Category Archives: Tasks

My first speculative narrative was created using Pixton. It looks at education and the ability for it to be personalized for every student. As Dunne and Raby (2013) suggest, future predictions “usually take the form of scenarios, often starting with a what-if question” (p. 3). I began by thinking of what-if scenarios based on my class at school. I have a very diverse class this year, with a wide range of learning needs. I wondered what-if each student had their own teacher who could scaffold the learning and customize the experience for each student. This is where I can up with the idea of each student having their own holographic teacher, with school happening on the student’s schedule and at any location. Education would become personalized and each learner would learn at their own rate, in the environment that was best for them. 

My second speculative narrative was created using Animaker. It looks at the use of technology in a student’s day to day life, but aims to show the negative social implications the technology could pose. While future technological advancements could support day-to-day life and make things easier and more personalized for man-kind, there could also be negative impacts of the technological advancements, such as a lack of social connections. I created this narrative  “to draw attention to a scary possibility in the form of a cautionary tale” (Dunne and Raby, 2013, p. 28). The narrative is a something I speculate could happen and want to forewarn others about the possible implications. 

(Click HERE if the video doesn’t load:

References

 Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT press.

The  online game User Inyerface was an interesting experience. It reminded me of an escape room in which you never know if what you are choosing will help or hinder your progress. I played the User Inyerface game two times. The first time I clicked on the terms and conditions. The scroll bar to get through all the terms and conditions moves at a snail pace and there are so many pages to get through, so I quit and restarted the game. I knew I had made a key mistake! On my second try, I spent more time looking and reading things before clicking. There were so many ways in which the GUI is designed to manipulate attention and responses. For example, the game was timed. I am a competitive person so this created a sense of urgency. I wanted to go quickly, but after what happened my first try, I also wanted to read over what I was doing. This lead me to scan the pages, allowing deception by the game as key information was buried in text and was easily overlooked when scanning the page (Brignull, 2011). From being constantly reminded of the time, the use of colors opposite than one would think (ex. green for No, as opposed to red), and clicking on a word instead of what appeared to be a link, to the order of the text boxes that had to be manually deleted, and the ‘I am not a robot’ pages that were open to interpretation, the game was a struggle. Things that I had become familiar with from time spent online, were not the correct choices. The game purposely manipulated me into clicking on specific things.

Tristen Harris (2017) spoke of how the internet is not evolving at random and there is a hidden goal of gaining our attention. This can be accomplished in various ways, but “auto play” was one example that Tristan Harris (2017) used in his Ted talk.  Zeynep Tufekci (2017) spoke of persuasion architecture and how both the physical and online world can be designed to persuade us. As I listened to their TED talks, I was reminded of some of my undergrad courses in human geography. The auto play example in the online world that Harris (2017) discussed can be related to the hallways and aisles in malls and casinos. Malls and casinos are designed to appear never-ending. When one hallway or aisle ends, the next begins. Malls and casinos have a hidden goal of gaining time from the customers because the more time that is spent in the facilities generally means more money being spent. There are also other architectural features that are designed to help accomplish this goal. The exits are not easily visible or they are at the end of long hallways. There are no windows so the customers are removed from the outside world and don’t know if it is getting dark outside, snowing etc. And lastly, there are no clocks so the customers have no idea how much time has gone by while inside the mall or casino. This persuasion architecture has been a part of our physical world for many years and it is no wonder that it has expanded to the online world which now makes up a big part of our daily lives. It is scary to think of how much we are persuaded in both the physical and online world, and even scarier to think of how often we are completely oblivious to it!

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. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention?language=en

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

When I first opened the Palladio program, the music choice data from task #8 was displayed for the entire class. The curators were all represented as light grey dots on the graph and each of those dots was the same size as one curator was not any more important than the other. These dots are all vertices or nodes. The music tracks were represented by dark grey dots, or nodes. The lines connecting the curator nodes and the music track nodes are referred to as edges. The dark grey music track nodes were different sizes, proportional to the number of edges each song had, or the number of connections between the particular music track and curators. The more edges/connections, the bigger the node was represented on the graph. 

I moved the nodes around as I found it overwhelming to view the graph with all the nodes rather randomly placed on the graph. I moved all the curators to the outside of the graph, leaving the music track nodes in the centre. This allowed me to more clearly see which nodes for the music tracks had more edges. Both the size of the node and the number of edges or lines leaving the node allowed me to see this. 

Next I focused on the community I was put into. Community 1 consisted of myself and 4 other classmates. Focusing in on just one community was easier than viewing the graph of the entire class as a whole because it narrowed down the number of nodes and edges. This makes it easier to view all the connections. 

I again re-arranged the nodes in order to see the connections and edges more clearly, as well as to see the size of the music track nodes easier. The bigger music track nodes indicated that more of us from the community had selected that particular music track. 

There were two particular tracks that all 5 of had chosen. In our community, these two tracks have 5 edges. I was curious as to why we all chose these songs. What was it about them? Flowing Streams is a song from China with sounds from a guqin, a seven-string instrument. The other is a percussion piece from Senegal. I chose these songs because I was trying to showcase a variety of instrument sounds. Did the other community members have the same criteria? 

When I looked specifically at the songs that 3, 4 or 5 of the curators in community 1 had in common, the songs were all from different areas of the world, and all featured different instruments. There was also a range of  sounds. It appears as though diversity was a common criteria between the community members. Diversity, however, is quite broad. The criteria could have been geographical diversity, instrumental diversity, or sound diversity. Not being able to confirm the criteria made me wonder if there was ever really a way to know what criteria allowed these 5 curators to have commonality, or if it was always an educated guess.

“The community structure of a network can also be a powerful visual representation of the system: instead of visualizing all the vertices and edges of the network (which is impossible on large systems), one could display its communities and their mutual connections, obtaining a far more compact and understandable description of the graph as a whole” (Lancichinetti et al., 2011, p.1). The data for this task was much easier to view and interpret when just one community was displayed as opposed to the date for the entire class. While the nodes and edges of the 5 curators and song tracks were more apparent and much easier to view, the data did not indicate why these curators were grouped together. I can find commonality between the curators song choices and make assumptions about the criteria that was used, but the data can never tell me the exact criteria or thought process of the curators. The data also doesn’t make it clear as to why the curators didn’t chose specific songs. The nodes are smaller for songs that were not chosen as frequently, however if a song was not chosen at all, it doesn’t appear on the graph. This makes it hard to speculate as to why a song was not chosen, in this case, as it would not even be reflected on the graph.

My interpretations of the data presented could be vastly different than someone else’s. Just as there was cultural and personal bias when choosing our songs, there is also bias the interpretation of the data. I think diversity was the criteria that was used by the curators in community 1, but perhaps there are other criteria that I did not consider. The algorithm put the 5 of us together and while I can speculate why, I don’t know that we can ever really know for sure by just looking at the graph. 

References

Lancichinetti, A., Radicchi, F., Ramasco, J. J., & Fortunato, S. (2011). Finding statistically significant communities in networks. PloS one, 6(4), e18961.

To redesign task #1, I chose to create a spoken word poem. I have had colleagues do spoken word poems with their students, but it is something I have never tried myself or with my own students. I decided I would give it a try and go through the experience as a student would. 

Click HERE to listen to the spoken word poem and see the bag images. 

Click HERE to read the poem lyrics.

Task #1 was about introducing ourselves to the class through our bag and what the items from the bag told others about ourselves. To redesign the task, I started by brainstorming all the roles, traits and experiences that help to define who I am, and then compared them to the items that were in my bag from the first task. Many of the items from my bag were in some way represented by my brainstorming, but many other parts of what defines me was not included in my bag at all. I struggled at first with what to do to redesign this task. My go to response was a video, but I wanted to really focus on the audio component of this task. I decided to take my brainstorming about myself and wrote a poem about who I am. I then recorded the poem in the form of spoken word poetry. I was going to only submit the audio poem, but then decided to include images of the parts of the bag that I felt were represented by the parts of the poem. By creating the poem, it allows the listener to learn much more about me and who I am. The poem allowed me to extend the conversation and go much deeper about who I am as compared to task 1 when I only spoke of the physical items in my bag. The poem has allowed for a narrative that goes with the items and tells others about who I am beyond what they can see.

As the New London Group (1996) suggests, redesigning is “neither a simple reproduction… nor is it simply creative” (p. 76). Redesigning changes the task and the result is something new. The redesigned “is the unique product of human agency: a transformed meaning” (New London Group, 1996, p. 76). The poem in this task is completely transformed from the bag assignment in task #1. While some of the items from my bag in the original task loosely link to part of my poem, the poem is a completely new entity. Writing the poem allowed me to introduce myself in a different way. I was able to rely less on physical, public side of me and share more of my private life and thoughts. By redesigning the task and changing the semiotic mode, the meaning has changed. 

I have been brought up in a culture in which reading and writing are generally thought of as literacy. There are cultures, however, where that is not the case. The idea of multiliteracies “focuses on modes of presentation much broader than language alone” (New London Group, 1996, p. 64). I found it fascinating that the New London Group (1996) spoke of “sci-fi visions of information highways and impending future where we are all virtual shoppers” and that “new communications media are reshaping the way we use language” (p. 64). While information highways and virtual shopping have become the norm, so much can still be said about new communications media reshaping the way we use language. With emojis, tweet, posts, tik tok videos, snaps etc., our language and literacy is being redesigned and multiliteracies are becoming the norm.

References

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

Can you guess my emoji story?

This task was a lot of fun, although also frustrating at times! I narrowed down my choices between a few different tv shows I had watched, thinking about the emojis that came to mind for each show, and then finally settled in on one show. I chose to use the online emoji keyboard and started by going through the different categories and choosing all the ones I thought might be needed to explain the show I had chosen. I then used those emojis to start to lay out the plot. Sometimes I had to go back and find an emoji that I was missing, or to see if there was something I could use to represent part of the plot. I tried to start with the title, but then switched to the plot as the title was three words that are all not explicitly represented by a particular emoji and I needed to think more about them. As I worked through the plot, I relied completely on words or ideas. I didn’t use syllables, but I am not exactly sure why. My guess is that certain words are easier to split into syllables and I didn’t run into those words, and/or I tried to sum up a few hours of tv into the plot and didn’t get into nitty, gritty details. I focused more on the main ideas and events of the plot. Overall, I am satisfied with my end result. 

The emoji story is an example of “reverse ekphrasis in which images are given the task of explaining words” (Bolter, 2001, p. 56) and this presents some challenges. An arrow pointing down, for example, doesn’t have one specific word associated with it. The arrow pointing down can represent down, in, under, below, south, etc., resulting in different interpretations and taking on different meanings. Each emoji in my story had more power than I realized. I thought putting together the emojis to explain the plot wouldn’t be too hard. The range of interpretations, however, made this task difficult. “By the standard of phonetic writing, however, picture writing lacks nar­rative power. The picture elements extend over a broad range of verbal meanings: each element means too much rather than too little” (Bolter, 2001, p. 59). Each emoji I added to my story was much more than adding just a word. Each emoji I added brought different meanings and interpretations. Another challenge was the cultural interpretation. I created my emoji story using the emojis that I felt best represented the ideas from the show’s plot, but realized that someone else may interpret the story different based on their background. For example, some cultures interpret a thumbs up as a positive gesture, while other cultures consider it rude. This was a hard obstacle that I could not really overcome due to my lack of knowledge of other cultures interpretations of specific symbols. Lastly, the limited number or emojis presented a challenge for me at times. The characters on the show I used could only be represented by the emojis that were in the online keyboard. Age, skin color, hair color/style etc. were very limited and I just had to make the best choices I could given the limited option. In the title, I really struggled to find an emoji to represent the first word. There were emojis that I thought might be better, but those emojis had specific age, skin color, hair color/style characteristics, so I settled for what I felt was a grayed in, neutral-looking emoji. I didn’t want to impose age, race etc. into the title. I didn’t want my interpretations to impact the reader. The challenges that this task presented really allowed me to see the meaning behind the expression ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’

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

Normally when I need to write something, I chose to type it out on a computer. This wasn’t always the case. In my university days, notes and such were always taken by hand. I would write page after page and not think anything of it. When I wrote this task manually, it was different than in the past. My hand was sore and was no longer trained to write for so long. This made the task somewhat difficult. It was also difficult in that I couldn’t edit my thoughts as easy as I am used to when typing on a computer. In some ways, however, this task was easy. I found the ability to sit on a couch with a notebook and pen relaxing, and because editing is not easy on paper, I found I just let my ideas flow and didn’t think about editing or changing things as I went. 

When I made a mistake, or wanted to change something, I tried to correct it as neatly as I could, or I changed my thoughts and ideas to work with what I had written. I don’t like a messy page, so I left things that I would have changed had I been typing on a computer. I chose to write in a purple Flair pen on lined paper, so my choice of media definitely played a part in my lack of editing. While colored Flair pens are smooth to write with and the colors make me happy, they don’t erase. Because I didn’t have white-out, and I don’t like messy pages, my mistakes were left as they are. I also have big, bubbly printing and use up the whole line, so there is very little room to correct anything on the page.

I think the most significant difference between writing by hand and using mechanized forms of writing is the labour involved and the limitations. Writing by hand involves more manual labour. Writing and typing both involve labour, but the editing with mechanized forms of writing is done easily, while editing when writing by hand isn’t as easy as just pushing a backspace key. It involves using a eraser, using whiteout, starting over, or crossing things out and messing up the aesthetics of the page. This is similar to the laborious process the Egyptian scribes experienced when they had to wait for the ink to dry and had no easy way to edit anything (Lamb & McCormick, 2020). Limitations are another significant difference between writing by hand and using mechanized forms of writing. I already spoke to the limitations in terms of editing, but there are also limitations in terms of the spread of information. Writing by hand affects the information and what information can easily be spread (Lamb & McCormick, 2020). Mechanized forms of writing allow ideas to be copies faster, and with the internet, be spread in an instant. I prefer mechanized forms of writing, and specifically typing on a computer. Technology has really impacted writing as things can be edited and changed in an instant and there is no need to plan ahead or start over (Cooke, 2012). Being able to change and edit as I work is such an advantage and makes writing easy and efficient.

References

Cooke, D. [Danny Cooke Freelance Filmmaker]. (2012, January 26). Upside down, left to right: a letterpress film [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6RqWe1bFpM&t=347s

Lamb, R. and McCormick, J. (Executive Producers). (2020, May 6). From the vault: invention of the book part 1 and 2 [Audio podcast]. iheartradio.com. 

For this task, I used the voice-typing feature in Google docs. I turned the microphone on and then put my screen at 45 degrees so I could not see the typing while I was talking. Here is what was transcribed:

Hi everyone! I am going to tell you a little bit about my family. We are a very busy family of four people. There is my husband myself my daughter and my son. My daughter is almost 12 years old and this is her first year of middle school. She is attending the middle school that I work at so it is an interesting Dynamic this year having her at my work. My daughter is a soccer player and plays soccer twice a week. On Tuesdays when she is not at soccer, she goes to dance class and takes a hip hop dance class. My son is 10 years old and in grade five. This is the first year of elementary school that he does not have his sister with him and he is very happy to be on his own and more independent. My son is obsessed with hockey. He has been obsessed with hockey since he could walk. He is always practicing his hockey working out or going to hockey practices and games. When he has some down time he can be found biking playing in the neighbourhood or playing spike ball in the backyard. My husband is someone who really enjoys working out. Many days throughout the week he can be found working out in our garage or Fitness room. When he has extra time he is putzing in the yard and doing things around the house. My husband also coaches hockey. In the past he has coached older kids but this year he will be coaching our son for the first time. They are both really looking forward to being out on the ice and enjoying hockey which is a passion for both of them. I spend a lot of time doing school and Masters. I work in a middle school that is great 729 and teach a variety of grades and subjects. This year I have mostly grade sevens and teach English 7 social studies 7 pe7 careers 7 + yearbook 9. This is the first year that my children both walk to and from school and so I have the ability to go to work and leave when I would like. This is very different for me when I am done work you can usually find me as a taxi driving my children to all their activities. Pre covid I used to attend boot camp many mornings unfortunately I have gotten out of that routine now and I’m not working out in the mornings. It is something that I would like to start doing again this year. My parents live in town and we see them often. They often help out and we visit them or they come and hang out with the kids when they can. During the school year we are very busy between activities and sports we are always on the go try to fit everything in. During the summer we have some more down time and we spend lots of time going camping. We enjoy camping all over the Okanagan and the kids love to bring their bikes and kayaks when we go. That’s a little bit about me and my family! 

When I finished and read over the text, I noticed that my text was missing some of the conventions of written English, such as commas. I knew that I needed to “say” the end punctuation when I was using voice-typing, but I had not considered commas. As a result, many of my sentences are long and lack the breaks that a comma provides the reader. When speaking, I paused in many spots, but the voice-typing program did not interpret that as a pause because I didn’t specifically say “comma.” Another thing I noticed was that there were also other instances where the meaning of the text differed from the intended meaning. For example, I had said that I work in a middle school that is grades 7 to 9. The voice-typing wrote that “I work in a middle school that is great 729 and teach a variety of grades and subjects.” This slight deviation changed the intended meaning. It doesn’t tell the reader the grades that are in the school and it instead tells the reader that the middle school I work at is great. While that is true, it may not have been the case. This slight deviation from the intended meaning demonstrates the power our words have and how a minor change can result in a completely different meaning. The majority of the text, on the other hand, was transcribed fairly accurately. I was impressed at how few mistakes there were! The mistakes that stood out to me the most were the lack of commas and the text that was written differently than intended. I consider these mistakes because they both change the text from the original form. The lack of commas change the fluency and flow of the text, and at times, could also change the meaning. I would consider the text that was written differently a mistake because it was not what I had intended for it to say. Both of these mistakes resulted in a different interpretation of the text than were originally spoken and intended.

If I had scripted the story, I think it would have made a big difference. My text jumps around from one idea to the next and the language used is very basic. A scripted story would have allowed the ideas in the text to go deeper and be described in more detail. I found that when I was speaking and ended each sentence by saying the end punctuation, it threw off my train of thought. It made my speech choppy and I had a hard time developing my ideas because I was also focusing on the end punctuation and making sure I didn’t miss saying it. If the text had been scripted, however, the ideas would have been developed and it would have allowed me to organize my train of thought easier.

I think oral storytelling and written storytelling differ in the way they are passed on, as well as in the structure of the stories themselves. With oral storytelling, the story lives in people’s minds and is past on to future generations from person to person. Should the story not be passed on to the next generation, the story would disappear and be lost forever. In more recent years, technology has allowed for oral stories to be recorded and has allowed oral stories to be shared further away and for longer periods of time. Written storytelling, on the other hand, is passed on through the medium in which it was written. It can bypass a generation or more, and yet still survive. A clay tablet, for example, can be buried for years and still share its stories years later once uncovered. In our digital world, a written text online will live forever in cyberworld and will never disappear. This is also demonstrated by the fact that “until the development of modern recording and broadcasting techniques, writing could reach a larger audience than the spoken word, and continue to communicate to people over a long period of time” (Gnanadesikan, 2011, pg. 5). Oral storytelling and written storytelling also differ in the structure of the stories. Oral storytelling has a free-flowing structure. The story has the same meaning and same general structure, but the storyteller makes it there own through the vocabulary chosen, where the pauses are, and the voice(s) that are used in telling the story. Written storytelling, on the other hand, “is generally done more deliberately than speaking, so finished written pieces are much more carefully crafted than a typical spoken sentence. Written texts can thus convey their message more precisely” (Gnanadesikan, 2011, pg. 5). A last point to ponder is the difference that occurs when a story is transcribed from an oral story into a written story. While the written text may be the same as the spoken text, the story can be different. Anthropological linguists “theorized how transcribing spoken utterances, conversations, and oral performances altered the interpretations of spoken discourse” (Schmandt-Besserat, 2009, pg. 2). This is because “although writing represents information about how words are pronounced, it does not record the identifying details of any individual utterance of those words. It records language but not actual speech… much information about the actual speech is lost, such as intonation and emotional content” (Gnanadesikan, 2011, pg. 9). Oral storytelling and written storytelling both have their advantages and are both a powerful tool for sharing a message, but they are also very different from one another.

References

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011). “The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons. (pp. 1-10).

Schmandt-Besserat, D. (2009). “Origins and Forms of Writing.” In Bazerman, C. (Ed.). Handbook of research on writing: History, society, school, individual, text. New York, NY: Routledge.

Task #1 – What’s in Your Bag?

The bag I have chosen for this assignment is my purse. The items currently in my purse include:

1. 1. 1. A mask 
      2. Hand sanitizer 
      3. Lip Products 
      4. Nail File 
      5. Gum and Mints
      6. Wet Napkins 
      7. Power Bank Portable Charger 
      8. Highlighters and Pens
      9. Mini Post-it Note Pad 
      10. Pill Container
      11. Hair Ties
      12. Tums 
      13. Receipts – Costco, Save-On, Staples. 
      14. Nutrigrain Bar 
      15. Car Key
      16. IPhone 11 (Missing from picture as I used it to take the picture!)

After emptying my bag and reflecting on the daily need for these items, I realize that most items are not ones I use on a daily basis. In fact the only item that is used on a daily basis is my phone (not pictured). My car key and wallet are always with me, regardless if I am using this bag or not, but they are not always “used.” My car has a push button start and easy door unlock,  so I never actually use the key for anything. The key simply has to be in my bag or with me. My wallet is also always with me because it contains my drivers license, but my wallet isn’t always used on a daily basis. I mean I do often use my wallet to pay for things, but not on a daily basis. The rest of the items in my bag are “just in case” items as I like to be prepared. 

If someone was to read the “texts” in my bag, the “texts” might tell them a few things about me:

• The chapsticks and lip gloss could indicate that I am low-key when it comes to my appearance. The chapsticks are both clear and the lip gloss only has a hint of color. There is no other makeup in the bag. The low-key appearance may also be implied with the plain black purse, wallet and mask.
• The pens, highlighters and Post-it note pad could indicate that I am a teacher or that I work in an office. 
• The hair ties could imply that I have long hair. They may also suggest that I am an active person and have hair ties with me to put my hair up at anytime.
• The wet wipes from the Canadian Brewpub suggest that I go to casual dining establishments and perhaps enjoy finger foods. They could also hint at the fact that I am a mother and wet wipes are always handy to have!
• The mask and sanitizer could indicate that either I live in an area that is mask mandated at this time, or they could indicate that I am extra cautious and/or want to protect myself and those around me by wearing a mask when I am out and about. The items also show that the pandemic is still happening.
• The receipts could show that I go shopping and that there may be more than one person in my household. This could be hinted at with a Costco wholesale receipt and a Save-on Foods receipt from the same weekend, as generally this entails a lot of groceries. The Staples receipt with school supplies  from just before school started may indicate that I am a teacher, that I am a student, or that I have a child (or children) that are school age. 
• A large number of the items could also demonstrate that I like to be prepared. From the portable battery pack, nail file, mints, and tums, to the snack bar, sanitizer, pill container, and chapsticks. So many of the items are ‘just-in-case’ items – in case of a headache, heartburn, bad breath, a broken nail, hunger, germs, chapped lips, a dead phone battery etc.
• The car key suggests that I have a drivers license and car and therefore am of a certain age. With the car key being a keyless fob, it could indicate that I own a car that is 0-7 years old or so.
• The Nutrigrain snack bar could indicate that I am often on the run and have easy to go food with me. It could also imply that I am a mother and have snacks with me for my kid(s). It also suggests that I am not celiac.
• All of the words written on the items in my bag are in English, suggesting I live in a country that is predominantly English speaking. 

There are a couple of text technologies in my bag. The first being the pens, highlighters and post-it notes. These allow me to manually  write or draw a message to communicate with others, or with myself. The different types and colors of pens allow different text or symbols to stand out amongst the other text. The highlighters allow me to pull out specific text in something I read or have written and allow me to interact with the text. My phone is also a text technology as it is a way for digital communication. I use my phone to send text messages, emails, write lists and reminders, create calendars etc. It is also used to read articles, emails, books, weather and look at pictures and posts. These two types of text technologies are very different. One indicates a manual, hands-on type of text interaction, while the other is a digital text interaction, complete with spell check and voice typing, that I can use to create text or interact with text that was created by others. 

My phone (which isn’t pictured) shows that I have digital literacy. I use my phone to create and interact with texts, to communicate with others, and to  find, gather and assess information. My phone could also be linked to aural literacy because I use my phone to listen to audio books. I also often use speech technology to send text messages and to leave voice messages for my niece.

I think the narrative  of the private contents of the bag in comparison to the narrative of my public self are pretty much the same. I have been told that I am easy to read as a person and I think the things that one would assume by seeing me in person would be confirmed by the contents of my bag. I am a fairly reserved person and prefer to be more in the background. I think this is confirmed by clear lip products and the neutral color of my purse, mask and wallet. I am also a very organized and prepared person, which again is demonstrated by my bag. 

Some of the things in my bag would have been very different 15-25 years ago. The biggest difference would have been some of the electronic type items. The cell phone, for example, would have been a flip phone, possibly with an antenna, and it would only be able to make phone calls and send text messages with ‘T9’ typing. The portable battery pack would not be something that the average person could afford, nor would it probably fit in a purse, and the car key would have been a metal key as opposed to have a circuit board inside it. The receipts would also have been different as credit cards were not automatically read and processed by the computers/cash registers and instead you would find carbon copied prints from credit card imprinters in my bag. I would also have never had a mask or sanitizer in my purse. Pre-pandemic, I would have never considered having those items with me everywhere I went and having them become part of the every day norm.

The two items that I think might stand out the most to an archeologist would be the mask and the sanitizer. These items would gives hints about living in a pandemic. The other items that may give a hint into this temporal period are individually wrapped snack bar, and individually wrapped wet napkins. These items may indicate that the people in this period of time weren’t looking after the environment and both created and used a lot of single-use plastic waste.