ETEC 540 Site For Greg Patton

In his write up for Task 7: Mode Bending, Juliano touches on some very important points.  First are the ideas of individualization and differentiation:  

“The benefit of mode-changing is that it forces educators to revisit what we are teaching and adapt it to our audience so that it is relevant to them and engages them.” 

This mirrors The New London Group’s idea of trying to ensure that individual differences are not barriers to educational success (The New London Group. (1996), p. 61).  Teachers need to recognize what mode is best for individual students and then try their best to differentiate the curriculum to the advantage of the student’s learning style.  I agree with Juliano that this is not always possible as our curriculum has not completely moved away from the “stand and deliver facts” model to the more inquiry-based “Big Ideas” model that we are implementing, but with collaboration between students and teachers we are moving in the right direction. 

“A holistic approach that connects the concepts to our students’ lives is how we are going to engage them and keep their interest and create opportunities for deeper learning.”

I still remember sitting in Physics class and the teacher rolling out an old school movie projector to show the class movies on motion and gravity (yes, the gentleman in the movie had a white short sleeved shirt, black tie, black glasses, and a buzz cut).  This would cause most students today to slip into some sort of catatonic state, where only the glitchy embrace of a Tik Tok video would bring them out.  Videos are harder with students brought up on not watching television shows per se, but shorter more “exciting” videos found on their phones.  And that is another benefit of mode bending; it allows the students to show us, the educators, what type of media is beneficial to their learning.  That way, we become better teachers and students have taken a step to being more responsible for their education.  A win-win scenario for sure! 

Juliano’s Mode-Bending Assignment 

My Mode-Bending Assignment 

I found a lot of similarities between Sarah’s account of this task and my own; larger, more important pieces get typed up and smaller, more informal ones are done in handwriting.  Sarah feels comfortable taking notes on her phone though, something I do not like doing as I am not a great thumb typist and I’m at the age where my arms aren’t long enough for me to see what I’m typing on my phone screen.  Where we had our biggest divergence in opinion was in our preference and significant differences.  Sarah loves the convenience and speed of mechanization, while I prefer the speed I have with my pen.  I also lay out my sentimental reasons of not letting go of a finished product that is in your hands.  Sarah has no qualms about this; she loves all the other aspects that computerization have given her:   

“Nowadays, when you type something you can quickly personalize the text, correct it, make multiple copies, and share it with others.” 

It is this property of the computerization of writing that I completely overlooked.  I have found that using Google Docs and Word 360 to be almost God-sends in these pandemic times.  Last week, we had five people working simultaneously on a draft letter for our staff and only two of us were located in the school.  We would leave notes to each other in the margins by changing the font colour to grab our attention and quickly zoom back and forth reading and editing others’ paragraphs.  We accomplished something that would usually take hours, if not a day, with handwriting (or Microsoft Word installed on your computer) in just over fifteen minutes.  Sarah reminded me that letting go of the attachment to some writing pieces and allowing computerization and collaboration is a great thing, and I need to do more of that.  

Sarah’s Manual Script Assignment 

My Manual Script Assignment 

“… the minister finally believes Tumblr and telling the truth so yeah EDM Dumbledore Ryback seems okay…”   

I texted Binal (we know each other outside of this program) that this was my favourite line in her voice-to-text assignment by far: anytime you get to mix a minister, Tumblr, Electronic Dance Music, Dumbledore, and pro wrestler Ryback together it’s going to be a party!  I knew from talking to her that she thought her voice-to-text made no sense: “It is not easy to read and definitely makes no sense at all.”  And yet I found I could follow the narrative fairly well.  But I attribute that to my historical knowledge; I have read the Harry Potter series several times (as has Binal, naturally) so, even with the grammatical missteps and weird interpretations of Binal’s narrative, it’s possible to eke the story out.  I do think this outcome would be completely different for someone who had no prior knowledge of the stories, and shows the importance of historical knowledge when it comes to “passing down” oral traditions.  Sure, the story may change from speaker to speaker (just play a game of telephone with 5 of your favourite friends) but as long as people have the historical background they will be able to understand the message.  It is why some people understand Shakespearian theatre and others look on it as another language. 

Going back to my favourite line: I found it really remarkable how the technology Binal used easily recognized, or came up with, such modern Pop culture words and phrases.  I used the speech to text right in Microsoft Word and it could not recognize my last name (Patton is sort of famous in US second world war circles… at least I get asked at the border a lot if I’m related to the general), yet Binal’s software knew almost all the Harry Potter references and a plethora of other ones.  It showed me the disparity between programs and that, as in most things, you need to research on which software to use when implementing it in a setting like a classroom where Pop references would definitely benefit the students. 

Finally, Binal states, “While oral stories may be wonderfully immersive in their right, without the written word they may not (will not) live forever.”  Though technically true, there is another option: recording.  Technology has made the idea of recording oral traditions and languages such an attainable goal now as each handheld phone can record on the spot.  We need to start a library of oral stories just we have for written ones, so that they can be part of future generations’ historical knowledge. 

Binal’s Voice-To-Text Assignment 

My Voice-To-Text Assignment 

Upon listening to Adriana’s speculative narratives on AI I was struck by how similar they were to a similar assignment I worked on in another course.  We had designed a wearable device linked to VR goggles that could aid students in both their education and in monitoring their mental and physical health.  I do not see this technology being too far off and was so excited to see that Adriana was on the same wavelength.  In my own speculative narrative, I looked at an actual AI robot (for lack of a better word) that was able to provide assistance, albeit in a kind of pandemic-riddled Blade Runnerish future.    

I found Adriana’s second narrative, Edison learning curriculum planner, particularly interesting.  We know that we need to put students’ educations firmly into their hands for them to be an active participant and not just a disinterested observer.  The idea of allowing the student the opportunity to schedule their day not only around their classes, but around their social interactions with peers would allow schools to be more than just a building where students got to learn, but a place where they facilitate their own learning hand in hand with the educators and peers surrounding them.   

The one drawback I see in this technology advancement is cost.  In reality, these AI planners would be quite expensive and would further the digital divide between the “have” and “have nots”.  The pandemic has really opened my eyes to this disparity as I oversaw chromebook distribution for our district last Spring.  Our district loaned out over nine hundred chromebooks to students who did not have access to a computer at home.  As we move forward with such beneficial technology, we need to be cognizant that it needs to be in the hands of all and not just some. 

Adriana’s Speculative Narratives Assignment 

My Speculative Narratives Assignment 

“Emojis are pictograms and seem to transform the movie plot into visual poetry. While the original media was a form of visual representation, the expressed ideas were not intended to be reduced to poetry. Not relying on syllables, I attempted to reduce the plot to the simplest set of icons and while working out the structure nearly created a haiku (too many parts and images).” Ben Z. 

The idea Ben brought up of visual poetry in his Task 6: A 90s emoji story intrigued me.  When I went to describe my plot, I tried my hardest to break it down into the absolute most essential pieces that needed to be said and then “translate” them into emojis; we didn’t seem that far off.  But the poetry aspect… it reminded me of a game I had purchased recently (COVID times = a multitude of family board games in the Patton household) called “Poetry for Neanderthals”.  The premise is that you must get your partner to guess a word or phrase by describing it using only one syllable words; reduce your hints to their simplest forms.  I believe that this is what emojis seem to do in text conversation at present; they take complex ideas and emotions and reduce and represent them with simple visual representations.  Now, I’m not saying that they do this one hundred percent successfully, or that they will become a fluid next language for future generations, but, like the one syllable words in the game, they tend to get their point across a majority of the time.   And sometimes what they are saying can be seen as a basic visual poetry. 

I also agree with Ben’s statement, “Emoji-mediated language use for this context seems less concise to me than the written or spoken word.”  Face to face conversations and descriptive written texts are still superior methods of communicating which allow subtle grammatical and emotional “footprints” to be interpreted by the reader/listener.  But, as times change and we have less and less “face-time” with individuals and more and more communication through quick text blasts, I see emojis not becoming a language unto themselves, but rather a more symbiotic partner in our communications.  I think we already see this transformation happening with the advent of a GIFs option on most keyboards as well as emojis.  The application of visual representations to augment thoughts, emotions, and ideas is something I believe will only flourish as we forward with technology. 

By the way, Happy Gilmore is an awesome movie! 

Ben’s Task 6 Assignment 

My Task 6 Assignment 

The first time I read Peter’s posting for The Golden Record Curation assignment my immediate response was “cop out!” (sorry Peter).  “I realized that no choice would be a bad choice.  So the choice I made was to not choose.”  By randomly choosing songs Peter just flew in the face of my entire posting; music elicits an emotional response with people and we can harness that and curate pieces together carefully and thus, at the end, have a new exciting, emotionally charged piece of work for others to enjoy: the mixtape.  I laboured over my list for quite some time, brought my family in to listen, bored friends at work by asking them if they thought that the songs transitioned easily into each other, and Peter randomly chose ten numbers and BAM! Done. 

“It seems like bots are making lots of decisions for us these days.  So I decided to be a  bot of a kind.”  

With these two sentences Peter completely changed my outlook.  Bots (or algorithms) do make a lot of decisions about what we see and consume at present.  As Dr. Cathy O’Neil said in her article How can we stop algorithms telling lies?: 

   “…the underlying functionality (of an algorithm) is… : collect historical data about  people, profiling their behaviour online, location, or answers to questionnaires, and use  that massive dataset  to predict their future purchases, voting behaviour, or work  ethic.” O’Neil, C. (2017, July 16) 

Peter had done nothing but exactly what my Spotify account does after I have finished listening to an album or playlist; look at my historical listening pattern and randomly suggest music that could be deemed similar and likable by me.  He had twenty-seven quality pieces to start with and deduced that by using that historical information he would be able to achieve a solid list of songs for the assignment through a random selection process.   And he was right; he likes his generated list (and I did too, grudgingly).  I believe Peter has given a great example of just how powerful these bots and algorithms are at predicting outcomes by using historical data.  We will have to wait and see if individuals will use these tools for the benefit of society or to its detriment. 

Peter’s Golden Record Assignment 

My Golden Record Assignment 

References 

O’Neil, C. (2017, July 16). How can we stop algorithms telling lies? The Observer. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/16/how-can-we-stop-algorithms-telling-lies