Check out Seime’s Task 8 here!

I chose to link with Seime for this task as we shared the least choices in common. As well, as I read my peers’ blogs, I felt Seime and I took very different approaches to this task so I thought it would be most interesting to compare our processes.

Seime’s choices seemed to come from a less methodical and more of a personal or aesthetic approach. He often makes connections between the musical pieces and his personal life, a song that he may listen to when he participates in or does something (ie. yard work, a trip, hiking, jogging, working out). He describes the emotions and feelings that the pieces evoke within him; mystery, peace, energy, focus, joy, achievement, reflection, inspiration, and thought-provoking.

He also made choices based on the popularity and interestingly the irreplaceability of a piece. I was less personable in my choices and more methodical in the origin or instruments used. We both made note of how El Cascabel made us want to dance and Senegal Percussion made us want to move. We also both chose the same piece from Bach (Brandenburg), I chose only one song from the list of classical composers and he chose three; one each from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.

Seime makes note that choices are all a matter of taste and personal preferences whereas my choices lay more within statistics of origin and instrument.

Check out Deborah’s Task 7 here!

Audio isn’t great. I’m no studio artist! She begins with. But, I have to disagree, this was absolutely incredible! What a fun and engaging way to approach this task.

Deborah chose to create a rap song about the items in her bag for this multimodal presentation of content. I appreciated how she included the quote from Gee (2005) about musical notation and its relationship to literacy. The idea of literacy is an important one to dissect, especially in my line of work in special education, so I appreciated how she included this particular note on what may make someone “literate”.

Deborah chose to use Youtube to create a musical piece with lyrics, whereas I chose to create a “radio show” (more similar to a podcast) on Soundtrap. The use of Youtube allowed for the lyrics to be visually represented/included along with the audio. This multimodality was appreciated as I could follow along with the lyrics (a feature that helps me understand or process information better). I chose to include a transcript for my podcast for similar reasons; accessibility as well as information processing.

The grander idea of literacy (or various forms) as she mentions from the New London Group is important to consider (prose literacy, numerical literacy, digital literacy, health literacy). It reminds me of a recent conversation I had with an educational psychologist about what is more important; reading and writing or understanding. This can be quite the point of contention especially when it comes to individualized education plans but brings light to the topic of literacy.

Check out Natalie’s Task 6 here!

I just had to pick this one to link with as it is one of my favourite shows as well. I knew it instantly when I saw the title, the one this that took me a second to recognize was how Natalie chose to approach this task. At first, I was wondering what episode she may be depicting, as I (maybe embarrassingly so) likely would have known the specific episode. Rather, she decided to introduce each of the main characters with emojis which I thought was absolutely brilliant and she did a wonderful (and entertaining) job of it.

We both enjoyed this task of representing a tv show or movie through the use of emojis. We both note the challenge we had with finding the appropriate emojis to encapsulate messages or loose connections of ideas of representations. We both started with the title for similar reasons, Natalie; emojis that I could use in my plot description that would make the entire story cohesive, and myself; specific emoji I wanted to use in the title as I use it throughout the rest of my emoji story (representation is made more obvious in the title). We both had to be a little creative and improvise to express our ideas and make appropriate visual representations for our viewers.

As mentioned previously, I found it interesting how she chose to introduce the main characters and then briefly represent the main idea or plot of the entire series. I think it would have been a nice addition to my emoji story if I introduced the characters at the beginning as well. I would have liked the challenge to decipher an episode of the tv show she chose (as nerdy as that sounds) just for the challenge! I enjoyed engaging with Natalie’s story and got to laugh along the way.

Check out Phi’s Task 5 here!

I loved how Phi included his three inspirations when creating his Twine; conversing with a bot, humour, and illusion of control. This last piece was particularly….
We shared the goal of trying to pull off humour in a text-based world, he mentions how they were lacking without audio support but I would have to disagree with him. There were multiple times I literally laughed out loud during his Twine, so I think he did a great job at embedding humour in this text game and agree that it can actually be more engaging for players.

We both really valued the game-based approach and although we both felt we could have done more with more time, we thought it was a fun opportunity to engage in such a creative task; incorporating our own ideas and being humorous. Phi’s game was the game that never ended, in all the witty, well-thought-out, wonderful ways. I loved that his game incorporated this idea of control (ie. I’ll choose this to mess with the system), acknowledging that the user is playing a Twine (and what that entails), and the loop of responses. He wrote the script as if you are in fact talking with someone on the other side (ChatGPT), and makes the user really feel this human connection (ie. if you could only hear my voice or see my face). The addition of not being able to say goodbye is not only humorous but a well-planned feature.

I was very impressed with how the game was organized, and how the various responses looped in with previous ones but still made sense or added new text. I thought it was very well planned to pull off as successfully as he did!