I chose to curate this list of links to other’s works in one page, rather than separate posts. I’m not sure whether this is good or poor, but this is the way I structure things in my brain.
Amy Stiff – Task 2
I chose Amy’s page as this is one of the tasks that I didn’t complete, though I was very interested in the topic of the task, that of language shaping the way we think.
I resonated with what she was saying in terms of language and gender – some languages, such as French and German, use gender to identify objects in the sentence, and her post really made me think about this phenomenon. I grew up in Montreal, and (used to) speak French fairly fluently. I hadn’t thought about the use of gender in language in many years, and this post brought back my questions about why the choice of gender was assigned to various objects. For example, in French, why is a beach feminine (la plage) and a city centre masculine (le centre-ville)? As an animist (someone who believes that all things have a spirit, including inanimate objects), this resonates with me as I hadn’t thought about this use of language for a very long time.
Amy used WordPress to publish her blog, which is a free (for UBC students) and easy to use platform for blog posts. Is this platform identified as feminine or masculine in French? I don’t know. 🙂
I also used WordPress, for the same reasons, and found her site easy to use to find what I wanted to – her menu is clear, and it is easy to find the task I was looking for as navigation is direct and well laid out. One thing I do find difficult with WordPress formatting is that the text comes out as one long scrolling text, which can be intimidating for someone who has lower English literacy. I like the way she interspersed quotations to break up the long paragraphs, as otherwise, it can be visually discouraging.
I enjoyed the description of her personal experiences with language and how they impact her teaching including her musings on her own pedagogy when teaching social studies. Ultimately, we try to teach critical thinking in our subjects, and viewing subject matter from various perspectives is part of that process. She makes an intriguing point about the use of gender being embedded in a language in this way, and how this will be impacted in societies where the identification of gender is becoming more fluid.
Petros Katsigiannis – Task 3
https://sites.google.com/view/etec540petroskatsigiannis/task-3?authuser=0
I chose Petro’s Voice to Text task because it was quite different from mine, though similar in some ways as well. As I did, he discovered that written speech is more easily understood from others perspectives. He notes that if this was a written, rather than verbal text, he could take the time to better craft the story, with proper punctuation and grammar conventions. I really like the way he notes that he doesn’t “have a dictionary” in his mind as he’s writing. He concludes that he did get his story across, though the execution left much to be desired.
The format used is Padlet, which is a little more visually appealing to me. The navigation is similar to WordPress, though the layout seems simpler and less intimidating to look at from an accessibility point of view. I also like that the comments section is very visually different from the main blog, and has a nice background graphic that, again, makes it more visually appealing. I also liked that the initial page you land on is a distinct home page with some info about him.
While he did discuss his post in terms of the course material, he didn’t clearly link it to pedagogy. Some of this can be implied in that he speaks of the difficulty of presenting things orally vs written formats and he is an ESL teacher. One conclusion that could be made from this post is that he thinks very carefully about how he is presenting language in both oral and written formats.
I enjoyed reading this post as it is very personable and easy to read, having a more conversational tone than formal academic posting.
Lubna Yasin – Task 7
I really connected with Lubna’s post. While I did a rap, her aural presentation of her bag objects was much more unique and personal.
While I had to go back to look at her original photo to see what some of the objects were, I did already have a sense by listening to the ‘soundtrack’ that went with them before I checked with the original picture. The fact that the recordings were made by her (curating her own soundtrack) also lended a much more personal aspect to the post. She states this was a more visceral experience, and I would agree with this sentiment. I really liked how each sound was carefully chosen to signify a much broader and deeper context than her written words could convey.
She also identified a personal assumption that was challenged in this task, about the idea that all academic work was in English, which demonstrates her deep thinking about how language shapes the way we think and interact with the world.
Lubna also used WordPress, though hers looks much better than mine. She has included a more robust menu navigation than mine, including archived files by month, and her picture affixed to each page/post. This is much more visually appealing than a block of paragraphs like mine.
I can see that her ideas about pedagogy are multimodal and flexible, and that she is willing to challenge her own assumptions and beliefs through the learning process. It is also clear that she can translate the visceral experience to a metacognitive process, contextualizing meaning-making in a new and different way.
This was a very personal and intimate view into her world, and I really enjoyed interacting with this post, understanding the context, if not the actual words spoken in her sound clips.
Chris Rugo – Task 8
I am very involved with de-colonizing the nursing program I work in, though surprisingly, I didn’t think of this as I worked on this task. Chris’s post struck right at the heart of decolonization and spoke about the systematic erasure of Indigenous culture. There is a bias that was evident in the original list, as it was curated by White, European men. That Chris was able to recognize this bias and counteract it with his list is impressive and speaks to his ability to look at biases and challenge assumptions that many may not realize.
He also used WordPress, as it is free and easy to use. The formatting was simple, straightforward and easy to read. The menu navigation was humble and unassuming, with no distractors. Is this indicative of a straightforward and unassuming style of teaching, while being aware of biases and encouragement of critical thinking to challenge personal assumptions?
This post was most striking for me, as it very much challenged my own biases and caused me to recognize the biases that exist in my own thinking. This was very thought provoking and I enjoyed looking at the challenge that this post presented to my own assumptions.
Kristine Lachance – Task 9
I connected with this assignment as it rang true to my own struggles with the assignment and using the palladio app. She, like me, fought to understand the basic tenets of the assignment and the app, having little experience with data visualization.
She also came to the same conclusions I did: That without more information than was provided, we were unable to determine why those particular tracks were chosen. This data visualization only showed the statistical information of what songs were chosen, rather than the reasons why the data (songs) were chosen in the first place. It also didn’t tell us what was missing from the song list. She included some probing questions in her reflections and strong insights in her Implications section. Which I didn’t include in my post.
Kristine used Padlet, I believe, for her posts. I only assume this because of the layout of the home page in tiles, rather than lists of links like, for example, WordPress would use. I like the creativity of this format in the home page, with it’s less structured visuals and colourful background graphic. The post itself is black on white print – high contrast, which makes it easier to read in terms of accessibility.
I also enjoyed and commented on her personal story of how she and her husband choose selections for their DJ business, according to the demographic of the event they are working on. This requires pre-knowledge of the event and who would be attending, and meeting with the organizers themselves to get a feel for what is wanted. I think this reflects her own teaching style, wanting to make a personal connection with the intended audience, getting to know them to be able to tailor an approach specifically for that particular audience.
The thoughts about implications of what this type of data curation can have in the ‘real world’ are insightful and very thought provoking.
Seime – Task 11
https://sites.google.com/view/etec540semadhemar/task-11-detainrelease?authuser=0
I chose this post because it was one that I did not do as I chose the other option. I was interested in seeing how this option was manifested by others.
Though this post is short, this person did present some probing questions about the use of AI technology. It would have been nice to see what their answers were for the situations (what did they choose for the situation), or perhaps a summary of what they decided. They did summarize the overall experience and what was considered in making the decision. They also had some great discussion about how AI is used and how it’s use is flawed. With AI not being able to contextualize important decisions, they suggest that it should explain how it came to the decision, and that these decisions are based purely on historical data, which contains biases.
I believe Google sites was chosen as a platform here, though this was not easy information to find on the page. I also had a hard time finding what this person’s name was, so went by what was listed in the student’s websites list the professor had uploaded. From an accessibility point of view, the text was a little difficult to read, as it was very small and not high contrast. The background graphic was very nice, and added to the visual appeal, though it was difficult to read the small black print against the pink background.
Due to the short piece, it is difficult to determine how this task is influenced by their pedagogy, though there is some great critical questions posed about the use of AI technology in life changing decisions and how we should be using it.
