Category Archives: Linking Assignment

Link #6 – James Martin

Linking to James Martin’s Task #7: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540jamesmartin/2021/10/24/task-7-mode-bending/

When I came across James Martin’s mode-bending task, I was blown away. What a creative, interactive way to present the information from the bag task! Jame emojified each of the items from his bag and added two types of audio: a voice sharing the name of the item, as well as sounds effects that are made by the items. James went above and beyond with this task. The audio provided snap shots of his day through the use of the items. The items even had different sound effects depending on how the item was used at different times of the day. Because he displayed the emojified items on a grid with times of day at the top, the user was able to get a glimpse into a day in his life, as well as when/what the items were used for. The user was able to interact with the objects in any order and make meaning from the images and sounds. 

James was able to convey so much meaning without any text, and the audio added more detail than I thought it could. I feel like I learned a lot about both his public and private life through this presentation and I had fun “reading” the text he created. I, on the other hand, chose a completely different way of completing this task. I changed the semiotic mode and created a spoken word poem. While I had a primarily audio component, my audio was based on a text script. This was very different from James’ audio which was based on sounds. Both of our mode-bending tasks, however, allowed the user to experience audio in different ways and created meaning that was an extended, deeper conversation with the user compared to the original task.

Link #5 – Maurice Broschart

Linking to Maurice Broschart’s Task #5: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540texttech/task-five/

Maurice created a Twine about the first day of school. I enjoyed working my way through the Twine and deciding which path I was going to take. I appreciated all the different options and how he was able to have different text pop up within the task. The images and pop-ups added to the experience as a viewer/reader and allowed some elements of the storyline stand out and have more emphasis than others. In reading his reflection, I right away connected to many of his thoughts. I connected Twine to the “choose your own adventure books” and I also teach using hyperlinks. While I don’t use Canvas as a platform in my teaching, I do use Google Classroom and in a fairly similar way. I also use the Google Apps for Education and link items into documents, allowing students to access audio, visual, text, websites etc. all from a common document. This makes it easy to guide a student through different learning opportunities and provide different resources for learning that cater to different learning styles. In the creation of the Twine, Maurice resorted to pen and paper to map out his storyboard. I tried to do this step digitally in the Twine program, but found that I often had to click back and open previous boxes as I wasn’t sure what the last prompt was. It would definitely be helpful if you could see a little preview of the story boards as you plan instead of just the title each storyboard. Maurice and I both used YouTube clips to support our Twine learning. It is interesting how times have changed where we get our information from. In the past, books or encyclopedias were often used as a source of knowledge when someone was unsure of something. Now, those who have the advantage of computers and smartphones, can google or YouTube almost anything and learn the process. Both Maurice and I learned from someone who had posted their tutorials to YouTube, and this process of learning online through videos is becoming more and more the norm. 

Maurice’s blog space is set up so the user can navigate their way through the tasks by using the links at the top of the blog. The user is able to leave a comment after each post, so they are able to interact with the blog if they want to. While the blog space itself is very plain, with a white background and standard blank font, there are some images in some of the posts themselves. Once I navigated to Maurice’s website, I had a hard time knowing who the blog space belonged to and had to go back to the class page and work my way back to the blog in order to know who the author was. Perhaps it was a conscious choice to hide his identity, or perhaps an oversight in the creation of the blog itself.

Link #4 – Chris Howey 

Linking to Chris Howey’s Task #6: https://blogs.ubc.ca/chowey/2021/10/13/an-emoji-story/

Chris and I approached this task quite similarly. We both included the TV emoji before our title to suggest that our emoji story was a TV show as opposed to a movie or book. We also both used emojis to represent ideas and whole words instead of syllables. We started the task, however, in an opposite way. Chris chose to start with the title and move his way through the plot. He also ended his line with periods, indicating that the “sentence” or that particular line of emojis represented a particular idea and the next line would be a new idea. I found it easier to start with the plot and then go back to the title after. I also never even considered the possibility of using punctuation to indicate the end of an idea as one would use in writing. 

Chris reflected on the limitations of using emojis, such as with the color of the flowers or the positions of the hands. He also reflected on the idea that context matters and that a shared understanding or pre-context between the “readers” is important. I reflected similarly, but went beyond the color of the emojis and the context to include the culture that is “reading” the emojis. I know that certain images can mean different things in different cultures and considered what an emoji may represent to someone else. I also reflected on the limitations occurred in regards to the people emojis. The people emojis were limited in terms of age, skin color, hair color/style etc. Because of the limitations I experienced, I re-looked at Chris’ emoji story and it made me wonder if the emojis that he chose were actually representative of the characters from his chosen show. I know he would have liked different hand positions and different colors on the flowers, but would other emojis have helped him to provide more detail or a more accurate representation of the plot? Or are there a range of interpretations by the “reader” regardless how representative the emoji are?

Chris has set up his blog to be very user friendly. There are menus down the side of the screen, allowing viewers to easily navigate to posts and recent comments. The large, clear image of his emoji story caught my attention right away and because of the size and clarity, I was able to see the details in the emojis. I did find the grey colored text a little harder to read than the usual black text, but that could just be my eyes! 

Link #3 – Karen Wang 

Linking to Karen Wang’s Task #4: https://karenw0801.wixsite.com/mysite/post/task-4-manual-scripts-and-potato-printing

Karen and I took completely different approaches to task #4. While Karen chose to complete the potato printing task, I chose to complete the manual scripts task. I really enjoyed reading about Karen’s experiences with the potato printing. I followed along as she discussed the failed attempts she made, and I considered whether I would have done the same. In many cases, I feel I would have gone through the same challenges with the process and could relate to how Karen was feeling. I was impressed with how Karen found solutions to her problems and overcame the challenges, attempting the task over again each time. While there were challenges with both of the tasks, there were also some key differences in our experiences. Karen discusses choosing a different font to make her task easier. When manually writing, however, the font can’t change. What can change is the tool used to write – whether that be a pencil, pen, mechanical pencil, flair pen etc. The font in Karen’s task created the tool that was then used to write, so in this way her choice of font was similar to my choice of tool. Another difference in our tasks was the manual labour involved. In Karen’s task, the manual labour was very front-loaded. She had to create the potato “tool” and once it was completed, she could then create multiple prints with the tool. With my manual script, the labour was less, however it was constant. I had to continue using the tool the entire time, resulting in a sore hand. If Karen used the potato print over and over to create multiple representations, then she too may have a sore hand from the repetitive nature of the printing, similar to the manual script.

Karen chose her platform to be a WIX site. When a user arrives at the WIX site, there is a preview of each post that includes an image and a brief intro to the post. This allows the user to navigate to the post they would like to by scrolling through the previews. If the user wants to be directed to a specific post, however, the menu is no helpful for the user. The menu at the top of the site has three options: Blog, About and Top 10. The “About” and “Top 10” menu lead the user to a standard template with no information. There is also a menu on the blog page, which allows the user to choose between “All Posts” and “Education.” The “Education” menu is also a standard template, and “All Posts” leads to the main blog. The down side of all the post being together is that the posts are from courses other than this course and could be hard to navigate as more and more posts are added to the stream. Overall, however, the site colors are beautiful. I was drawn to the site as soon as I clicked on the link to her site with the soothing, Ombre colors. I also really appreciated that there were many visuals of the process of her task present throughout her post, allowing me to see and read her process.

Link #2 – Stephanie Carr 

Linking to Stephanie Carr’s Task #3: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540scarr/2021/09/26/task-3-voice-to-text/

I really enjoyed reading Stephanie’s voice-to-text story as I could really connect with many parts of it. I have been to some of the places she mentioned and could relate to what she was describing. I was also in Osoyoos at the time of the fire this summer. Unlike Stephanie who had to be evacuated from her resort, I was on the other side of town and was luckily able to stay! While reading her story, I found that I often had to stop and go back a few words when I noticed that the idea had changed. This was because the entire story was written without punctuation. Stephanie discussed how she talked naturally when telling her story, without saying any of the punctuation. This was because she wanted her story to seem natural and as though she was chatting with a friend. This was a very different experience than I had. I chose to say the punctuation when using voice-to-text because I had used the program in the past and knew that you had to say it. I am an English teacher and it makes me crazy when students write really, really long sentences, so I guess that impacted my decision to add punctuation as I spoke. I did reflect after, however, in that my speaking was very unnatural, which was the opposite of Stephanie’s experience. Another difference between our experiences was the program that was used for the task. Stephanie used office dictation in Microsoft Word. I, on the other hand, used voice-to-text in Google Docs. Both programs are similar except that Microsoft Word saves the files to a hard drive while Google Docs saves the files to an online drive that is accessible from any device with internet access. Lastly, Stephanie and I both took a different approach when discussing oral language versus written language. Stephanie discussed how oral language was more casual, as compared to written language being more formal with consideration taken for spelling, structure and grammar. I completely agree with Stephanie’s thoughts, but when in my post, my train of thought and reflection focused more on storytelling and how an oral story versus a written story is passed on. 

For her blog, Stephanie and I both used a UBC Weblog. The template that we used for our blogs, however, is very different. Stephanie’s blog is very modern looking, as compared to my traditional looking template. I really like the colors of Stephanie’s blog as they are very calming and compliment each other well. My blog is a white background with an image at the top. There is not a lot of color, other than in the header image. While there were no images on the voice-to-text task page, Stephanie does have images on other pages that coincide with the theme of the post. In terms of user accessibility, Stephanie’s blog doesn’t have a menu enabling the user to choose which post they would like to go to. The user does have the ability to click on the recent post links, but once a post is no longer a recent one, the user would have to scroll through everything in order to find the information they were looking for. Both of our blogs allow the user to leave a comment on each post. Stephanie’s template also allows for a recent comment list with links so the user can see what others have said, which I thought was a great addition to her blog.

Linking to Richard Wong’s Task #1: https://blogs.ubc.ca/richard540/2021/09/19/task-1-whats-in-my-bag/

Richard chose to share his reflection of the “What’s in Your Bag?” assignment through a video. This was very different to my presentation style of a photo with written text. I had not really considered doing a video for this task, so it intrigued me to see how Richard approached this task. Through the video, Richard was able to speak in depth about various items in his bag and what these items might tell the reader about him. Richard was able to relate most items to text technologies and he made connections that I had not thought of. Richard’s car keys, for example, were related to transportation, which Richard then linked into text on the in-car console. I really enjoyed that Richard ended his video with a question: “Will paper ever go completely out of style?” This question really allows the reader/user to interact and share their opinion. A great advantage of the video presentation style is that it allowed me hear tone and inflection in Richard’s voice, to see and hear the humour, and to see Richard’s facial expressions. Being able to see and hear Richard changed the experience of just reading about his bag. I felt like I got to know Richard more than I would have if I just read a written reflection of his bag. The video also removed any misinterpretations that may have existed if I had just read a written reflection.

 Richard used UBC Weblog for his blog, which is the same platform I chose to use. The visual appearance and the ease of use, however, are very different from my blog. Richard’s blog is very simple, with no images. While I had found his “What’s in Your Bag?” video warm and friendly, his blog space has a very different feel. The blog simply states his name and the course at the top and then then has a homepage that scrolls through all of his posts in the order that they were posted, with the newest post being first. In order to access a particular post, the user must scroll down to find the post, or click on the recent posts that are listed on the side. There is no menu that allows the user to go directly to the tasks. There is a menu bar title ‘sample,’ but it is from the original template and is linked to just a template page. There is no personalization on the blog. On the other hand, I tried to design my blog with a high ease-of-use for the user. I have menus that allow the user to navigate to a specific task, as well as the recent post links that are available to use. While the design of my blog isn’t as appealing as I would like it to be, I worked within the template constraints and did add a picture I took on a local hike to give the user a glimpse into my world, as well as add some color and visual appeal. Both of us did choose a template that allows the user to leave comments on the blog posts.