I picked Tyler’s post for Week 4 (Potato Printing) to contrast my own as the third submission towards my linking assignment. The very first thing I notice when opening Tyler’s blog is the beautiful landscape picture he has chosen as a background on his WordPress space. The words of his posts overlay this picture and there is no clear barrier between the written word and visual per se. As a result, the blended visual and textual elements are part and parcel of his posts. Bolter (2001) offers a wonderful description of this when he refers to words and visuals on the computer screen becoming so entwined that it becomes hard for the reader to know where the pictorial space ends and the verbal space begins. These words mirror exactly my experience on Tyler’s site as I find it can be tricky to read the black text over the background image at times but I also embrace the visual element offered by the background in his posts. The fact that Tyler has chosen to blend the image and his text in such a way makes it clear that he considers the visual elements in his post as very important and it seems re-affirmed by the fact that he also starts every post with an additional photo related to the task at hand.

His blog site is also very sleek without the presence of almost any menus and so to navigate between tasks, I have to return to his home page and scroll through posts that are arranged chronologically. My own blog site of course has far fewer images and a clear barrier exists between my chosen background image and the textual elements on my blog. Text appears on a white canvas overlaying the background image on my site. I also have a clear navigation pane at the top of my blog site, which allows a reader to easily find a subsection of posts that they might want to look at.

In reflecting on our two posts, I wanted to look at Tyler’s post for two specific reasons. We had both chosen words to print that hold special meaning to us. His word, was snowy (originally snow) and Tyler admits to choosing this word because he loves snow. On the other hand, I had picked the word coast based on my love of the coast. What was intriguing to me about this similarity was the perspective it offered me on how others might engage with my own post. I had thought of my word as being special in some way- given its deep meaning to me and so had Tyler. However, in reading his post his word did not evoke nearly as much emotion in me as my own did. I have never known snow, I might have seen it a handful of times in my life and so there is very little real life connection to the word for me. Tyler might even have very special memories connected to the word that I don’t share. Of course, this isn’t unexpected but it made me realize how differently people might react when they read our posts and find no emotional association with the words we picked so carefully. The deep emotional connection I feel when reading over my post might not be the same that others experience when reading it.

The second reason why I picked his post was because Tyler had confessed to having a terrible experience in creating his potato stamps. He reveals that he had hoped that after completing the task that he could use the activity in his own classes but had now changed his mind. If you read between the lines, you might even think he regretted picking this task. However, what resulted from Tyler’s very candid admission of the experience was a wonderful example of exactly what this course aims to achieve- a network of connections and a weaving together of ideas. He received  spectacular comments of how he could adjust the task to make it perhaps easier and more applicable for the grade he teaches (a message of hope and encouragement I believe) and others that commiserated with his struggles. I wonder whether we would have witnessed such a sharing of ideas and contributions to the discussion had Tyler not been as honest as he was about his undertaking of this task. It’s wonderful to see how even a negative experience can unlock a wonderful learning experience for us all.

Reference

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