#1 Kelcie Task 3
https://kelcievouk.wixsite.com/my-site/post/task-3-voice-to-text
Kelcie did her voice-to-text assignment centred around an informal story telling of a dramatic event that happened to someone close to her. These are the types of stories usually preserved for in-person gatherings with family or close friends, so it was exciting to feel like I was a part of a close circle hearing this entertaining story.
I chose to link Kelcie’s voice-to-text story about “Bali Rory” because while I was reading it I felt as if I was reading something that I had written. I think Kelcie and I share a very similar voice in our writing (speaking?) where we both love to tell a dramatic story with all the juicy details and can sometimes go off on a tangent with extra details. Kelcie did a great job remembering to include punctuation in her voice-to-text story, unlike me, which made it very easy to read, as if she was right there telling me this story. Since this story was delivered verbally, the tone was very casual as opposed to the formal style of writing many of us have become accustomed to which was perfect for this type of story.
Kelcie’s Wix site is set up in such a way that it is easy to see each section of the page (ie. instructions, story, reflection). Her site is easy to navigate and, unlike mine, houses several blogs for different classes which are all kept separate so as to not get confused. Co-authoring and commenting is made easy with a comment section at the bottom that anyone can contribute too, and the images accompanying her recent posts make it easy to see her other work.
#2 Amanda Task 4
https://blogs.ubc.ca/webspace/2022/06/12/task-4-potato-printing/
I chose to link to Amanda’s potato stamps for a few different reasons. One way I connect with her stamp is the word she chose- “teach.” As a teacher, I was surprised that this word did not come to mind when I was trying to figure out the word I would carve into my potato. I found that a lot of people chose words that shared an insight into their lives (ie. pet names) or their passions and values such as this one. After seeing Amanda’s potato stamp, it made me wish that I had been a bit more thoughtful when choosing my word for reasons other than I had initially valued. When I was choosing my word, my only thought was to choose a word that was going to be fairly simple to carve with lots of staring lines. Now I wish that I had chosen a word that would give my classmates a bit more of an insight as to who I am to get to know me better. Seeing the “teach” potato stamp at the end of an extremely difficult school year gave me a moment to step back and reflect on my (short) career as a teacher and reminded me of the excitement and passion I used to have for this profession before COVID took a lot of that joy away. This reflection gave me a little extra spark that I needed to finish the school year. I was inspired by the beautiful two-toned inking Amanda did with her potato stamp which I brought into my next art lesson on print-making and the art turned out so much better than in previous years because they were not just one dimensional.
Something else I was surprised by when viewing Amanda’s and all the other potato stamps is that I think I was the only person to interpret the assignment as using only one potato for the whole word. For some reason, it had not even dawned on me to use one potato for each letter until I saw everyone else’s submissions. Perhaps it was the fact that I had only one potato in my pantry, or maybe I read the assignment wrong (or did everyone else read it wrong…).
Amanda’s wordpress site has a beautiful navy and teal theme throughout that I have seen from a few other blogs. It would be nice to have menu items for each individual assignment to have easier access to them rather than scrolling down through each week’s task. With this style of site having such a narrow text box, it causes the writing to go very far down the page. With so much empty, unused space on either side, a better design would have been to go wider and use more area for the text. Both our sites allow for easy commenting by participants which can be seen and replied to by everyone who views the site.
#3 Jennifer Task 5
https://blogs.ubc.ca/jgttetec540/2022/06/19/task-5-twine-task-disease-detective-game/
I really enjoyed participating in Jennifer’s Disease Detective Twine game. Jennifer’s Twine was much more functional than mine which was more of a story and I now wish I had thought of something more along the lines of this one that would have more practical uses. I wanted to link to this Twine in particular because this one gave me the most inspiration for other possibilities using a similar style of Twine. I can really see many useful possibilities using this style of activity for training modules in lots of different domains. I have seen quiz-type learning activities like this before, but I believe that Twine in particular has the potential to increase the engagement of these tools because of the ability to add images, music and text features that makes it feel more of a game than a module. This interests me in particular because I sometimes do instructional design work on UNICEF projects which often includes building learning modules for teachers from around the world. This style of Twine could be a great addition to increase engagement and can be created for any topic or demographic.
Both myself and Jennifer stuck with the original text and background colours for our Twines. For myself, it was because I was already overwhelmed and struggling to create a simple story using this tool, I did not want to mess anything up or spend hours trying to change the colours when it was not necessary to the story. I would have liked to have seen some accompanying images for the diseases, or general health care images, though this was quite challenging to achieve so I can understand their absence. Something that Jennifer added that was very helpful in this situation is links to the Alberta Public Health Disease Management Guidelines to give more information about all of the diseases listed in her interactive game. I am from Alberta so this information is perfect but these guidelines are likely universal.
#4 Georgia Task 6
http://blogs.ubc.ca/gkadawong/2022/06/24/task-6-an-emoji-story/
While we were both given the same assignment, and both achieved the goal of retelling a movie or book- we both seemed to take it in different directions. I did my emoji story on The Titanic and spent a lot of time trying to get every last detail of the plot with so many specifically chosen emojis and then I saw Georgia’s on Space Jam with only two dozen emojis! Her simple approach still achieved the desired outcome, I could tell what movie she was retelling and I got the major plot points (I had just seen Space Jam a few weeks prior). I have never seen emojis that look like these, but they worked perfectly at getting the story across. At first I thought that this was way too short to be a good emoji story, but then after looking at all the other assignments, this was the only one that I could figure out. This made me realise that as long as the reader can tell what the story is about, the length or number of emojis really does not matter.
Georgia houses her work in a WordPress site similar to my own with a few design differences. I enjoy the ease of navigation on Georgia’s site where there are subpages for each task under the “Weekly Tasks” tab, making it quick and easy to go to whichever one you want to see. The map on my site serves the same function, however looks a bit cluttered having every task on the main menu without subpages. Both of our sites are simple, clean cut and do not feature decorative images, patterns or colours and they both have areas for comments at the bottom of each page for participants to become co-authors.
#5 Joseph Task 7
https://blogs.ubc.ca/jvillella540/2022/07/02/task-7-mode-bending/
I chose Joseph’s Task 7 on mode bending to reflect on and link to where he uses and explains a sound effect to represent each of the items in his bag. When I was thinking of what I wanted to do for this project and had to focus on an auditory mode, I had trouble coming up with something that appealed to me. At the time, the only really auditory ideas I could think of were podcasts and ASMR- both of which I am not a fan of. Now seeing Joseph’s take on the assignment, it seems so obvious and I wish I had thought of it before. Both Joseph and my projects feature visual and auditory components, however he relied more heavily on the auditory element in a podcast-style recording. The image of the contents in the bag helped while I was listening to the recording, though I think he could have done without the image, forcing the listener to create their own image. Our projects are juxtaposed in the sense that Joseph’s is very literal and mine is more abstract. Joseph used his own voice and sound effects that could truly have been made from the objects he was showing. My TikTok on the other hand used a computer generated narration and described each object without actually saying what it is.
Joseph chose to house his work in a WordPress site that is a very different style from mine. I find that it is difficult to navigate without having a main menu present on each page. With the style Joseph is using, I have to flip through each page to find what I am looking for, instead of easily being able to click on the page I want and go straight there. Though our sites have differences, there are also many similarities. Both our sites allow for easy commenting by participants which can be viewed by everyone and creators can embed audio, videos, images, links, etc right into the site to quickly and easily relay information to the user.
#6 Jocelyn Task 8
https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540jfung/2022/07/10/8-2-golden-record-curation/
I wanted to link to Jocelyn F’s Task 8: Golden Record Curation assignment because of our similarities, differences, and my love for maps. I connected with this assignment because Jocelyn had the great idea of using an interactive map where she used a template on the site Genial.ly to create it. It was great to see a visual representation of how spread out the countries of origin are for the songs she selected and the flag of each country was a great touch. While we both got across the same information, Jocelyn’s work used visuals and was much more appealing, engaging and interactive than mine which used only text. I noticed that there were no songs representing either Europe or Oceania/ Australia and five just in Asia which I found surprising. If I were to have used a map, I would have made sure that there was a selection from each continent, as having multiple pins in one area and none in another is very noticeable on a map.
The songs that both Joeclyn and I had in common on our lists are:
–Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
-Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
-Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
-India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
While viewing Jocelyn and other classmates’ song lists, I really enjoy reading why each song was chosen, but I would also be very curious to learn why certain songs were not selected. I noticed that nearly everyone chose Melancholy Blues and/or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and that Jocelyn does not have either on her list for any number of reasons which would be very interesting to hear about.