For my final linking assignment I chose to look at Tanya’s post for Task 12. I really like Tanya’s layout on her site. She has chosen to host her blog outside of the WordPress platform and so you find yourself on a Weebly site with a beautiful flow between the posts. The first impression of the site is the spaciousness that the website format offers over the WordPress blog spaces. The simple design change has a huge effect on my experience of Tanya’s blog space. It just feels as if you have space to breathe as opposed to the cramped feeling I experience when I look at WordPress sites. Having chosen to host her blog on a website like Weebly also allows Tanya to take advantage of more fluid integration of media into her posts in a way that again just seems very visually appealing.

Since my own site is hosted on WordPress, I have none of these affordances. However, an element that I missed on Tanya’s site was the comments section so prominently displayed on WordPress blog sites. This might be because websites aren’t designed to incorporate comment sections for every paragraph or topic on display. It would hinder the experience of scrolling through the visually curated information on display. Once displayed, comments are much smaller in contrast to the post or task’s text on the website, another indicator that the website’s design might not place as much emphasis on comments as the blog sites do. I feel as if the WordPress site better facilitates discussion through comments than what would be possible on a website. I also really struggled to find anything that could connect the website to its author. There was a home space with an about section but I couldn’t find Tanya’s name on the site which made the space feel a little impersonal.

Why I wanted to contrast Task 12 specifically in this assignment was because I felt as if Tanya’s stories bore a similar theme to my own. We had told similar tales of a future where technology becomes more integrated in the human body through brain implants albeit we chose different mediums to tell our stories. Tanya had made use of audio to tell her first person story and I had constructed a narrative story using Twine (a text based medium). Both I feel were equally successful in conveying our fears of this kind of future but what I particularly liked about Tanya’s post was her focus on the personal. She told her story from a first person perspective of someone experiencing the implanted technology whereas my story was more removed with one of my characters simply discussing his company that designs similar implants. It was this personal touch that added a different dimension to her story that had me easily connect with it and want to listen on. There just is something very special about oral storytelling that speaks to the human mind and heart. The messages conveyed in her tone and the other sounds included in the audio adds so much more to the story than what would have been conveyed through just what was spoken. She also crafted several themes in her story which adds a level of sophistication to the narrative which I think my own lack somewhat. I had a very straightforward story to tell with one message whereas this one was intricately planned and weaved together.

Jamie has such a unique interface and design on her blog site that one is immediately drawn in to want to start exploring her space. On the site home page, which feels almost futuristic she has utilized a completely different design to any other blog site I have seen in the course. She has made use of visual “cards” to display her individual posts, that give a quick view of the content that the post will contain and is visually inviting to the reader of her site- you get to pick from the onset what post looks like it might be interesting to you. They act almost as little teasers of what’s to come and I love looking at these cards. Most of my peers, including myself, make use of a scrolling main home page.

Once a post has been selected on Jamie’s site, you are taken to that post and all other menus disappear from view. Instead your mode of navigation to other posts becomes the arrows positioned at either end of the post or by clicking on her page name to go back to the main page. Additionally you could also go to the linking assignment from within a post. In that regard, the navigation feels a little more restricted than the open flow of my own blog design that allows movement between categories a little more effortlessly.

For my fifth linking assignment post I chose to compare our submissions for Task 11. I love that Jamie always gives her readers a well-curated experience of the topic at hand each week in her posts. She never has a post without additional resources available to us all to extend the discussion points of the week with Task 11 not being any different. In this task, we both ended up taking on small experiments with predictive text and ended up with very similar conclusions drawn at the end. She made use of WhatsApp and Facebook to test whether the use of these technologies would have influenced the predictive text options given for the same questions where as my own experiment involved changing the language on my phone and testing whether any sensible message could be constructed without me knowing what I was selecting. I think we both were slightly disturbed and upset by the results of our experiments.

Absolutely it was possible to construct some message with these technologies but what they lacked was our own voices in those messages. Taking away our choice had robbed us both of feeling as if there was any realness in the messages created and they could in no way truly represent us. We both clearly share similar concerns for a future in which algorithms such as those used in predictive text software limits our choices and continually prevents us from expressing our individuality. The implications of a world in which humans cannot freely express themselves seems bizarre right now but that might change in the next decade or so (given how fast technology is evolving). I hope that as more people become aware of the trade-offs being made between convenience and individuality that we will consider more closely the use of algorithms and the implications of entwining them with our daily lives so extensively.

I chose Kristin’s post for Task 8 to compare for my next linking assignment submission. I have wanted to write about Kristin’s blog space for quite some time so I am happy that I am finally getting the opportunity now. The design of her blog space is inviting and organized in a visual way that helps guide the reader of her site to where information might be accessed. She has picked a relatively large font size for her posts, which helps to read her posts more easily than my own site allows I would say. Although we both chose grey as our font colour, her darker choice and bold font type again aids the reader. She has also made use of categories on her blog with labels displayed in all capital letters. I feel as if the contrast to my own site where my categories combine capital and lowercase letters, allows one to more easily navigate to relevant content on her site.

It was quite interesting to see how we have picked similar one line descriptions for our blog sites. On Kristin’s site, she mentions that this is her site of exploration whilst my site uses the word adventure. In a sense it feels as if these words carry similar sentiments and as such this might be part of the reason why I have felt a strong affinity to always go over Kristin’s new posts- we potentially  share a similar outlook in the course and our MET studies.

Why I really wanted to include her blog site in my linking assignment though is the true blog feel that is present on her site. Kristin has the ability to present her tasks in such a way that one always feels as if you are part of her personal journey. She weaves elements of her daily life quite effortlessly into her tasks and this has allowed readers of her blog to get to know Kristin on a deeper level than just through discussions of course work. In this task in particular, she structures her post in such a way that you travel with her thought process as she made her song selections. It’s almost as if we are following her internal dialogue.

It was fascinating to follow her thought process and in comparison to my own, we clearly had wildly different methods for our song selection. Where Kristin had included an 8 odd step process of elimination, my own criteria was summed up by a single sentence- choices were to be made on emotional reactions. Interestingly though, this task and the subsequent task of network analysis ended up revealing that we in fact had chosen 9 similar songs! A happy coincidence? Or did our one line descriptions of our sites elude to more similarities than what meets the eye?

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

I chose to look at Laura’s post in contrast to my own for the Emoji task of Week 6 as the next contribution to my linking assignment. Her blog space, like mine, is hosted on WordPress although the different themes that we have employed create very different experiences in how we engage with our individual posts. The layout on Laura’s blog space is perhaps less clinical than my own with a colorful background and a logo with her name displayed brightly in this space. This has eloquently infused a sense of her personality into the space where my own can be regarded as more minimalist. I have made less use of the architectural elements available in WordPress to give readers of my blog a sense of my character. This results in the reader having to rely solely on the contents of my posts to infer more of my personality.

There are also two main ways to navigate Laura’s blog with a vertical menu on the left hand side allowing one to navigate to her different weekly tasks. On the right hand side, she again has a vertical menu, which links to her author bio and last activity according to the date posted. In contrast, the menu to be used to access the different subsections of tasks in my space runs horizontally at the top of the blog and the main page has to be used to look at chronologically posted submissions. The layouts of our different blog spaces does affect the readability of posts though as Laura’s text is spaced more compressed between the two menus and mine appears less restricted. I regard it as a bit of a trade-off between more functionally and freedom of movement in the space versus a less constricted reading experience. I like both formats and didn’t have any trouble reading Laura’s post, it was only when returning to my own post that I picked up on this subtle difference in experience.

In focusing on the contents of the weekly task, although deciphering the title and plot of the show Laura focused on unraveling using emojis was beyond me, I was very drawn into her description of how she went about completing this task. She went into detail on how she approached conveying the title and plot i.e. her choice to mostly convey ideas rather than individual syllables and like her, I also had to compromise on how I wanted to represent my plot based on the number of emojis available to me. We also both started by illustrating the title of the story which seems a natural inclination given the influence of the written word in our daily lives (a book starts with its title followed by the story).

However, what really piqued my interest in her post was the mention of the other two stories she wanted to explore but was unable to because of the lack of available emojis. No Egyptian related emojis could be found apart from the Egyptian flag nor was there an emoji for the Eiffel tower in the library of emojis out there. I was almost in disbelief that these emojis would be unavailable among the 3 304 Unicode Standard pictographs in existence. This made me pause to reflect and consider how representative emojis truly are and whether this was important.

First created in the 1990’s in Japan, the most recent set of emojis added to the library came after a proposal from Apple to include more options regarding accessibility emojis. Was there a need for more emojis though? Well, simply put- these pictographs (pictorial symbols) have come a long way from their first use in adding tone to text based digital messages. According to the Washington Post, cultural experts have even posited that “representation by emoji validates identity”. Since emojis are thought to be used by 92% of the global population online, representation then becomes a truly important aspect to ensure people can authentically express themselves.

I randomly found a Statue of Liberty emoji and a Moai (Easter Island Head statues) emoji on my keyboard but hardly any other emoji that could be linked to a specific country or cultural group (apart from country flags). As we keep expanding the library of emojis, I think it will be important to bring in representation of these facets associated with human culture if we want to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to represent themselves using these symbols.

References

Baca, M. C. (2019, July 18). Why emoji are — finally — becoming more diverse. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/18/why-emoji-are-finally-becoming-more-diverse/

I chose to look at Shaun’s post for Task 4 as my first linking assignment submission. The first striking feature of Shaun’s blog space is how his posts have been stylized for every task. A different colored header with a bold font type title can be found at the beginning of every post which, is then followed by detail on the digital tool he used to create his content for that particular post.  In the case of Task 4, Shaun used Adobe Spark to collate and present his contribution to the Manual Scripts task. The final part of the post on the blog site gives instructions on how one could access images of his handwritten manuscript along with his thought analysis.

There were several distinct differences between Shaun’s approach and my own in bringing together our thoughts for this task. By including the Adobe Spark presentation, Shaun requires an action from his fellow “academic lurkers” in order to access his thoughts. You need to click on each separate image in order to enlarge it and read his work. In contrast, my own post starts with the title for the task and includes no information on what tools I used to create my post or content for the task. This is followed by two separate images (taken with my mobile phone and posted unedited onto the blog site) that allows the reader to inspect my written artifact from the start. No action is required by the reader to access my handwritten manuscript or thoughts.

Shaun has deliberately crafted his work into a more edited format for the reader to be engaged with the process of viewing his task. In this approach, he has also broken down the task into sections for reflection by posting first a question and then giving his thoughts on that particular question. My post never directly quotes the guiding questions posed in the assignment instructions and follows a more free-flowing approach in the discussion. Neither approach is wrong and I found it refreshing to look at Shaun’s created Adobe presentation for the task. There were some technical hassles involved in the process e.g. having to use the back button to return to the gallery of the post and the fact that one had to click on the top half of an image to open it but these weren’t really a hindrance to me as I went through his presentation.

An interesting question that Shaun posed in his submission was whether one could really qualify his written document as “writing” given that he didn’t use a cursive style to lay down his thoughts. This is curious to me as I wondered why Shaun would hold the perception that only cursive is a valid form of writing. If that were true, then we must be taking the wrong approach in teaching children to read and write as we definitely don’t start off teaching them cursive. Perhaps there is something more to read into this statement and his mention of becoming extremely reliant on word processors and keyboards for his daily writing. Does he maybe avoid writing by hand because he perceives that there are certain prescribed minimum requirements he finds cumbersome or a hindrance to meet? A word processor on the other hand would take away the effort required to meet “specified requirements” in writing and perhaps this has played a role in his preference for this medium of writing. This is all speculation of course but it was an interesting train of thought to follow as I mulled over his statement. As clearly mentioned in my post, I still prefer writing much of my thoughts and work by hand and to me writing by hand is more freeing than what it is for Shaun.