Link Week 1 – What’s in your bag? (Janice Roper)

Janice Roper:  https://blogs.ubc.ca/janicer/2020/05/22/whats-in-your-bag/

The purpose of this assignment appears to me to be twofold:  (i)  to introduce the students to each other; and (ii)  start the conversation and realization that text is found in many forms and can tell us many things about each other.

In terms of an introduction, Janice’s observations about the contents of her bag, and my observations about same were similar.  The contents identified what needs we have (had – her bag and mine were both much about travel) and how they are used by both her and her entire family.  The contents did disclose, in part, her foreign travels;  for example the boarding pass for a flight from Delhi.  The contents did not disclose that Janice and her family had been living in India and that this was a flight back to Canada – not a vacation trip.   Other “text” items in the bag gave clues to Janice’s life;  in particular, “Gravol kids” suggests that she has children (she does) and laptop with a Patagonia and “Smith” stickers on same, gave at least me, an impression that the user was athletic.

Janice’s own attempts at the use of text technologies are a little bit different from mine.  Janice noted that she is trying to go paperless.  My bag instead included a two inch thick legal briefing book (well tabbed) indicating that I still use paper and rely on same in my legal work.

One interesting, and old school piece of text in Janice’s bag are business cards.  (I did not have any).  Janice does not she does not refer to them (even though she has interacted with some of those people since receiving those cards).

Finally, one comment on Janice’s blog posting from Ryan Dorey is very interesting.  Therein Ryan commented on the Patagonia sticker on Janice’s computer saying that that text means “quality matters” to him.  It is interesting that Ryan took something different and something more from the Patagonia sticker, reminding us that text symbols can mean something different to different people.

As an architectural tool, Janice does not appear to use WordPress, or she has modified same in a way I have not.  Janice’s choice of presentation is clear and provides links to her prior and next blogs;  something I did not do, and would do going forward.