A Day in the Life of a Student in the Year 2051 (Scenario A)

Billy is a 12 year old student in the year 2051. He is an average student who loves to use technology. He has used technology since he could sit upright. As a young child, his parents would play holographic videos on YouTube off their iPhone 42 to keep him occupied. He generally likes to keep to himself and most of his friendships are from people he’s met online. His hobbies include watching YouTube and playing videogames.

Billy’s teacher, Mr. Smith, enters the room and asks everyone to take out their devices to start the day’s activities. It is an expectation that every student has a device to use for learning at the school. You would think that by now everyone could go to school remotely and not require a physical building to learn in, but parents still need to go to work and need a place for their kids to be safe in. Additionally, kids still need to be able to socialize and interact with each other beyond seeing each other on a computer screen. School runs year round but since all students are on individualized plans, they can be pulled out by their parents if they plan to go on a vacation and can continue once they return. The teacher is also able to go on vacation at any time (as long as they have enough vacation days) and a replacement teacher will be in the classroom to troubleshoot any issues.

When the screens load up, the AI instructor speaks to each student individually to go over their lessons for the day. Mr. Smith is the homeroom teacher whose responsibility is to supervise and to work with the AI to select the programming that best suits the student and their learning level. Otherwise, all lessons are taught online through the AI programming. Every student learns in their own program and at their own pace. The focus is on developing skills instead of memorizing facts, so programming is catered to each student’s interests. As a result, students are put into age groups instead of grades so no student feels the pressure of needing to be at a certain “grade level” and the progress of each student is kept confidential between the student, their homeroom teacher, and the AI programming. Students have strengths in some subjects and weaknesses in others so there are some students who are working on basic Language Arts that focuses on phonics but are working through trigonometry in Math.

By age 10, students begin to know which subjects they like and dislike so besides the core four subjects of Language Arts (split into reading and writing), Science, Social Studies, and Math, students can choose an Elective. The Elective gives students more freedom to choose a subject that interests them. Students can choose from Music, Physical Education, Art, STEM, or to learn another language. Billy, who likes to keep to himself, chose STEM as his elective as he likes to design and create his own projects.

For Language Arts, students are given a baseline test at the beginning of the year where they read aloud and the AI tracks their fluency and then students must answer comprehension questions. If they are successful in passing both sections, then they are asked questions by the AI that dive deeper into the text. The questions may be about making connections, analyzing parts of the text, or even having a discussion with the AI instructor based on the topics brought up in the passage. As an average student, Billy was able to pass the baseline test and could read books that are at the maturity and reading level of his age group.

The AI provides a list of passages that Billy chooses from to read. After completing the passage, Billy informs the AI instructor that he is finished and the AI instructor then will begin having a discussion with Billy and draw from a database of prompts and possible answers to help Billy further develop his critical thinking skills while reading.

Just like in Language Arts, for Math, students must also go through a baseline test to see if they know their basic Math operations before getting to move on to more advanced skills. Billy is able to demonstrate that he knows his basic operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division so he is allowed to move on to the advanced skills part. For Math, the AI provides real-life scenarios with open-ended problems for Billy to solve. To make it more realistic, Billy puts on his virtual reality glasses to be fully immersed into the scenario. In today’s task, he is learning about fractions. His task is to bake a cake using the fractions given but the catch is that he needs to double the recipe as he is baking for twice as many people. As Billy works through the task, when he gets stuck, he can ask the AI for assistance who will provide hints and visuals to show him how to work with fractions.

STEM is Billy’s favorite subject. Inspired from the classic movie by Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, Billy wants to become an inventor like Tony Stark. In STEM, Billy researches an object he would like to build and he must make prototypes and test it. Just like in the movies, since he is practicing through holograms, he has access to any materials he needs as he does not actually need the physical materials. As school is continual, Billy has been working on his project to create hovershoes (shoes that allow you to hover above the ground) for the past two years.

Science and Social Studies are both interactive courses that utilize mixed reality (Either Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality) to help students feel immersed in the topics. In both subjects, students are assessed mostly on the skills they learn such as being able to investigate and experiment to find solutions or to think critically to assess the significance of past events and how they influence them now.

At the end of the day, all the work is processed by the AI and any issues are flagged and sent to Mr. Smith for review and to touch base with the student the next day.

A Day in the Life of a Student in the Year 2051 (Scenario B) in an Alternate Reality

Bobby is a 12 year old student in the Year 2051. With AI doing almost all of the routine jobs and people being able to ask Google to do everything for them, schools have been deemed unnecessary. The few schools remaining are still using the same curriculum since 2021 and very few students attend school. Bobby is in a class of thirty but students range from kindergarten to grade 12 and everyone has different strengths in learning. If schools were still the norm, Bobby would be a top student who excels in creative and critical thinking. He is a leader who can motivate others to work as a team. There are only two teachers in the class, Ms. Smith, who teaches the elementary grade students and Ms. Parker, who teaches the secondary grades. Both teachers are brilliant teachers but are looked down on by society as they are seen as being resistant to change and not with the times. Society has coined these educators and their pupils as “The Nerds” who are wasting their time by learning all this pointless information that they feel is just stored within Google. Luckily for Bobby, his parents grew up as “Nerds” as well and feel that it is important for humans to think for themselves and not rely solely on technology.

Since AI has taken over and done everything, humans have become complacent and their “job” is to enjoy their life. AI is doing most of the routine work for the humans. From household chores to driving, AI is doing everything for the humans. Self-driving cars are the norm and people who know how to drive cars are now in the minority. The same goes for basic tasks, humans are beginning to lose the ability to complete simple calculations or to even read since they can ask Google to solve everything for them. They are a purely oral society and identification is done through biometrics so the need for literacy has become obsolete.

There is no crime as AI has helped provide people with everything they need. AI is so efficient that they can harvest all the resources humans need to survive.

However, the resources of the world are being depleted as humans are consuming the resources at a more accelerated rate. With the use of the resources, technology has advanced substantially from 2021 and has made life easier for humans but it has become too easy. The majority of the humans are not able to think for themselves and do not sense the danger that is approaching them from the way they are living their lives. The AI knows how to plant and harvest resources but they cannot account for the overconsumption of humans and the AI only knows how to work with what it is currently given or is programmed to do, it does not know how to invent new resources or energy sources. Very soon it will be up to The Nerds to change people’s minds or invent new ideas or else humanity on Earth will be heading towards their demise.

Reflection

I’m not sure if I did the task correctly but either way I enjoyed writing speculative narrative stories in this activity as I haven’t written a “future based” story in a very long time.

The first scenario connects to the talk by Dr. Shannon Vallor (2018) where we use AI as a tool that helps improve our lives but human decisions and activity are still at the forefront. We, as humans, are controlling the technology and not the other way around. By working together with AI, it has accelerated the learning process and enhanced the education system for the better. The system has changed with the times and students are learning skills that are relevant to them and at their own pace. The downside to the increased interaction with technology is that there would be, at least in my speculation, a decreased interaction with other people. If everyone is learning on their own, there may be fewer opportunities to complete tasks together.

The second scenario connects to Dr. Vallor’s (2018) talk in a slightly different way. The second scenario would occur if we choose to improve our machines but we don’t choose to improve ourselves. In this scenario, AI is accelerating our dependence on technology which gives us a false mirage that life is improving for the better but instead, it is moving us towards that downhill of potholes and cliffs that she mentions.

I hope that the first scenario comes to fruition otherwise we are heading towards a Wall-E type scenario if the second one comes true. Unfortunately, there seems to be more and more people who would rather machines do everything for them than for them to think for themselves though.

References:

Santaclaraweb (Director). (2018, November 06). Lessons from the ai mirror shannon vallor [Video file]. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40UbpSoYN4k

This task was both frustrating and entertaining at the same time and will be a “game” I will get my students to play after Spring Break as I plan on having them design their own website using sites such as Weebly and Wix. That last page took me a lot longer than I would like to admit and my hope is that the frustration that my students will encounter will help them be more cognizant of how user friendly their website layout will be for the end user. My fear though, when I do get my students to play this game, is that my students will quickly get frustrated and give up instead of persevering through to find the solution. Or, once one person figures it out, they will tell everyone how to “beat the game”.

This avoidance of wanting to work through a problem/challenge and lack of perseverance is what I worry about for my students. As alluded to by the Harris (2017) video, our youth’s minds are programmed for this instant gratification of their “elicit brain” and having answers or solutions at their fingertips, but not everything can be solved through a quick Google Search or YouTube instruction video. They need to be able to think critically and work to solve problems, especially when they will be facing problems that don’t have a clear answer yet and it will be up to them to come up with the solution.

On the topic of dark patterns and how companies can exploit these tendencies. By making tasks tedious, it can manipulate people/my students into agreeing to everything or selecting “yes” just to get to what they want quickly, without them even knowing what they agreed to. As adults, we are also guilty of this. How many of us actually read through the Terms and Conditions or Privacy Statements before agreeing to them? Besides making tasks tedious, I noticed when playing through the game that my mind was programmed, from previous experience, to think that certain buttons were placed in the same location on most webpages which the game changed around. The two most prominent ones I fell for was the location of where to hide the Help Box and where to close the timer. The timer also subconsciously made me want to rush through the process which diverted my attention from the details. The timer tactic I often experience when making online purchases like when buying concert tickets on Ticketmaster where the site sets a time limit when purchasing tickets to rush you to purchase tickets or risk losing your seats.

I think that darkpatterns.org is a great way to make users more aware of the sneaky practices of some companies and be more alert so that they are not as easily manipulated (Brignull, 2011).

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

This was my first time analyzing data in this manner so the task was challenging for me but very interesting at the same time. The main function I used was to turn on the “Size Nodes” setting which enlarged the nodes (the songs in this case) that were selected by the most people and had the highest degree of connectivity (Systems Innovation, 2015). What I found most interesting was that Track 7: “Johnny B. Goode” and Track 25: “Jaat Kahan Ho” were the two most popular songs chosen. What both tracks have in common is that they both originated from highly populated countries (United States and India) and both contain lyrics or language which may show that this was an important criterion for many people. The smaller nodes tended to be the ones that were either only instrumental with specialized instruments such as the panpipes and drums from Peru or originated from areas that had small populations which did not fully represent humanity, such as Track 4: Pygmy Girls’ Initiation Song. One thing to keep in mind is that this is only my own interpretation of the data that is formed through my own ideas/assumptions so I could be completely wrong when guessing why my peers chose the tracks that they did.

Regarding political implications, based on my assumptions in the previous paragraph, it would imply that the countries with the largest population have the most voice and representation in this exercise. What that means is that those countries would be the most influential in determining what is representative of humanity, or the nodes of the more populated countries would hold more “weight” (Code.org, 2017). The downside to this is that this results in the countries with smaller populations to not be fairly represented and will lack a voice as the larger or more powerful countries will do all the speaking and the small countries will eventually be forgotten.

I don’t think that the reasons for the “null” choices can be interpreted based on the current data set as the data/quiz was geared towards a criterion that focused on our favorable choices. There is too much variance in the 17 tracks that were not chosen by each person for us to interpret the reasons for our non-selections accurately. If the criteria in the quiz were to be changed, where we had to curate 10 tracks to be removed from the Golden Records instead of kept, then we would be able to represent the “null” choices as those become the large nodes in the data set. Essentially, it inverses the current database information and makes the “null” choices into the more populated data points.

References

Code.org. (2017, June 13). The Internet: How Search Works. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/LVV_93mBfSU

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 19). Network Connections. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/2iViaEAytxw

My 10 Picks:

• “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry
• China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu
• Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina, performed by Budapest String Quartet.
• Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle
• Bach, “Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin, performed by Arthur Grumiaux.
• Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service
• Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima
• “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven
• Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México
• Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow

I chose these ten songs based on the country of origin and also the instruments that were used to play the music. Languages sometimes become endangered or extinct so I put more importance in the instruments played as I feel that the sound they make can stand the test of time and it also demonstrates the diversity of humans as humans from different countries are influenced by their culture when producing music. By taking music from a variety of countries, I hope to avoid the idea that we as humans are an intellectual monoculture that Abby Smith Rumsey (Brown University, 2017) spoke of. I included music which included electric instruments, strings, percussion, brass and woodwind instruments which provides an example of the wide range of sounds that humans of different cultures can produce. In addition, I tried to find music from different genres that could evoke different emotions. There were classical songs, blues/jazz, cultural songs, and also a more contemporary song to demonstrate that we as a species are diverse and are sentient.

References:

Brown University. (2017). Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital Memory: What Can We Afford to Lose?”

When redesigning my Task 1 assignment, I found this task challenging because I felt that I had to keep everything short to hold the attention of my audience as I was using audio and video instead of plain text. I had my own grade 6/7 students in mind when working on the assignment and they are so used to watching short videos that overstimulate their minds (think TikTok), that anything long or drawn out causes them to quickly lose interest. To keep their interest, I tried to minimize the amount of text and replace them with narration and visuals. However, to maintain interest, I had to sacrifice some content that I had originally written so the audience would receive less information than had they read my Task 1 assignment. This relates to the fragmentation of information that Bolter (2001) refers to.

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. The challenge is that sometimes there is no way to adapt it so that it engages our audience (we can’t reinvent the wheel) as some of the content we are asked to teach is outdated but still part of the curriculum. The revised curriculum in BC has greatly revamped the content we teach so that it is more relevant and has shifted the focus to developing skills and competencies over learning facts so this has made it easier for educators to change the way they present their lessons.

Growing up, it was a treat to get to watch a video in class to learn. The teacher would roll in the AV cart and we’d all be excited. Sometimes it would be Bill Nye the Science Guy, other times it was The Magic School Bus, but whatever we watched, we were engaged and overjoyed to watch it. The videos were also almost thirty minutes long! Now, with my students, videos are simply loaded up from my computer but the students aren’t as engaged with the video. It can hold their attention for around 5 minutes but anything longer and they lose interest and groan. This may be that the videos are not viewed as a “transformed practice” as it is something they only view but don’t get to interact with (The New London Group, 1996). For them, they need to experience the learning/concepts themselves and watching a video about it is no longer enough. A quick video may be used to hook them into the topic, but they look forward and are more engaged during the discussion we have about the topics afterwards. This applies to any subject, from Math where we tie in real-world situations and when the concept would be used in their lives, to Social Studies where we discuss current events and how the news affects their lives. 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.

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

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

Coming up with the emojis to tell the plot of this movie was a fun, yet difficult task. I started off with the title as it provides a framework for my colleagues to guess the rest of the plot. If I gave the plot and then the title, I think it would be hard to guess as the plot may be harder to decipher and I tried to show the most memorable parts of the movie. I chose to use solely ideas because I think having syllables or words would make it more confusing to guess. By staying consistent with one style, the reader can just decipher the message as ideas/images instead of trying to guess if its supposed to be a syllable, a word, or an idea.

The saying “a picture tells a thousand words” comes to mind when completing this activity as I found that I could tell a story with much fewer emojis than I could if I had to type it all out in words. In previous chapters we learned about how digital technology reduced the effort needed to write manually and increased efficiency. Emojis, if we can all come to an agreement to what each of them means, could further increase this efficiency although it may look less professional. However, as questioned in Kress (2005), do the conventions that we are accustomed to really matter that much or is it more important for the correct message to be communicated to the receiver? I’ve mentioned in previous posts about how sarcasm can’t be conveyed properly through text, but with the use of images and emojis, could that change? I know that if I add a smiley face emoji to the end of a statement, my friends know that I am joking but without it, they may not be sure. Even if it looks less professional than what we are currently used to, isn’t it more important that the message is clear and interpreted exactly how we wanted to communicate it?

References:

Kress, G. (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.

The Great Adventures of A

Twinery is a program that I have my grade 6/7 students use to write Choose Your Own Adventure Stories so I have a bit of familiarity with the program. Just like how I advise my students, I followed the same instructions I gave them before beginning their Twinery project. My strategy going into completing this task was to plan out my story first. From previous experience, these stories tend to fall apart or lose connection when you are writing on the fly without a proper plan. I also made sure to write my entire story out first and dealt with the coding after my story was completed.

What I noticed when writing in this format was that it was far less formal than what I am used to writing normally. Incorporating coding into the writing itself also further moved me away from the writing that I was used to. What I also noticed was that my students were much more engaged with this style of writing compared to when I had them write formally whether on paper or through a computer. I think this is because the style that Twinery is written is closer to the Internet language that they are used to communicating with their peers on over social media. The sentences are written in a style that is more like the utterances with the “new rules” mentioned in The Allusionist podcast (Zaltzman, 2019). However, even though the writing is more informal, Twinery still forces the writer to be technical as there were certain rules that had to be followed or else the page wouldn’t load like how we wanted it to. For example, when I tried to include the audio files, I had to have the file at the end of my document instead of the beginning or else my text would not show up and all you would hear would be the sound effect.

Upon reflection, these are some of the questions I thought of. If there is an agreed upon set of rules and understandings, could this be a new style of writing that will be widely accepted? If the new generation is more accustomed to this style/language, would we phase out the formal writing that we are used to seeing now? Will we see publishers writing books for youth more with this style/language and less like the traditional format? Imagine needing to read Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter in Internet Language. Thinking of all the wizard emojis and the changes in punctuation to show tone is already giving me a headache.

I enjoyed getting to write using the “new rules” and write with a more informal voice. Reading The Temple of No helped me ease up on the formal writing and write in a similar style to what those creators did.

References:

Zaltzman, H. (Producer). (2019, July 13). The Allusionist – Allusionist 102. New Rules. https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/new-rules

Two words that summarize my experience of completing the manual script: Hand cramps. Being someone who normally writes by type, I guess my hands were not used to the task of writing manually so I found the task difficult as the muscles in my hand started cramping as those hand muscles are not used often. From listening to the podcast by Harris (2018) and how he mentioned that written works took months to complete, I can’t imagine how laborious that undertaking was. I guess it makes sense that the work was worth the annual salary of an average laborer.

I prefer to write by type over by hand because I find the process faster and also neater as my writing is quite messy and small. Being left-handed in a society with a written language that reads from left to right, writing by hand created some difficulties when I was growing up so whenever I had the chance to type my work instead of handwriting it, I took it. Whether from needing to twist my wrist so that I don’t touch the coils of notebooks or needing to lift my hand to avoid smudging when using markers, I always disliked the task of writing. Thinking back to the time prior to the printing press, I wonder how lefties handled the task of manually writing books? I also wonder why, even for societies with a written language that reads from right to left (like Chinese), right-handed people are still preferred to the point where parents would convert left-handed people to become right-handed at a very young age? If you have seen Chinese calligraphers, you would notice that their technique and grip of their writing tool is different from how we hold a pencil, and I think part of that is to prevent the smudging that lefties encounter when writing and to accommodate right-handed writers.

I think the most significant difference between writing by hand compared to mechanized forms of writing is that mechanized forms of writing allows us to produce written works faster and, as mentioned in the YouTube video about the letterpress (Cooke, 2012), allows for instant changes and edits to the work, be it in content or in style. The drawback to this is that I find writers today may not plan as well because they know that they can simply go back and make changes afterwards and no one would know. The video mentioned how, with the letterpress, much like when writing by hand, you must plan your way forward and I think that there is value to that as it makes us think more about the process before we start writing. With that said, I still prefer mechanized forms of writing as I value speed and efficiency over careful planning as I can go back and make changes after if my plan falls through.

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?list=PLwDcrXJd8qmYTILdpa3XIyRtOFQvQAlXj&v=n6RqWe1bFpM

Harris, B. (Producer). (2018, February 5). How It Began: A History of the Modern World – The Printed Book: Opening the Floodgates of Knowledge. https://howitbegan.com/episodes/the-printed-book/

Below is my unscripted story about my wedding day:
The story that I’ll be telling today is about my wedding day I got married in August of 2018 it was actually a very good summer in the sense that it we had good weather there almost the entire August all except for my wedding day where it decided to pour rain and the next day it was sunny again people might tell you that getting married and having it rain is good luck that only comes from wedding guests but not the people who actually had their wedding on a rainy day supposed to say it did not start off great we had hoped that the weather would change in the mid-morning and the venue assured us that we can let them know by noon whether or not to switch from the outdoor option to the indoor option however at 9 a.m. they called us a we have to make a decision send in there which caused a lot of stress for my wife and I ultimately we decided to do the indoor option but we are able to compromise and have it at the front entryway which is covered instead of actually inside of the dining area Besides eating to change how the ceremony was going to look the rain also caused a whole slew of other problems for example and create a lot of traffic behind schedule as we had a lot of places we wanted to take photos in the first stop was my in-laws house and everything went fine there we took pictures everyone’s family we had a traditional tea ceremony for her family and the photographer is got everything recorded there but then the issue started when we needed to go to my parents house for our tea ceremony photos and family photos upon our arrival to our to my parents place a car accident just happened at the intersection where our driver was going to drop us off as a result there were a lot of emergency vehicles and so the driver could not stop us and we’re close to my parents house so we had to stop a block away and walk in the rain for the guys that was fine since we’re wearing suits watch for my wife in a wedding dress this was quite the adventure to walk a block in pouring rain we had umbrellas the experience. To add on to that there was some how some miscommunication where I had confirmed to the photographers that the next location would be my parents house in Burnaby however they went to my place in Coquitlam to get ready for the first look photos and we waited for almost half an hour before they told us that they were at the place and at the end we needed my parents friends to just help us take pictures so it kind of took away from that moment for my parents as they didn’t get the same type of photos. because we were waiting so long for photographers arrive at my place only to find out that they weren’t coming it wasted a lot of time so we had to rush out of my parents place and head back to my place to get to get our first look photos on to get ready for the actual ceremony when we arrived at my place the photographer is weren’t there waiting for us they ended up for some strange reason decided to go get coffee and lunch even though we told them that we were on our way so we needed to wait for them for another 10 minutes which further delayed our schedule after that all the photos at my place went fine and we went to downtown us to take some more kind of Scenic wedding photos and we did it by The Front Street and the photos went great but then suddenly the limousine driver told us that or booking was only until 3 p.m. and that she needed to go we asked if we can just pay for having to stay and he said unfortunately he couldn’t so he basically left us stranded at that location luckily the photographer is nice enough to let us carpool and their car and we were able to get one of our friends to drive the rest of the wedding party to the venue by the time we got to the venue we were about half an hour behind schedule so everything was pushed by 30 minutes and we actually had all these outdoor party games that people can play while waiting such as giant Jenga and giant tic tac toe but due to the rain a lot of that was not seeing by the guests and there was just kind of an undercover area and not enough people went there when we got to the venue the ceremony went flawlessly and everyone was very see if I how it went and complimentary of how beautiful everything looks and somehow we’re able to squeeze some time in and get a few more photos in a nearby park and then the dinner ceremony or dinner reception happened and over all that went fine however when it kind of It Came time to for speeches what usually happens after the dinner portion a lot of my parents friends had left because it had a flight to fly back the next morning so when all the photos were taken of them listen to the speech in the video of them listen to the speech of on the two of them sitting in a large table so that didn’t look the greatest but they were able to edit that part out but just the Optics of it to everyone else did not look great despite all that happened my wife and I still had a great time no one knew of everything that happened behind-the-scenes and everyone thought that it was a beautiful wedding and enjoy themselves as well so all in all it went to out when turned out to be a great day there was just a lot of hiccups along the way that we have to deal with but that’s how I’m able to tell the story about it now if everything like fall asleep I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell the story. 

Analysis:
My unscripted story deviated greatly from conventional written English. So much to the point that it was painful to read it. There is hardly any punctuation found in this entry and it is one giant paragraph. As a result of the lack of punctuation, there is also little capitalization in the entry as well. I used Google Docs and it did say that I could say the word “period” and “new line” to create a period or make a new paragraph but that would ruin the flow of the story and also sound unnatural as I am speaking.

In terms of what was wrong in the text, it misinterpreted some of my words, especially the shorter words such as “as” or “he/she” and I noticed that if I didn’t enunciate words, it would convert it incorrectly, like what happened for the word “suffice” where instead, it recorded it as “supposed” as well as “eating” instead of “needing”. With that said, I was also surprised by the amount that it got right in its recording. It knew to capitalize proper nouns like Burnaby and Coquitlam but it did not recognize slang like when I said “downtown New West”, it took it as “downtown us”. There were also no spelling errors in the entire entry since the program would only find words it knows how to spell, it even caught the hyphenated words like mid-morning and the periods needed for “a.m.” which was a pleasant surprise. I also appreciated that it skipped over a lot of the rambling/thinking words like “umm” or “like” which was impressive and without it doing that, the story would have made even less sense.

As stated earlier, a common mistake would be the lack of punctuation found in the entry. I consider these to be mistakes because the program did not catch on to the pauses made in the speech to clue in that either a comma or period was needed. Instead, the program just continued on with the sentence even though there was a long pause. It is also considered a mistake because without the proper punctuation, the message isn’t communicated properly. The reader focuses more on trying to understand the actual writing and correcting the English conventions instead of focusing on the story itself.

A scripted story would have been organized in paragraphs with proper punctuation. I am able to make sense of the story while reading it in my head because I have the context and background information of the story but I think that if a stranger were to read it the way it is now, they would have a hard time understanding it. I would also go into more detail in specific parts of the story to help readers understand my story more but I chose not to do this while telling the story orally because I felt like I was rambling.

Oral storytelling differs from written storytelling in the way that we often need to interpret written stories in a more literal sense as we miss many of the nuances of speech, like expression and body language. In oral storytelling, we can use sarcasm more simply than with written storytelling. Through SMS, Whatsapp, and Facebook Messenger miscommunication often happens because what the sender meant to say, was interpreted entirely differently by the receiver. Without body language and tone/expression, we can only read things literally unless we really know the sender well and can imagine them speaking but again, notice that we need to imagine them speaking orally. I find oral storytelling to be more engaging and a more active process for the listener compared to written storytelling. There is more to pay attention to when telling stories orally. You need to be aware of pacing, tone, expression, and body language, in addition to giving enough details to keep the listener engaged. Whereas for written storytelling, you need to focus on the descriptive details and writing mechanics to keep the reader interested. In both you have to be detailed enough that the audience understands what you’re conveying but also not too detailed that it becomes a ramble or overload them with information.

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.