“Last week Ashley turned out to be a bit of a week from hell for me and my family it started out very nice says we me and Alicia my wife dropped off our daughter to have a sleepover some friends so we actually had the house to her self and we went out for dinner on a date night and I started great but when we came back home we turned off our car and noticed that the fan on the radiator was still on and so we turn it off again on again and off again and off again and it wasn’t going to turn off so basically will I let it run for about 10 more minutes in hopes that it would just kill itself and sadly it did not so I basically had to pry open to pry off the battery element to kill the top to kill my car so it wouldn’t kill the whole battery after we had to phone the car dealership the next day and basically had to wait until the 29th basically just short of two weeks to get into the car dealership so we’ve been running around in one vehicle for the last week which just adds more stress to her life because we got to go around to drop kids off and pick each other up and it’s just makes it for a hard time that’s for sure God bless people who can have a one car family that’s for sure the next day Saturday were sitting in our basement we recently bought a house over the summer and as we’re sitting in our basement rec room I heard a drip drip drip in the ceiling above us and obviously there’s some water spots above us that I was kind of hoping we’re old ones but sure enough we started ripping down some boards and found out and we found a big leaky pipe that kind of slow dripping for quite some time and as we peel back the more boards we found out that the pipe was actually leaking in several different spots so it looks like we’re gonna have to re-plum our whole entire basement this time I think I want to do it in pecks plumbing thankfully it’s open but that said to go through that whole process and it’s gonna be at least $1000 so that added some more stress on to our lives and then finally on Monday evening this is the good part Prince Rupert pretty right now for it rains I got hammered by some very heavy downpour about 70 or 80 mils of rain and throughout the night basically our base our basement started to flood and it wasn’t coming in from the side walls because actually coming up from the floor on the basement and out through some cracks so for the best part about four hours until the rain subsided we were mopping and sucking up rain through our throat basement so it was brutal thankfully it was right outside our rec room so I could at least watch Monday night football and drink a beer as I’m mopping up water for about four hours and as the next day and we got cleaned up kind of started doing some repairs and we kind of got prepped up for it I was chiselling so we could get some some mortar in there and so on and basically I found a super soft spot in my foundation which crumbled away and basically chewed up a big 2 foot hole in my and sadly within a couple days knowing that a couple days from now there would be about 120 mills worth of water coming I had to basically figure out a quick way to fill those gaps in which we got some hydraulic cement and then basically poured moss like real cement into the 2 foot hole and thankfully obviously this grade a lot more stress thankfully our repair is kind of held through the 120 mills worth of rain on Thursday I think it was just some minimal leaking although we did find a few more leaks in the back corner of her house but again those look fairly minimal I can try to get picked up with some of the hydraulic cement so yeah to say the least it was a one hell of a stressful week joys of homeownership againYeah but if that’s the worst at Prince Rupert got to throw us for rains because that was probably one of the worst storms we’ve had here in our seven years looks like our house will hold up now thankfully but yeah it was just a long week today basically kind of cleared out my gutters up top to make sure the runner all run away as well and onto bigger and brighter features I guess this week so yeah that was my story thank God this week is done thank you”

The above was my attempt to create create a written story through a talk to text feature on my cell phone.

I was actually pretty excited to try this assignment because over the last couple of years I have been encouraging my elementary French Immersion students to use talk-to-text translators instead of hard cover French-English dictionaries.  For some of my colleagues, they consider students using talk-to-text blasphemous, especially when it comes to developing writing skills.  Perhaps they see this type of new technology as a tainted, psychological crutch, much like Plato did with writing in general. (Haas, 2013) However, as Haas (2013) also points out writing itself is a man-made material through the use of technologies whether it be sticks on sand, pencil on paper, or a cursor on a monitor.  So, in my opinion, there is room for debate in the technology question.

The first and most obvious deviation within the text of my story is the missing punctuation.  There doesn’t appear to be a single period within the entire story, so without any proper sentence structure, the text appears as one long run-on sentence.  There are also no commas to help separate sentences to or to give pause when I am speaking.  Apart from the letter “I”, there are also very few capital letters which would also help a reader recognize the beginning of a new sentence and emphasize meaning within the text.

Reflecting on the text, I would say there isn’t much “wrong” with the text other than a few words which were not recorded correctly by my cell phone.  A strong majority of the story is “right” and written exactly as I told the story, including a few repeated words.  The story should also be considered “correct” as it accurately shares the entire point of my story in that it was a notably stressful week for myself due to reasons shared in the story.

I believe if I had scripted my story, as oppose to telling it how I would with a friend, the written version would be more accurate, but the oral version of the story would have lost its meaning.  For instance, if I had to constantly say “period” or “comma” as I was relaying the story, it would obviously become difficult to listen to over an extended period of time.  Furthermore, if the story had been scripted, it would have not had the many “inconsistencies” (Haas, 2013) such as repeated words, or fumbled pauses, while I was searching for the perfect word when explaining my story.  When speaking face-to-face these imperfections tend to be forgotten or overlooked throughout the course of the story (Hass, 2013).

Throughout this week I have kept coming back to the power of story and language from an Indigenous people’s point of view. In his 2003 Massey Lecture, Thomas King notes “The truth about stories is that’s all we are” (CBC, 2003). For most all of the Indigenous nations living within what is now Canada, stories and the spoken word are vital to their culture, but their languages in which those stories have been passed down since time and immemorial were nearly completely erased.  Thankfully the traditional adawx (stories) of the Ts’msyen continued to live on as that is one of the powers of spoken word.  Even as colonialists raided villages and took valuables such as totem poles, land, and regalia, no written adawx would have stood a chance of remaining intact.  But once you have the honour of hearing a story, it can’t be taken from you like physical objects.  It can pass on to another person who can keep the story alive and pass it on to someone else.  This is where I return to King’s quote “The truth about stories is that’s all we are.”  I have shared with you below the audio version of King’s Lecture, which is given with emphasis.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2398900256

This is true for the Ts’msyen people.  The Ts’msyen and their culture are based on stories.  Although over time their adawx had to be converted into English, they lived on and they are now making their way back into the traditional Sm’algyax language. This is one of the benefits of oral storytelling, compared to written story telling.  It lends itself well to be shared by others and doesn’t lose it meaning the way that writing can.  Technologies such as online dictionaries, web apps, and Sm’algyax learning modules (Ts’msyen Sm’algyx Language Authority, 2021) have all been created to help re-spread the language and all students throughout the school district now have to learn Sm’algyax.

Through this exercise I have come to realize that my fellow colleagues were right to be cautious about the use of talk-to-text technology within the classroom.  For myself, embracing a technology without considering what effects it may have somewhat foolish. Although these effects may not be necessarily negative for my students, I have come to learn that the effects of the technology for writing purposes may be “varied, elaborate, complicated, and far from immediate”. (Haas. 2013. Page 18).

References

Canadian Broadcast Company. 2003.  The Truth About Stories: Part 1.  CBC.ca.  https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2398900256

Haas, C. (2013). “The Technology Question.” In Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacyLinks to an external site. Routledge. (pp. 3-23).

Ts’msyen Sm’algyax Language Authority.  2021.  Links.  Smalgyax.com. https://www.smalgyax.ca/links