Task 1: What’s in your Bag?
Note: Due to file size limits, I was unable to embed my video response directly into this blog-post. Please right-click HERE and select “open link in new window” to be directed to the video response hosted by Canvas.
Items in my bag:
- printed copy of my teaching schedule for the current school-year (2021-2022)
- pencil case filled with multicolored felt tip fineliners
- eyeglasses case with a pair of glasses inside
- large planner, open to the first week of September
- paperback novel (Anne Rice’s “The Witching Hour)
- headphones
- pack of gum
- tub of strawberry lip-gloss and a half-melted Chapstick
- keyring with:
- attached cardholder containing a credit card, debit card, driver’s license, vaccination card, and Costco membership card
- one house key
- decorative “A” for Angela
- mini Save-on-More card and Canadian Tire points card
- metal charity coin for shopping carts from the BC Children’s Hospital
- NOT PICTURED: my cellphone, which is being used to take the photo
My Responses:
Well, I recorded a lovely (albeit long) video going through each of these items, however, WordPress has a file upload limit of 20mb which I made the mistake of discovering only after recording the video. After an hour and a half of trying to split the video into smaller segments to post, and getting increasingly frustrated, I found a workaround by posting it directly into Canvas and then linking that video web-address here. You can watch that video by right-clicking THIS link and selecting “open link in new window” – this will allow you to have the video open in one window while also viewing the image of the items in this window.
Questions to consider:
- What is your daily need for the items in your bag?
- How might these items be considered “texts” and what do they say about you, the places you inhabit, the cultures with which you engage, and/or the activities you take up?
- Thinking about the title of the course, what are the “text technologies” in your bag, if any? What do these items say about how you engage with language and communication?
- What do the items in your bag say about the literacies you have?
- How does the narrative of the (private) contents of your bag compare with the narrative produced by image you have of yourself or the image you outwardly project?
- What would this same bag have looked like, say, 15 or 25 years ago?
- How do you imagine an archeologist aiming to understand this temporal period might view the contents of your bag many years in the future?