Please find a PDF copy of my final project below:

Spoken Language The Importance of Weaving Traditional Knowledge into the 21st Century

Task: create two speculative narratives about our potential relationship with media, education, text and technology in the next 30 years. These narratives may be created in any media available (linguistic text, images, animations, audio, video, multi-modal, etc,)

Speculative Narrative #1

In the year 2050, officials from the United Nations made the decision that to better connect the entire globe that all nations of the world would now use one global language.  Similar to the original thinking of the use of Latin, UN Officials believed that this global language would help integrate vast regions of the globe under one dialect.  Under quite a lot of criticism, the decision was made to convert all the languages of the world into emoji.

At first, there was much confusion, even though there was much time and effort to simplify the language with a set standardized emojis.  Officials didn’t realize that a language, especially one which uses symbols, is still open to interpretation depending on the different cultures of the world which were still in place.

Only after a few months of this new standardized, coded language being in place, the language started to evolve throughout different pockets across the globe, much like genetic evolution.  To express their different slangs, usages, and styles of expressing themselves in different regions, citizens of the world started to develop different emojis to represent their ideas and views of the world, which were not available in a global mother tongue.

Within one year of instituting the language policy, United Nations officials made the difficult decision to do away with the universal language of emoji and return to the use of thousands of languages across our globe.  Officials noted that trying to contain any language into a defined set standard is impossible, as language is intertwined with culture, and that culture across the globe is constantly evolving.  UN officials stated that containing language is impossible.

Speculative Narrative #2

David’s Day at School

Beep Beep Beep!!!!

David wakes up out of a deep sleep at 8:30am to an alarm buzzing from his mobile device next to his bed.  He slowly opens his eyes and begins to stretch in bed, but he is alert enough to remember that he has a field trip today at school.  The 16-year-old boy, with brown hair and of average height, was excited for the field trip, as he has been looking forward to it for quite some time.

Lifting himself to his feet the cool, fresh air of his room hits his skin.  He quickly walks to the washroom where the light and shower automatically click on as soon as he walks in.  After ‘using the facilities’, he hops into the shower which is automatically set to his preferred temperature.

After his 15-minute shower, David gets dressed into his favorite jeans and hoodie, and places his mobile device into his pocket, which is something he always carries with him.  He combs his short hair and brushes his teeth.

Afterwards he makes his way downstairs and eats some cereal and drinks some orange juice.  He isn’t a big eater in the morning, but his Dad always told him he should start the day right by feeding his brain.  After eating and placing his dishes in the dishwasher, David finds a seat in the living room next to his school bag.

As he opens a simple, black, waterproof backpack he pulls out a set of electronic goggles which have a strap.  The sleek looking goggles have his name “David” and school name “CHSS” engraved on the front along with a QR code.  David also pulls out a pair of black ear buds from his school bag.  David is doing what all of his schoolmates do now.  This is getting ready for school.

David powers up his googles and connects them to his ear buds.  As David slips the googles over his eyes, he sees the familiar logo of CHSS inside.  The goggles automatically recognize David through retinal detection, mark him as present to his class, and welcome him to school.

“Good morning David.” speaks the school system with the familiar, soothing voice combined with a dark-skinned bot.  David chose this particular voice as it is of an English-speaking man from the UK, similar to his grandfather who David greatly admired.  Last school-year, he chose a a pale-skinned bot with a female voice, but chose to change things up this year in the name of variety.

Within seconds, David is presented with several class options for him to complete today.  Each of the options needs to be completed, but David has the choice of their order.  David notes that for Language Arts they are continuing to read the autobiography of Wab Kinew, Canada’s first Indigenous Prime Minister.  In Math, he will continue working with his partner to create a video game based on algebra.  Not his favorite activity but he likes using the old coding language of Python, which he believes is a blast from the past.

But what he is drawn to is the option to virtually visit the Haida Gwaii Museum.  This museum offers visitors a fascinating look into Haida Gwaii culture.  David has never visited Haida Gwaii, an archipelago located off the northwest coast of British Columbia, in fact he lives over a thousand kilometers away.  But David had the chance to learn Haida last year in Indigenous language class, and specifically chose Haida because his grandfather had told him the Haida were once the most highly feared warriors on BC’s West Coast prior to colonization.

As David selects the museum visit, he also chooses to visit the museum in the Haida language.  He figures he might as well brush up on his Haida.  As the light of the opening scene enters his eyes through his googles, his ears are greeted with traditional drumming.  This is high school learning in 2050.

To listen to an audio version of David’s Day at School, please click the link below:

Task 10: Attention Economy

I will be the first to admit that the attention economy task was well designed.  After completing some of the assigned readings and watching several videos about how the internet is not evolving at random, with a hidden goal of gaining your attention to certain products, causes, or organizations (Harris, 2017), the User Inyerface video game perfectly illustrated how these strategies work.

Much like certain physical infrastructure is designed to persuade a person to spend more time within and area or to spend money, such as casinos or shopping mall, online architecture can have a persuasive design of its own (Tufekei, 2017).  The video game which was assigned, had the player/consumer complete four tasks but each had many specific tricks and dark patterns (Brignull, 2011) designed to keep you, the player/consumer, on the site longer, forcing you to click on certain drop-down boxes and re-read material very specifically instead of scanning through.

The game actually reminded me of a digital escape room I designed for another ETEC class, exits were not easy to find, and large, bright buttons were displayed drawing your attention, but like everything, the devils were in the details.  The final level was the most difficult for myself, as I didn’t notice the hidden row of check boxes until I scrolled up.

During the game I most definitely felt a sense of urgency to complete the game with the time clock.  I’ve used this strategy within my own teaching practice when students are completing online math games.  Nothing like a little competition to get the best out of a student.  Though the sense of frustration also came forth when having to find stupid little details such as double negatives built into questions, etc.  As Harris (2017) notes, drawing emotions from people, positive or negative, can be quite the motivator when trying to complete a task, be it reading an article, buying a product, or clicking on a link.  Companies recognize this, will deceptively add in elements which produce a certain emotion from people, and will use it to their advantage online.

When on the Internet, be aware of those trying to grab your attention and how!

References

Brignull, H. (2011). Dark Patterns: Deception vs. Honesty in UI Design. Interaction Design, Usability, 338.

Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day [Video].  TedTalk.  https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_how_a_handful_of_tech_companies_control_billions_of_minds_every_day?language=en

Tufekci, Z. (2017). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [Video].  TedTalk.   https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads?language=en

For Task 9, our class had to first submit some data regarding our top ten track selections from Voyager’s Golden Record.  See Task 8.  When reading through the assignment I have to admit I was somewhat intimidated by the sounds of running a zip file through another program to create some sort of graph.  To our professor’s credit, the process was actually quite easy, as all it required was copying and pasting to load the file in Palladio (Stanford University, 2016) which was the graphing program used for this task.

As I soon found out though, that was the end of the easy part of trying to manipulate the graph.  Trying to stumble my way through Palladio and all it has to offer was difficult for someone who has never used the program before.  Thankfully I looked up a video on YouTube (Raynor Digital Scholarship Lab, 2018) to help me with the basics of what to do and how to find information through Palladio.

Though I figured out how to sort through the nodes and edges within the undirected graph (Systems Innovation, 2015), trying to comb through all the data was still a difficult task.  I could figure out a general sense of the degree of connectivity (Systems Innovation, 2015) of certain nodes, though visualizing it through the other edges made it hard to visualize, and it was best to add weight to the nodes.  The rest of the data in my opinion was difficult to extract easily.

At this point I started to realize, trying to develop these types of analytical skills simply takes time and knowledge with a program.  This wasn’t going to happen in 1-2 hours I had set out for this task.  I could learn the basics and only the basics, and I would be ok with that.  This is something I would also keep in mind when considering such a project for my own work context in a k-12 environment.  Students need scaffolding to be able to complete a skilled project successfully. That takes time, practice, and patience.

One last aspect which came to mind throughout this task was also the lack of access to the raw data.  Having taken a previous learning analytics course in this program, my mind came back specifically to what data was collected, how was the data collected, has it been filtered, and if so, how?  It would have been interesting to filter the data between different genders, age sets, etc and see what kind of differences popped up? In the end through, through the Palladio exercise, I am still left wondering about context of the chosen songs.  Why did my fellow students choose the songs they did and why?  This Palladio task didn’t really help answer that question.

References

Raynor Digital Scholarship Lab.  2018, April 18.  Palladio 3 – Data Visualization.  [Video].  YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-OVVAm0utE

Stanford University.  2016.  Palladio Project.  https://hdlab.stanford.edu/palladio/

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 18). Graph Theory Overview . Retrieved from https://youtu.be/82zlRaRUsaY

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 19). Network Connections . Retrieved from https://youtu.be/2iViaEAytxw

For this assignment I had to create a “Top 10 List”  from Voyagers Golden Record.  My “Top 10” is as follows:

I found that completing this task to be quite engaging.  Having to morph my first task (https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540f2021/2021/09/13/task-1-whats-in-your-bag/) into something completely different wasn’t an easy as I initially thought it would be, but in the end I found myself caught up in the fun of it.

To create this multi-modal task, I started by basing the task on the world on the learner (myself), or situated practice (New London Group, 1996).   To completely shift away from a text based medium, I decided to take the time to visit 8 different locations around the Prince Rupert area which are connected to the 8 different items I chose from my bag.  At these specific locations, I snapped a photo of each item along with my bag.  What occurred to me through this process is that in some ways I am bringing these locations with me everywhere I go when I carry the items in my bag.

Through this process of mode-bending, I would argue I also took control of the overt instruction of the task (New London Group, 1996).  In the written instructions of the task, Keri (our prof) asked us to change the semiotic mode of our first task, but with no explicit instructions about how or what those changes involved.  That left with me with a lot of possibilities.  As Dobson & Willinsky (2009, p.18) note “As digital literacy is leading to significant increases in the quantity and range of information that can be readily accessed, new technologies are adding to the convenience, speed, and accuracy with which readers can work with this wide variety of information sources”.  What I see now is by leaving the task somewhat ‘open ended’, I forced me to be  the one who would have to choose the specific design features of the new task.  I, the learner, was the one who chose to include the photo elements because as we learned through the emoji task last week, when sharing through just generic text, a writer can lose something that may be visible via an image.  I was also the one who chose to use video software to combine the images and to to add my own audio to the video.  I felt that by adding my voice, the viewer would be able to gain a better connection to the video and the importance of the items in my bag. Finally, I also decided to add sub-titles within the video as well, for two reasons.  The first was for accessibility reasons, something I learned from a previous MET class and which I do now for most all of my videos.   I also added sub-titles as a connection to the original form of the task, which was written in text.

I also believe that critical framing (New London Group, 1996) occurred throughout this mode-bending task.  By visiting these various different locations across the Prince Rupert area, I was able to portray the social contexts of the 8 different items within my bag, and further expand on their meaning to myself, as the learner, and you, as the reader/viewer.  By adding the photo elements to the task, I was able to better give viewers, through my own lens, a better idea of my connections to the local fish hatchery, my Fire Department, my bus stop, and the local hockey arena.

Through this mode-bending exercise, I also believe that transformed practice (New London Group, 1996) occurred as my presentation completely changed from what I created for Task 1.I   feel the meaning of the task changed dramatically, from a rather lengthy text based creation with a lousy photo, into an engaging video which includes multiple forms of media available for the viewer, and possibly gives them a better perspective of what my life in Prince Rupert is really like.  As Dobson & Willinsky (2009, p.11) note “The advent of electronic textuality reminds us of this, inviting us to reconsider our presuppositions about reading and writing, which are infused with assumptions specific to print, to “re-formulate fundamental ideas about texts and, in the process, to see print as well as electronic texts with fresh eyes”

A last reflection on the task occurred to me while driving in between these different locations across town, was that I was doing exactly what I like to do with my own students, which is getting out of the classroom and exploring the outside world.  The first task was completed sitting inside, behind a computer screen, typing in a stable environment.  The mode-bending task still required me to type out information (editing the sub-titles), but it forced me to move around from the different locations across the area and get out and enjoy nature.

I am also left with a question from this task.  How many modals are too many?  When watching the final product of my presentation, in some ways I wonder if its too much media coming at the viewer.  Not only does the viewer have to pay attention and analyze the different photos within the video, but also focus on my voice and the text within the sub-titles.  I found myself somewhat scanning through it all to try and soak it all in.

References

Dobson, T.M. & Willinsky J. (2009). Digital literacy. In D.R. Olson and N. Torrance (Eds) The      Cambridge handbook of literacy (286-312) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

The New London Group.  (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures.  Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.

Admittedly, I was pretty excited to try this task.  This seemed like a natural activity to try with my class and after now experiencing it first hand, I will most definitely be bringing this exercise to my Grade 6/7 French Immersion students.

At first, I thought that this task was going to have to be a lot more in-depth because movies have a lot of detail which would need to be passed on to the reader.  But as I started to work myself through the task, I realized the power of the emoji.  You don’t have to worry about every single word because with one simple emoji, even without words, the author can pass on a lot of ideas and meaning to a reader.

As Kress correctly notes “With depiction and with images, the situation is different:  that which I wish to depict I can depict, at the moment at any rate.  I can draw whatever I like whenever I like to draw it.  Unlike words, depictions are full of meaning; they are always specific.  On the other hand, there is an infinity large potential of depictions – precise, specific, and full of meaning (2005.  p. 15).”

As I moved through the task, I found myself moving at a quicker pace.  The story didn’t seem as long now.  Whether it be myself becoming more apt at the process, or myself realizing and becoming more comfortable that complicated stories can be told through imagery, the story seem to write itself rather quickly.  Something else that surprised me was the vast amount of emojis available to choose.  As I slid through the collection emojis, I found myself continuous going back and editing my story to add in or switch emojis that I had previously selected because these newly found emojis, at least in my mind, shared more of the details I was trying to share.

Although this exercise would be valuable in any classroom, I believe this task would be especially valuable in a language classroom because it allows students to express their thoughts without the fear of circumnavigating specific language and becoming frustrated with the process.  Through universal images, language students can share their thoughts and feelings using symbols that are true to them.  As Bolton notes “The image therefore slips out of control of the word and makes its own claim to presenting the authentic and the real (2001. p 70).”

Finally, one of my last reflections on this task is something that I read in Kress’ article “Speech and writing tell the world; depiction shows the world (2005. p. 16).”  In the 21^st century, I would argue that the visual medium is more powerful than the spoken or written medium.  As the world becomes more connected through the power of the Internet, the power of the image becomes more dominant as billions of them are passed across all parts of the globe.  Language matters less.

Though context is important and what something means in one part of the globe, can mean absolutely nothing or something completely different in a different part of the globe, I still focus on the power of the image. “The Web remediates photography, film, radio, and television, and each of these technologies of representation have their own cultural constructions and their own design principles … All of their remediations will be in pursuit of the same goal:  greater authenticity and immediacy of presentation (Bolton, 2005. p. 70).”

The power that an image can connect billions of people to the same idea in an almost immediate way, no matter what the language, no matter what the context!  That’s what I take away from this task.

References

Bolton, J.D.  (2001).  Chapter 4.  Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2^nd ed.)  Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  Doi:10.4324/9781410600110

Kress (2005), Gains and losses:  New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning.  Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.

The first post which I felt a connection to came from my classmate Analesa who wrote about her Task 3 experience while using the Talk-to-Text feature.  Here is a link her post:

This was my response to Analesa’s post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/54064c/2021/10/03/week-3/

Bonjour Analesa,

Your experiences using talk-to-text technology were similar to mine. Missing punctuation, misspelled words, and really a lot of the context from the story which doesn’t get missed when speaking face-to-face.

What stood out to me in your analysis was something short, but vitally important:

“Another difference that exists is the value put on the type of storytelling. Indigenous cultures value oral storytelling and it is a significant part of most Indigenous cultures.”

Growing up on the West Coast on Canada and living within the very strong and proud indigenous communities, oral story telling is the cornerstone of their culture. Written histories were never kept, and throughout the colonization of Canada, languages were banned and most of the physical artifacts which had any meaning to indigenous groups were either confiscated or destroyed.

But what lived on through the forced change of language were the stories. In his 2003 Massey Lecture, Thomas King notes “The truth about stories is that’s all we are” (CBC, 2003). Once you have the honour of hearing a story, it can’t be taken from you like physical objects or beat out of you like a language.  It can passed on to another person who can keep the story alive and pass it on to someone else.

While living in Prince Rupert for the past 7 years, I have had the honour of welcoming in many Ts’msyen elders into my classroom to share local “adawx” (stories) to students about a variety of subjects including salmon, weather, and celestial objects such as the sun and the moon. These adawx are some of the only things that have remained from this area over the last several thousand years. That’s why these adawx are so powerful and treasured when shared with my students. Though the stories may slightly changed how they are told from person to person, the messages remain the same.

As you also rightly point out “In general, Western and European cultures tend to value written storytelling more than oral.” For many reasons many of the adawx have never been put to paper, which sometimes makes it difficult to share with students as you need to arrange a time with a particular elder who has the right to share the story. Although it may be challenging for scheduling purposes, fear of losing control to whomever publishes the stories is always on the mind of the local Indigenous Education Department. Over the last few hundred years the Ts’msyen have watched colonialists come and take nearly everything they have known as valuable, so I can’t blame them if the are extremely carful how some of their last items of value of treated and shared.

Reference

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

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The second post I am choosing to highlight is one from Angela.  She was completing Task #5 and creating a digital story with Twine, which she have never used prior to this class.  This is her original Blog Post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/angelamhluk/2021/10/10/20/

The following is my response to her post:

Bonjour Angela,

I can understand your feelings about not particularly liking this type of text, as I am more of a fan of non-fiction myself. But what I have come to learn over the last few years is there are some major educational benefits for students when using software such as Twine to create stories.

I was fortunate to be introduced to Twine back in 2017 when my employer sent me to a Professional Development opportunity set up by the Province of BC with Microsoft in Vancouver. At this Pro D session, dozens of educators from across the province were learning about the educational benefits of computational thinking strategies which were being added to the the provincial curriculum.

Programs like Twine allow students to move from just ideating like a computer (computational thinking), to actually putting these coding skills into practice (computational participation). As UBC Professor Dr. Jennifer Jensen notes, through computational participation “you don’t have to know how to code, but you need to understand what code does.” (PDCEUBC, 2020). Furthermore, Jensen & Droumeva (2017, p. 221) found that using programs similar to Twine “allow kids to practice applying key computational thinking constructs such as variables, operations, functions and conditionals.” It is a fallacy to think that every contemporary students comes born with this skill set. These skills need to be taught, developed, and practiced.

Finally, there are still noted gender differences when it comes to confidence and attitude with using computers. For a variety of reasons girls tend to have less time and access to forms of technology at home which allow them to fail and learn in a safe environment. The classroom then becomes the most important environment to receive computational literacies and skills training. (Jensen & Droumeva, 2017, p. 222)

References

Jenson, J., & Droumeva, M. (2017). Revisiting the media generation: Youth media use and computational literacy instruction. E-Learning and Digital Media, 14(4), 212-225. https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753017731357

Professional Development & Community Engagement – University of British Columbia. (2020, Feb 12). Computational Participation with Dr. Jennifer Jensen. Video [YouTube]. https://youtu.be/cCtiQlPMnJ8

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The third post that I connected with was Grant’s Emoji Task, found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540dgm/2021/10/17/task-6-an-emoji-story/

Grant chose to write out the script for a series I only watched a few months earlier (Ted Lasso).  Grant’s ability to choose his emojis with precision, made it easy for me to recognize the show and plot.  As Grant notes in his blog post, “such icons are meant to put the verbal text in context, as the writer tries to enforce a univocal interpretation on prose that is otherwise open to many interpretations.” (Bolter, 2001, p.72)”

I would agree on the point that there can be many interpretations when trying to read emojis.  Some of the emoji stories I read from the collection that our class created were difficult to pick out, mostly because without actually knowing the complete plots of the particular stories being shared, certain symbols have no meaning.  If I had never seen the series Ted Lasso on TV, I’m not quite sure I would have correctly picked it out from Grant’s emoji story.  Although images, such as emojis, are always specific, full of meaning, and can pass on ideas, interpreting such images to their full extent is greatly aided by words and context.

As Kress’ notes “Speech and writing tell the world; depiction shows the world (2005. p. 16).”  I would argue that in the 21^st century, the visual medium is more powerful than the spoken or written medium.  As the world becomes more connected through the power of the Internet, the power of the image becomes more dominant as billions of them are passed across all parts of the globe.  Language matters less, but in the end, still matters!

I also asked Grant about his experience when reading other people’s emoji stories?  I know correctly selected my emoji story, but I wondered if he’s already seen “No Time To Die”? Would he have selected it correctly if he hadn’t already seen the movie?

References

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110

Kress (2005), Gains and losses:  New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning.  Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.

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The fourth post I made a connection with was from Karen Wang’s Mode-Bending task, found here: https://karenw0801.wixsite.com/mysite/post/week-7-mode-bending-what-is-in-your-bag

I believe Karen’s mode bending exercise was a complete success.  After reading her initial ‘What’s in my Bag” post https://karenw0801.wixsite.com/mysite/post/task-1-what-s-in-your-bag where she simply detailed what was in her purse, but I gained a totally different perspective by watching her mode-bending video.

By adding a video with her voice, and including some other pictures to gain references to her life in Taiwan, through this transformative practice (New London Group, 1996) the post became something completely different to her original post.  I would argue that she, as the learner, took control of the overt instruction of the task (New London Group, 1996).  She chose what extra photos to share, what pieces of information from your personal to share, and what sort of meaning and connections they have to you in your life.

I also feel that through her video and explanation of how important 7-11’s are to life in Taiwan helped me reconsider my own presuppositions with a fresh set of eyes about what 7-11’s can be (Dobson & Willinsky, 2009).  Having grown up in North America for my entire life, 7-11’s were just corner store to get a slurpee and candy.  After listening to her explanation, they appear to be much more, including a place to purchase concert tickets, pay bills, or do some photocopying.  Nowhere near what I had in mind originally when I saw the bill in her original post.

Finally, I like that she flipped the video to something of a game where people can use the items within her bag and guess what Karen’s job is.  Not exactly what was in your original post, but something that seems suitable in this new video context.

References

Dobson, T.M. & Willinsky J. (2009). Digital literacy. In D.R. Olson and N. Torrance (Eds) The      Cambridge handbook of literacy (286-312) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

The New London Group.  (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures.  Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.

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The fifth post I made a connection with was from Maurice, who posted about our Golden Record Task, which can be found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540texttech/task-eight/

Here is my response to his post:

Bonjour Maurice,

I too loved the experience of learning more about Voyager and it’s encapsulated Golden Record, as I’m a big fan of everything space.  I agree with you that Sagan and his contemporaries had an impossible task to choose songs and sounds which fully encompass what it is to live on Earth.  Many of your songs were ones that I myself chose including “Dark was the Night” by Blind Willie Johnson, “Night Chant” by Navajo Indians, and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

What I wondered in my own task was given all these years later, if a NASA group were to complete a similar task, would they choose any different songs or sounds?  If so, which ones, and why?

Sadly, what stood out to me most from your post was your reasoning why you didn’t select the Chuck Berry song!  I chose “Johnny B. Goode” as one my song selections, but after now reading the article which you shared, I definitely have a different impression of Chuck Berry.  And his song “My Ding A Ling” doesn’t really have that playful context anymore.

Merci,

Mike McD

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The sixth post which I felt a connection came from DeeDee’s “What’s in Your Bag?” Post, found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/ddperrott/2021/09/17/what-is-in-your-bag/

This is my response to her post:

Bonjour DeeDee,

I think what stood out to me the most about you post was not so much the items within the bag, but how many iterations that your bag has gone through in 30 years.  From being a travel bag in Europe, to school bag for university, to a mom bag anything from diapers to Nintendos, and now teacher bag … that leather bag must have some stories to tell!

I also like your reflection about the different types of technology that bag has seen and held over the years from CD players, to notebooks and pens, and laptop computers.  It makes me reflect on some of the different types of technologies that my own previous bags have held, which is something I didn’t mention within my own assignment.  Sadly, I had to retire my old backpack a couple of years ago, as the wear and tear finally caught up with it.  It too had seen man different types of technologies including CD players, MP3 players, DVD players, a leapfrog entertainment system for my daughter, along with a cell phone, and perhaps the odd alcoholic beverages or two as well!

Thinking about my new bag, I wonder what types of technology it will hold over the next twenty plus years?  Where will the future take us?  Or will the changes simply come through the ever-changing mobile devices which we already can’t do without?

Merci,

Mike McD

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I cheated a little and added a 7th post which I made a connection with.  This last post comes from Sheena’s Speculative Futures post found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/shetec/2021/11/30/task-12-speculative-futures/

This is the response I added to Sheena’s comments:

The section which stood out to me the most was the part about what teaching could look like in the future.  This has an obvious connection as I am an educator myself.

“Meanwhile, Jay’s teacher is talking to herself, or is she? She’s having a discussion with her teaching app. The app goes through the curriculum and student data. From the time students enter the school, their learning progress has been input into a database. This data plus lesson plans taken from several online resources are input into the app which then uses this information to plan lessons around the teacher’s learning objectives.”

The idea of having an app which has a bank of lesson plans doesn’t seem too far off, as the current BC curriculum is online, and does have examples of lesson plans.  What struck me the most was the idea of collection of student data and how educators will collect it and use it in the future.  This idea takes me back to a previous MET course, where I explored the idea of the ethical collection of student data for educational analytics.

When considering the use of data collection and educational analytics, educational leadership and educators needs to consider a variety of issues including ownership; stewardship; access; transparency & consent; security and privacy; and interoperability.

Although all the other aspects are important to data collection, I believe interoperability is the one of the most important aspects.  To ensure the adoption of the learning analytics program by educators, a School District would have to be proactive that the collection, use, and access to learning data would sync well between the District and supplier software systems (Fritz, John et al., 2017).  I believe interoperability to be vital to the success of any data collection program overall as I feel not many educators would go through a process to obtain data that proved to be confusing, time-consuming, and cumbersome to acquire.

Future technologies can be complex in their design, but they will still need to be user-friendly otherwise they simply won’t be adopted by the masses.

References

Fritz, John et al., (2017, May 1).  IMS Global Learning Data & Analytics Key Principles.  IMS Global Learning Consortium.  https://www.imsglobal.org/learning-data-analytics-key-principles

How writing is affected by online practices

To read my Twine Story, please right-click this link: My Twine Story (2)

Once you have right-clicked the above link, save it to a given location on your computer.  If the download bar pops up in the bottom corner saying it is not safe, click on the the little up arrow on the download bar and select “keep”

The file will start downloading. Right click and choose open the file folder.  Click on the icon and the HTML file should open in a web browser.

As I completed my Twine Story this week, I began to realize how much my own writing has been affected by online practices.  Going through the creative process, I was just writing down quick sentences as I would if I were online texting a friend.  It wasn’t until after I completed the project and showed my wife, that she started reading and correcting the language I was using including missing punctuation.

As Gretchen McCulloch, an Internet linguist notes (Zaltzman, 2019), people now tend to write in utterances, similar to what you would see when you text or tweet.  As I reflect back on the process, I was absolutely writing in utterances when completing my project, similar to how I would speak when telling a story.  I just wanted to put something down as my ideas were flowing.

Irony is another thought which comes to mind when I think of this discussion.  If we, as a society, are speaking how modern, contemporary language is changing and becoming less rigid through the use of technology, this “minimalist typography” (Zaltzman, 2019) is still being produced and recorded via technology which is created and operates through highly structured coding languages.  When writing the code to create my twine story, the HTML coding I had to use to add an image had to be super precise.  Even with the slightest of mistakes in the coding such as a missing bracket, and my story wouldn’t work or the selected image would not appear.

Finally, the element of cultural context is also key.  Something which I noticed while creating my twine story was that it was seemingly missing something with just the text.  It needed something added to convey a more meaningful message to the reader.  This is apparently common under these “new rules” and a reason why there has been a rise in the use of the emoji (Zalzman, 2019).  I decided to add images to spice up my story, but as McCulloch correctly points out (Zaltzman, 2019), not all images or emojis are equivalent to every person.  The thumbs up emoji isn’t always a positive sign for all people, or the use of the middle finger may mean nothing for some others.  When reflecting on my own story, the opening pages using the “Game of Thrones” reference may not mean anything to some, or may actually confuse those who have never read or watched the series.

At the end of this task, I am left with more questions than answers.  As the world continues to move towards the digital age, how will my Middle School students, now growing up using minimalist typography structure on a regular basis, be able to successfully function or create code using complex languages with precise rules?  Or will future computer coding also become more minimalist in its design and nature?

I guess I will have to wait and see.

References

Zaltzman, Helen. (Host).  (2019, July 13).  New Rules [Audio podcast episode]. In The Allusionist.  http://theallusionist.org/new-rules

“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