My name is Juliano Ng and I am a grade 6/7 teacher in the Burnaby School District. Below is my response to the “What’s in your Bag?” exercise for ETEC 540.

For this exercise, the bag I chose was my workbag that I bring with me to school every day. The items found in my bag are: my laptop, my phone, a whistle, a Sport Chek receipt, rubrics, schedules, and notes from workshops I attended.

My laptop and my phone are like extensions of my body. If I accidentally forget them at home, I feel lost without them. I have moved all my files digitally so from rubrics, to lesson plans, to activities, I have everything stored online. Luckily, I put them all on OneDrive so all is not lost, but I still feel uncomfortable not having these two items with me.

The whistle and Sport Chek receipt symbolize my interest in sports. I carry my whistle around because besides being a teacher at my school, I also coach the volleyball and basketball teams. I love being a coach because it allows me to interact with the students in a different capacity. I get to know the students better and find that I do not need to be as strict or guarded when I am coaching. As the school I teach in is in a lower socioeconomic, I sometimes need to purchase resources on my own, which is where the Sport Chek receipt comes from.

TEXT TECHNOLOGIES

Both technological items in my bag produce “texts” and what it says about me is that I may have an unhealthy reliance on technology. As my students are always on technology, even at home, I try to use technology to stay relevant with them and also use technology as a means to provide them with more engaging content and activities.

Microsoft Teams is my primary platform to communicate with my students and help them develop as learners. Being able to share information and communicate with my students through visuals and text at any time has helped my students be more accountable and more willing to learn since their questions can be addressed by their peers or myself even after the school day is over. The rubrics and activities in my bag have actually been scanned and are now digitally stored on Teams so even if the students forgot their work at school or lost it entirely, they can still find it on Teams.

My apps on my phone are another example but I use my phone more for socializing than for school. What these items say about how I engage language and communication is that I prefer text communication over oral communication. Although I do go over concepts orally with my class, I still always provide a PowerPoint, guide, outline, criteria sheet, or rubric, for my students to follow as well as I find that a lot of the message is lost if only communicated orally. The same goes for when I conference with my students and give them feedback. I will verbally have a conversation with them but I would also keep notes that they can refer to later. When communicating with parents, I much prefer sending an email over a phone call. There are times that phone calls are more effective but I prefer emails as it gives both sides to process the message before responding, whereas a phone call needs instant responses that may be emotional and not fully thought through. Even in my own social life that is found on my phone, the Whatsapp and SMS messages far outnumber the phone calls.

Having been using technology in my practice for several years, I would like to think that I am digitally literate and am able to troubleshoot for many of the staff members at my school when they encounter issues. To my colleagues I outwardly project that I’m organized and have things planned well in advance. Although this may be true 49% of the time, the other 51% I’m flying by the seem of my pants! You’d think that my bag would be full of resource books and guides but it mostly consists of my laptop and some notes I take at my meetings.

• What would this same bag have looked like, say, 15 or 25 years ago?

This bag would like vastly different 15 or 25 years ago as I would either be in elementary school or high school. I definitely would not have had the luxury of having a laptop, let alone a smartphone. In high school I did have a cellphone so I would likely still have that in my bag but it may only have been good for playing Snake. I would have a planner to keep myself organized and I would be carrying pencils over pens as I was more comfortable using mechanical pencils growing up over using pens.

• How do you imagine an archeologist aiming to understand this temporal period might view the contents of your bag many years in the future?

The archeologist likely would assume that people in this period had a heavy reliance on technology and were moving away from needing to print papers. If the archeologist was interested in education, from seeing my papers, they would notice that communication with students through feedback was important and that students focused on learning skills instead of facts.