode                                                                                    14

Percussion (Senegal)                                                                             13

Flowing Streams_M7                                                                             12

Melancholy Blues                                                                                   12

Tchakrulo_M2                                                                                         12

Wedding song_M1                                                                                  12

Night Chant_M3                                                                                       11

The Magic Flute                                                                                         9

Brandenburg Concerto                                                                            8

Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin_M5                                                                      7

Panpipes and Drum                                                                                  7

Tsuru No Sugomori                                                                                  7

Dark Was the Night                                                                                  6

Pygmy Girls’ Initiation Song                                                                    6

The Well-Tempered Clavier                                                                     6

Bagpipes (Azerbaijan)                                                                               5

Gavotte en rondeaux                                                                                4

MensHouseSong                                                                                        4

Rite of Spring                                                                                              4

The Fairie Round                                                                                        3

Kinds of Flowers                                                                                         2

Greetings from Earth_M10                                                                       1

Cranes in their nest_M9                                                                            1

String Quartet No. 13_NotonList                                                             2

One thing I noticed right away is that most of my entries were wrong; not sure what happened there. So when I captured all the above data, I added mine correctly. That showed that I had made 2 choices it seems no one else did, although I find that doubtful. First, it seems I chose the Greetings track and no one else did. As well, I seem to have been the sole chooser of the Cranes track; again, it seems doubtful. In any event, the above data has my numbered choices tagged as _M9 or _M2 to show where my own choices ended up.

I also lost a bunch of data because I wrote directly into Canvas, something I almost never do. Thus, when it crashed (and I had not saved for awhile, I lost observations).

Oh, right, other data I lost: Female: 13; Male: 11. These numbers could easily be wrong, as I designated male/female simply by an arbitrary decision around the first name.

So, after I had written another thousand words or so, I tried to upload palladio files. Turns out, we cannot. And, I lost all that I’d written. Still, the graphics were nifty:

I also put the data into another program that manipulates like Palladio.

This is from Voyant Tools.org. The placement and colors have no meaning, only the size of the letters. As you can see, Jaat Kahan Ho was the most popular choice followed by Morning star.

Where you see _m2 or _m8 shows my choices in the music. I was interested in seeing how I lined up. Not all that well, actually . . .

The Palladio files cannot tell me anything, really. They especially cannot tell me why a choice or correlation occurs. It can show me some limited relationships, such as clustering names according to top choices, but what does that tell us? Nothing, really. It might provide a starting point to ask questions of those who are clustered to see if choices are more than coincidence.

This graphic shows clusters according to group connectivity:

Again, the visual shows people whose choices are similar, but this is a correlation and not causation. We cannot know why these choices coincide as they do. In fact, from my own close examination of the textual/numerical data, I learned that I have been miscategorized; thus, this representation is misleading. Still, it’d be a fun thing to do at a party, or ahead of time, especially to guests who might not know each other. Then, you could cluster people according to music choices. And, you don’t have to be limited to music; you could do anything . . .

Here’s a mandala representation of the songs, again from Voyant.com:

The blurriness results because I have to scale up the graphic to make it visible. Here’s another one, this time in Termsberry:

So  I did not scale this one, just to see how it turned out. You can see how much time ca be wasted playing around. But it is interesting to have your perspective turned upside down.

I have used other data capturing devices, particularly ones that analyse the presence and relative associations of adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and nouns. These are useful to identify the level of emotion in a text, and have even been used in court cases.

Another popular text analysis tool is readability. I have written plain English documents and these tools can be revealing. I also usually have my students do a few exercises using these tools to help them improve their writing. I put this paragraph and the previous one through a free app at https://app.readable.com/text/?demo

The site also comments on adverbs and so on. The biggest errors in my text, above, include sentences that are too long and words that are too complex, like, complex. Still, it’s expected that 84% of readers could understand what is written.

I love playing with words this way, and I find that I see so much more than when I simply review the words, even when I give a close read.

Generally, this exercise added another tool for me to use in my classes.

So after I tweaked a few sentences of the above paragraphs:

So I did not scale this one. I just wanted to see how it would turn out. You can see how much time can be wasted playing around. But it is interesting to have things turned upside down.
I have used other data capturing devices. I have used ones that analyse the presence and relative associations of adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and nouns. These are useful to identify the level of emotion in a text. This has even been used in court cases.
Another popular text analysis tool is readability. I have written plain English documents. These tools can be revealing. I also usually have my students do a few exercises using these tools. It helps them improve their writing. I put this paragraph and the previous one through a free app at https://app.readable.com/text/?demo

I ran it again through the readability app. The scores improved more than I had anticipated:

So, it is intriguing to see how words can mean . . .  and Alice was perhaps more insightful than she realized in her comments to Humpty Dumpty:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the looking-glass

https://texttech.weebly.com/weekly-tasks

Tanya’s site is a pleasure to experience, filled with artistic and technical endeavors that show, explore and explain her play with various aspects of this course. I love my opportunities to peek into someone else’s experience and see how it differs from my own. I also appreciate her technical skills, and took away any number of valuable lessons about design, web applications, software and so on.

I disagreed with some of her theoretical discussions; e.g. Marshall McLuhan said the medium was the message, a dramatically different statement than the medium “changes the language and the message.” I also struggled with other statements such as Shakespeare, when read, “falls flat” because it was intended to be performed (not true) or that moving to written words from orality results in a “loss of intonation and feeling” . . . not necessarily, at all! I have lost my breath over sentences, poetry and stories, wept over them, tossed books across rooms because their content has so enraged me . . . but I would agree that my favorite experience is face-to-face performance–song, theatre, talks, readings–all of these things hold a special appeal for me. In the same way, I much prefer classes face-to-face, real life chatter (how can I hear laughter any way but aurally . . . and even as I write Beethoven’s 9th is calling to me, my heart is pounding to the Chicago Symphony and I can feel myself growing powerful to the Beethoven’s 9th, and now the barotone’s voice comes up from the deep . . . ) . . .

Still, I spent time on many of her pages to help me to think about delivering (what am I delivering? Am I delivering? What am I doing in a classroom at all? )  . . . stuff . . . to my own students. I am considering how to integrate technology to teach a number of things: 1. I want students to recognize that technology has political, social, philosophical and pedagogical implications; it is not neutral, it can shape who they are and how they receive the world if they are not alert to its embrace; 2. I see technology as an opportunity to teach students that the way they see and know the world is constructed, learned, taught; it is not universal or transparent and I think technology can offer a new way of seeing, but don’t want students to begin to think this technological world is not also being manipulated to seduce them; e.g. the extraordinary pseudo-personal advertising that targets particular world-wide demographics (a la Nickelodeon) and is so dangerous to true democracy (a whole new kind of panopticon–wouldn’t Foucault be proud?) . . . I want students to understand in their use of technology how knowledge is constructed and that they, too, can construct knowledge

I am deeply struggling to think about what it means to teach; I don’t know that I know any more (laugh) . . .

I was fascinated by Tanya’s handbag, and all the fantastic things she carried, and how much meaning they hold for her. I feel, by stark contrast, empty, without the anchors that define, describe and shape her life.

Tanya comments that she teaches both coding and design . . . funny, I feel like I do the same thing in English.

I was particularly interested in Tanya’s exploration of twinery.org. I love that application, too, and am playing with it and trying to decide how I can integrate it to help my students in English. Curiously, Tanya does her preliminary thinking on paper. So do I. I have never found anything as useful as a table serviette (Tanya is much more organized and carries a book and special pencil) to scratch out ideas . . . I don’t usually forget much, so I don’t worry about cataloguing or retaining creative thoughts and ideas . . .

So Tanya’s site is my #3 pick for my links, and her site reminds me that I’ll have to move all this material to my new website soon, if I don’t want to lose it when the course ends.

Keating_540_Voyager Play List

I listened for humanity, things that spoke to me about the joys, sorrows, loves and losses of being human. I wanted each piece to offer a distinct joy and story, an intelligence of what it meant to be human and gifted with a soul. I was distraught that I would not be able to curate the 27 choices down to 10, but they came together perfectly for me, without angst. It is an unusual experience for me to not be tormented by choice; decision-making is not something I enjoy. It invariably suggests to me that I am losing out on one thing in order to enjoy some thing else. I am always deeply aware of opportunity costs, and no matter the pleasure, I wonder, what if I’d wandered the other road?

This unwillingness to choose reflects even in my foods where I love elaborate configurations of food rather than a single choice. I grew up on turkey dinners complete with 8 or 10 accompanying dishes, but much prefer turducken with at least 3 stuffings and then 8 or 10 accompaniments and several sauces . . . but I digress . . . although now I am desperate for Sailor’s Duff and Foamy Stuff, a fabulously rich steamed dessert I make for very special occasions . . . and yes, with both a salted caramel and cream-based sauce. To be fair, I learned that strategy when I visited New Orleans, where every dish comes with at least 2 sauces . . . and is, hands down, the place of the world’s best food . . . but I’m wandering again . . .

I listened for beauty and diversity—I wanted a cacophony of male, female, string, wind, solo, choral, east and west. I think I got it. I loved that my choices naturally worked out by beginning with the virginal tune of a sweet girl and ended with the solitary cry of the Japanese flute. What a beautiful assignment.

1. Wedding Song – Peru

This piece is so simple. A young girl’s wedding song, the female’s voice speaks of longing, loss, fear and the hope. She is apparently only known as the young girl of Huancavelica. I love that she is not a famous singer, and is apparently just a young girl of about 13 years old. It’s also the shortest piece in the entire collection. Her voice, so young and innocent, still harbours echoes of pain and loss yet to come.

2. Tchakrulo Choir, Georgia

I loved loved loved the a cappella male voices, voices used to hold the pedal drone were magnificent, the harmonies—I held my breath as they sang; the sense of the call that is being made; tapering to the solitary voice at end—sad, longing (I understand it is a drinking song in preparation for battle)—the musical motifs were full of beauty.

3. Navajo Night Chant

What is there to say to the wild, visceral call of the Navajo into the night? This song so brilliantly visualizes these people speaking to the earth and their home, calling to Gaia for wisdom and healing. It reminded me of when I drove through Montana and Wyoming a few years ago and listened to the native radio channels the whole time. I barely slept. The music awakened parts of me that had been sleeping a long time and I was alert and alive in ways that are difficult to describe.

4. Jaat Kahan Ho; Surshi; India

India will soon be the most populous country in world. This male singer creates an ancient call to the heart and the heat. The song shimmers just as that hot country sea shimmers and ripples. The music is haunting, heart wrenching, uniquely theirs and filled with a wild grief and voices from the past. Its oft-changing rhythms and beats call out its ancient mysteries. Beautiful.

5. Iziel je Delyo Hagdutin – Bulgaria

This piece begins as a feral instrumental from the bowels of the earth before a female voice, Valya Mladenova Balkanska, calls back. Her voice sent shivers down my spine, and the play between her vocals and the instrument was spectacular. This piece beat out the Azerbaijan bag pipes—soft sultry sound—quite sorrowful; ancient music—but straight instrumental and not quite as moving. This singer commands you to listen. You can see her high in the mountains calling to her people; spell binding. I find it hard to articulate how a human voice and musical instrument can cry out and call to some deep inner place of my being; I could hardly breathe during this piece, it held me, gripped me . . . took me to my knees . . .

6. El Cascabel-Lorenzo Barcelata & the Mari

You can smell the tequila and hear the raucous laughter and you must stand and stomp your feet and clap your hands to this music . . . its rich Mexican horns fill you with the love of life and the thrill of a sweaty night dancing on the streets of Mexico city, click your heels and howl to the moon. This song took me right back to time I spent in Costa Rica. Of course.

Night by the river                                                                                                                                           It was a full moon, one of those where men proposition and paramours do not say no but must withdraw their limp betrayals later under stale sunlight, a Samson defeat, a night where the moist heat hot music beat of summer takes you down to the river and secret rites of moon beam shot cunts sneak riot, wet cool now slippery the soccer player dreams breasts gently dripping drooping swaying light now dark sensuous succulents he reaches now falls reaches now falls his strength unmatched to the luscious bush under the moonlight by the water rippling sighing sweating wanting punctuation to pause the pleasure but Virginia Woolf plays semi-colons not periods the danger of a room of one’s own                                                              M. Keating

7. Flowing Streams – China

The zither is such a spectacular instrument and so quintessentially Chinese . . . equally proud, noble, austere, subtle, complex . . . also, as the only Chinese excerpt, it had to be included; again, the second most populous people on the planet deserved representation. At about 4:40 you can hear the stream rippling over shallows; spectacular, and the scaling that begins with a single note and builds to a blur is sensational.

8. Beethoven’s 5^{th– for the west}

It is the raw power of this piece that earns it a place beyond the stars. Its energy and relentless attack keep the listener plastered in place; the triumph of the ending fairly screams to our alien listeners: “How Glorious! WE! WERE!” But I am torn, still: should it have been the 9th? I am listening to it now, Chicago Orchestra, spine tingling . . .

9. Cranes in their nest-Japan (Shakuhachi)—

I had to include this piece. It was the call of a crane, a deceptively simple instrumental; its singular grace and beauty, so pure, its stillness was perfectly positioned, following Beethoven’s overwhelming power, this subtle, clear call straight to the soul, of sorrow, loss, flight, and the inner peace that Buddhism represents, the eternal loneliness of the maitri warrior . . .

10. Greetings from Earth

After nine musical pieces, it seemed an appropriate ending to this fabulous collection of sound. Our music showed them our hearts; our words give them our names. To the other lonely wanderers a billion years in the future: This was us.

And if you were wondering what the odds really are of other intelligent life out there, it looks like 36 is the number in our galaxy . . . https://getpocket.com/explore/item/scientists-say-most-likely-number-of-contactable-alien-civilisations-is-36?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Which is the mode I chose for this project . . . and which I’m trying hard to make a life mode, but so far, with rather less success . . .

The first thing I did was google the term, mode bending, which I totally love as an expression. I may begin saying, “wow, that was mode bending,” or perhaps, “that was a mode bending moment” (I love alliterations) . . .

Turns out, there are real mode benders. I took a screen capture:

The third one from the left, called an instrument bender, is one I recognize. I used it when, in a moment of madness, I spent a year training as a fitter-welder. This tool is a pipe-bender/fitter used wherever you see pipes (of any size) bending and curving their way through the world. A tube-bender likely used this tool or one like it to bend that pipe where it needed to go.

But, the real task. I was in a class last term where we played with a wide range of software to alter modalities from text to image to sound. It is a fascinating thing to do, and I did it for another class this term. This is the image I produced of a First Peoples lesson plan and discussion about multi-literacy, knowledge construction and self-reflection:

On the site, voyant.com, the image can actually move, etc., but I simply copy-pasted the graphic at a point where I liked the image, rather in the same way I often read and re-read the same passages or pages in order to enjoy the experience over and over again.

So the exercise is to use the original handbag assignment, and I’ll get to it, but I cannot resist playing (which is why I try not to go to these sites too often . . . they eat up hours of time) . . . but this is the result when I put my lesson plan on reflection, indigenous knowledge, ways of knowing and knowledge into Cirrus, a tool in voyant.com:

I worked many years ago with early software that did textual analyses using the above principles, but returning a list of frequencies (of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, etc.) to give an emotional level to the text. It looked more like the return you get in ms-word when you check word count, something like this:

It’s so easy now to see how the first visualization can support and alter ways of seeing and knowing. Using Cirrus, students can easily check and see what words and ideas are being put forward by the author and even re-write the material to change the slant to something they want to see. I’ve not used this tool yet in teaching, but I intend to use it with students to show them just how much their words matter and why it’s important they have the skills to critically analyse the words they see around them every day. Even with my own critical reading skills, I am always taken aback at how much the Cirrus visual helps me to ‘see’ what influence the words are working on me.

My purple handbag

I could not resist playing a bit, so I put the handbag assignment into some of the voyant tools, just for fun. Here are some links to the results:

https://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=b7b48a47fe3e80f3a5c81a7c2aaf70b6&view=Knots

Some renditions were less appealing, as this one, using wordtree:

Still, the central discussion about the bag is clear in this depiction, as is the color, purple. How the word, gym, gained such prominence I do not know. It’s also curious how much the visual representation reflects the way the bag can be carried. If the words, purple, the, and gym, are viewed as shoulder straps, they hold the word, bag, in place. This particular bag has shoulder straps and the bag can be carried on your back . . . .

One of the appeals of these types of visual representations is that I think they can readily accommodate differentiated learners and allow them to discuss text equally with their peers. I took the poem, The Shark, and played with it to see how it might work to show meaning in different ways that might make understanding easier for students, all of whom struggle with ideas about metaphor, simile, etc., and that this poem illustrates well. I tried Cirrus, first, as it is one visualization I find useful:

I love it! It even looks tubular and fish-like! I think these kinds of visualizations might really engage students.

YIKES! Once again, playing has caused me to be late for another class . .  .!

Later, same day . . . (I passed) . . .

What I particularly like about this site is that you can put your text (poetry, novel, news report) into the application and have it changed into an alternate mode. This can help alert students to how different ways of representing communication can influence how that information is received, interpreted, and understood; that is, MacLuhan’s point how the medium is the message.

As the New London Group (NLG) also argues, it is imperative, as multi-literacies become widespread, that students are taught how to use them and to ‘read’ them and that teachers are also capable of using them, reading them and teaching them (NLG, np). I agree with the NLG’s position that in order for 21st century citizens to fully and actively participate in their societies they must be literate in the literacies this century will foreground. Just as the last century foregrounded the print-bound text, this century may utilize other modes–visual, aural–to communicate.

NLG describe that learning to accommodate the new literacies requires them to be juxtaposed and integrated, to open students to the meta-languages they can now take advantage of and, most important, produce; it’s not just about the authority of the text as it lives in a print-bound page: “In an economy of productive diversity, in civic spaces that value pluralism, and in the flourishing of interrelated, multilayered, complementary yet increasingly divergent lifeworlds, workers, citizens, and community members are ideally creative and responsible makers of meaning” (NLG, np).

As Cope & Kalantzis (2009) note, the single standard of “grammar, the literary canon, standard national forms of the language” (p. 5) have given way to reading and writing in “multimodal texts integrated with other modes with language” (p. 5). As teachers and practitioners the need to become literate in technologies has perhaps never been greater. Thus, the letter of complaint signed by 103 students in the B.Ed. program regarding their incompetence with the simple platform Canvas should raise a massive red flag of warning.[1] Who will teach these new intersections and road crossings?

But, I digress. How to shift handbag to new mode? which mode? I finally settled on a free application, Natural Reader. Of course, I had some fun with it, too, slowing down and using various accents. I finally used it to produce this new material. I chose an accent from India because about 1 in 4 people come from India, and it emphasized to me how multi-lingualism (even if she is speaking in English) is an important component of multi-literacy.

So, I’ve told the story of Jack, really, and it occurred to me as I tried to justify why this story was a mode of the original that juxtapositions are part of multi-literacies and that a single authoritative story, in print, and bound in a book, doesn’t have to limit me any more. And the story of Jack tells also a story about the bag, my purple bag, that is different, yet part of, the photo I took of Jack and the bag, that suy day in Vancouver.

To play the story, click and the ms-word document will open up. Select “audio notes” from the upper left portion of the ms-word menu. Press play on the upper right. Adjust audio as needed. About 5 minutes listening.

It could use a new ending, or maybe there’s no ending. Add one, if you like.

Jack_and the handbag

[1] 103 B.Ed. teacher-students—many, Net-gens—recently submitted a petition to UBC complaining that they were not dealt a fair hand when, in an effort to save the 2020 Winter/Spring/Summer terms for as many students as possible, the university moved courses online for as many programs as possible (personal correspondence). It was a near-seamless transition and stupendous feat. UBC uses a single, simple platform to serve 65,000 students worldwide, but the Education students in Vancouver complained it was too hard for them, asking that administrators see their plight as analogous to the struggles of the children they practice-taught. UBC will graduate some 700 elementary and secondary school teachers in a few months with a number of them so confused by technology they compared their feelings of incompetence to the school children they are charged to teach.

Task 1: A little about … my teaching bag

I was fascinated by what Heidi had in her bag; it was clearly so different from me, and it was such an astonishing collection of stuff. I wish I could have seen the bag!

Batteries! And deodorant; toothbrush but no gum; coffee but no quick snack . . . hmmm . . . socks but no shoes . . . perhaps in her car?

An “uncomplicated and timeless” bag Heidi says. For me, enough stuff for a weekend in Vegas . . . who carries 12 pens, but no computer: I puzzled. Maybe a phone could be inferred from the headset?

I am having trouble reading these visual image-signs and reconciling them with the slippery metaphors to describe them: “essential . . . essentials . . . prepared . . . prepared” and me, sneaking, like Gollum, sniffing at the pack, wondering what’s in it for me. Not a snack, clearly.

An organized person by some logic I cannot fathom, my own ‘bag’ (re)manufactured and purposed so that I had something to show . . . only its color deliberate . . . a deep, rich purple . . .

Hers, I guess, is teacher. I’m a teacher, too, but I have no color.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/aaronko/2020/05/29/etec-540-task-3-voice-to-text-task/?unapproved=37&moderation-hash=633d32dc636f7bdbda1b6d32a4bbd949#comment-37

I find the various mediums of production, from oral to written to mass-produced, fascinating, and the observations people make about their conscious experiences of the medium, insightful. That’s why I chose this post for linking #5.

Aaron comments on a number of things that happen to him in orality: he gets nervous, talks too fast, mumbles, loses track of thought and so on. But is this an experience of orality? Or something else? Aaron’s experiences occur within the context, arguably, of performance. That is, he was performing for at least his recorder, and this brought on the physical manifestations. We do not hear Aaron complaining that these things occur every time he speaks, only within this particular context. To compare experiences, then, I wonder if Aaron needed to create a testing environment in which to write, one that creates the same pressure, to see how he would respond. Then, I think, the experiences are comparable.

I also had the same thoughts that Aaron did regarding punctuation. For me, it reminded me how some of our punctuation, such as the comma, comes from music. It also made me realize how much we use silence in orality to punctuate (pun intended) our word-sounds. Text, of course, that two-dimensional shadow, gives a feeble direction. Odd, though, as Aaron notes, that we do follow the ‘rules’ of the page, that unrelenting task master, in order to create (or to follow or to re-interpret) what those squiggly lines are trying to mean.

I found Aaron’s lack of confidence in oral recall curious, “when someone tells a story there is no perfect record or recollection of what was just said” and his seeming confidence in the written stories that have “a document that can be referenced” disconcerting. Perhaps memory is one way of knowing that story, and text, another, but both are fragments . . . of what, I am not entirely sure . . . the story? We are, in the end, nothing but the sum of all our stories, yes? And what about the memory of my heart? Are the words the only things that matter? It’s an odd thing that, in oral exchange, the story comes to us not only from the words, but also from the context, facial expressions, environment and our own emotional response in the moment. We move to the text and wrestle with the unreliability of language to re-infuse badly chosen words with the same meaning my bodily presence conveys so unerringly. Yet, when done rightly, I linger over those words, feeling their pulse and depth impress on my heart, and soul, and mind.

And perhaps that includes our dreams. My own have been strange mixtures of exterior sounds, the work I’m doing (including this one) and day dreams because I’ve been sick over the past 10 days. My sleep is disrupted, so I find myself nodding off, oddly, like just now, and passing into a strange Alice-world where I am doing my reading/research/writing with a large clock ticking behind me or an advertising agent calling on me to Buy this now! before a shorted snort (my dog’s, not mine!) wakes me to say, “Tick tock! ‘Tis past 9 o’clock, and another class beckons on the horizon. Set aside this silly reverie and move along.” . . . and so I shall.