Reading and sharing thoughts with my peers was a great experience and ETEC 540 offered me a creative output for all the theory and knowledge I have gain over the course of my MET program. There were many great posts, stories, and ideas and the following is a list to highlight some of the ones I connected most with.

Link 1: Brian L. – What’s in your bag?

Task 1: What’s in your bag?

The first connection I had was with Brian and his task 1: What’s in your bag? Brian – as with almost everyone else – chose to use UBC blogs as a means of showcasing their weekly tasks and final projects. What immediately caught my attention to Brian’s task was all his cycling gear. As someone who is also into cycling and more recently, mountain biking, I was intrigued by his bag’s content and the significance they carry in his daily life. His blog site is quite simple and well organized. These are two qualities that I very much appreciate in any blog site. The navigation should be simple and clear. Furthermore, the chronological order of his blog posts allowed me to scroll effortlessly through his site. His views towards literacies and text technologies are similar to mine but he leans more towards the digital aspects of text. As do I, however I still appreciate and utilize the old-school print technologies as mentioned in my first task. Overall, Brian’s simple blog style layout and organization was pleasing to the eyes.

Link 2: Katlyn Paslawski – Emoji Story

Emoji Story

Immediately upon visiting Katlyn’s website I noticed the attention to visuals and graphics. Katlyn uses large graphics, big pictures, and simple layout colours. This made the navigation of her website pleasant and appealing. Also, she included an short introduction bio to herself which was uncommon but very welcomed! This allowed me to grasp a better understanding as to who Katlyn is. In comparison, I am now reflecting on my own blog and worry that I come across as an unknown blogger to many. Tasks such as #1 What’s in my Bag? offer a glimpse into me as a person but I feel as though a short introduction would have helped the readers a lot more. Overall, Katlyn did a fantastic job with her blog which made it very easy to read through the entire site!

Link 3: Sarah Wong – Manual Script

Task No. 4: Manual Script

Sarah is a former classmate in other MET courses. I knew what to expect in terms of her work ethic and attention to detail. I was not surprised when I saw her blog space. It is elegant and modern. Her task – Manual Script showcases a perfect example of her attention to detail. If you look at her handwriting you will see that it is immaculate. In comparison to my own, my handwriting is very messy and scribbled while hers appears to be a computer font. The processes behind the manual script are also note-worthy. As mentioned, my handwriting is very messy, flowy, and scribbled. I utilize handwriting to outlet my thoughts in an unorganized brainstorm. In contrast, Sarah mentions how she thinks before she writes – quite the opposite. I wouldn’t disagree with her process. Neither is correct or incorrect, they are simply two different ways to create script. To each their own!

Link 4: Emma Pindera – Golden Record

Golden Diversity

First off, Emma’s website represents what I would imagine a blog  from the 1800’s to look like. The use of black and white colours, traditional serif fonts, and a cursive style writing showcased a unique approach to Emma’s blog page. The website seems to be one long endless scroll. This endless scroll added to the historic effect of the blog space. However, the lack of navigation buttons did create some obstacles when trying to move between old and new posts. In Emma’s Golden Record task, there are some notable similarities between our tasks. We both appreciate the diversity and multicultural aspect of the Golden Record. This is a key component that Emma and I both agreed upon. Overall, Emma’s website created an enjoyable reading experience back in time.

Link 5: Jeevan Pannun – Speculative Futures

Speculative Futures (Task 12)

Jeevan’s blog resembled that of a ‘off the shelf’ template from UBC blogs. This was accentuated by the ‘sample page’ still present on his homepage. Not that this is a problem but perhaps prevented Jeevan from adding a personalized touch to his blog space. Nonetheless, his blog posts were full bodied and did a great job of showcasing Jeevan’s thought-provoking creativity. In particular, his speculative future task caught my attention because of the fact that I am a high school teacher and Jeevan offered two very plausible perspectives of two teenagers. My take of the speculative futures showcased two narratives that were far-fetched yet not too far away. In comparison, Jeevan’s narratives were present and realistic. This offered a narrative that was not so much speculative, but rather, insightful into the thoughts of a teenager. I appreciated this point of view and change in perspective.

Link 6: Tyler Senini – Speculative Futures

Task #12 Speculative Narratives

Tyler’s blog site clearly showed his interest in the great outdoors. I would assume Tyler is from Alberta based on his background photos of farms and the Rockies. These two beautiful landscapes offer a peaceful reading experience. However, I do wish the font was a little more visible and clear on the background. When comparing to my own blog site, I focused on big, bold, and contrasting colours in order to catch the readers attention. Whereas Tyler focused on appealing landscapes to capture the same effect. Or perhaps he did this to simply satisfy his needs to explore the outdoors. Regardless, one can appreciate Tyler’s love for the simpler things in life. For example, the landscapes of Canada. Or – based on his speculative futures – the use of normal language as opposed to short text acronyms like LOL and SMH. I agree with his point of view. As a society, we find it 2 difficult 2 typ prply and spell words prply lol,… This could potentially lead to the loss of the beautiful landscape and complexities of the English language. neways, ttyl.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

#1 SHIP 

Please use https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/ to copy and paste the narrative below for the full effects of this speculative future!

Introducing the SHIP (Student Hybrid-Learning Integration Program) which is the latest technology to enhance the learning environment for students. SHIP will personalize learning for students, protect privacy, and create a more efficient workflow at school. The tiny microchip which is to be implanted into the arm of the student will provide many benefits. Students will no longer be required to remember their logins and passwords. Their computers and devices will automatically connect to the network via their SHIP chip. Furthermore, their identity and passwords will always be protected due to the SHIP insertion into the body when taking tests and exams or when logging into computers outside of the network. SHIP will also increase the efficiency and workflow at the school by providing a safe and easy way to pay for food at the vending machines or cafeteria with a simple wave of the arm using the latest R-F-I-D (Radio Frequency Identification Device). Keep all your logins, money, and identity safe with SHIP. Contact us now for pricing programs and subscription options. 

Terrifying isn’t it? It may sound extreme but a program such as SHIP may not be too far fetched. There are already businesses that are experimenting with microchip insertion into their employees. Many of the programs are for similar reasons as the SHIP. This speculative future was frightening to write and review but even more troubling when using the text-to-speech reader. What are your thoughts on a program such as this? For more information on businesses doing the same thing please check out: https://businessworld.net/blog/post/61/the-office-of-the-future-microchipped-employees

#2 Optimal Occupation

Jane wakes up on the last day of her senior year at high school. In the past, people were excited for this day. They saw it as their first day into the real world – the beginning of what they could make out of the rest of their lives. To Jane, this was not the case. Jane grew up a dancer – an extraordinary dancer – but she knows that she might never be able to dance. Her Optimal Occupation score was 98 which is among the top of her class. So the OO program decided she must go to medical school to become a doctor. Although Jane thought this was unfair, her teachers and parents explained how it would be a waste of talent if she did not go to medical school. The only thing she heard at the moment was “waste of talent”. Her dreams and passions always fell to dancing, to be on Broadway. She knew she had the talent just like her grandmother who was the biggest Broadway star of the last 50 years. As she walked across the stage she forced a smile and waved to her family. The only thing she could think of at the time was dancing.

This short narrative discusses a future in education where artificial-intelligence and personalized learning could be utilized to predict and/or mandate career outcomes or “optimal occupations”. This is a future that focuses on efficiency as opposed to self-will and creativity. I purposely left the ending of the narrative open to the reader’s imaginations as to how Jane’s story would conclude. Is this a future that is ideal for us as a society? What are your thoughts?

This task was quite interesting. It reminded me of navigating through a spam-filled malware site where I have been entered to win a free cruise. This form of digital text interpretation is important for anyone to know.

Palladio was a great tool to use that shows us the connection that each of us had in our song choices. My first impression with the network visualization was that I noticed all of our names within the inner circle of the network. My name seemed to be fairly close to the centre which I assume means that my choices had more connections to the choices of others. This would typically indicate that my choices and opinions are among the more popular choices and/or more agreed upon by my peers. The main concern with the “null” choices in this scenario are the implications that may seem to make the less “popular” songs less important. This is certainly not the case for a number of reasons. Firstly, the sample size of our class is far too small to accurately measure the importance of our choices. Secondly, each person’s opinion varies and the selections of songs may be deemed more important for different reasons. For example, the songs from Bach emphasize mathematics in the music. Some people may find this feature more valuable than a song that has lyrical story-telling. Furthermore, language plays an important role as well. Is classical music more popular because of the ability to be understood by any race or species? Overall, this visualization is but a small portion of the overall data. The results showcase and highlight important information and is a good preliminary step into analyzing network data.

1. Jaat Kahan Ho
2. Night Chant
3. Bagpipes
4. Tchakrulo
5. The Magic Flute
6. El cascabel
7. Symphony #5
8. Melancholy Blues
9. Brandenburg Concerto
10. Wedding Song

This task was more difficult than I would have anticipated. In order to complete this task, I had to think like the great American astronomer Carl Sagan who was the project director for the Golden Record. As a big fan of the Cosmos series with Carl Sagan as well as the remastered version with Neil deGrasse Tyson, I appreciate the connection that we – as humans – have with the universe. Therefore, I decided it would be best to showcase a tracklist that was diverse and represented our history of existence appropriately. Furthermore, I would emphasize the importance of also keeping and including the images, sound effects, and other texts that were in the original Golden Record.

I am fascinated by the thought that there are other civilizations out there. It would be incredible if one day we discovered another Golden Record from a distant galaxy. Live long and prosper.

Task 6 Reflection:

This task initially created the difficult challenge of condensing an entire plot into a few emoticons. In order to portray the plot effectively, I focused on utilizing ideas and symbols. In my opinion, symbols are easier to interpret because of their generic  imagery. The reader would be able to see a simple emoticon such as, ???? and assume it means to smile or be happy. As Bolter mentions (2001), imagery and visuals are increasingly important in order to convey ideas or text. Especially with movies, the filmography plays a critical role in telling the story.

In this task, I began with the title. There are important symbols and themes throughout the plot that can be identified within the title. Therefore, I found it to play an important role in the emoji story. Furthermore, I chose a story from the most recent thing I watched/read so I did not consider the difficulty in the delivery of this plot. Overall, I believe readers will be able to identify the plot based on key symbols.

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 Notepad:

As mentioned in Task 1, my notepad is always available. I use this pad mainly for the MET program, but it also serves as a calendar of reminders, notes, or even doodles. For myself, the notepad is the easiest way to quickly transcribe my thoughts down onto paper. So, this task was easy in terms of letting ideas flow. I did not think about what I was writing I just let the pen translate what my thoughts were. The notepad is typically used for short, concise notes which then get transferred onto the computer. So, I was not quite used to writing down such large bits of information. However, this was not a difficult task. As I was writing this reflection, I made the realization that I was able to better pace and flow my ideas from pen to paper. I believe this was a result of the speed in which I can write. For example, I can type quite quickly on a keyboard and I noticed that my words were typed out before my thoughts even finished. In contrast, my writing speed matches my thought speed and I felt as though my thoughts flowed more smoothly onto the notepad.

When using the notepad, mistakes are welcomed. After all the notepad was designed to invoke ideas, thoughts, creations, and in rough form. I am not concerned about layout, organization, or aesthetics. Rather, I strive to get the ideas down as they are produced. This is the beauty of the notepad. Overall, I prefer mechanical typing over handwriting 90% of the time. Essays, emails, reports, lesson plans, etc. are created much more efficiently and aesthetically pleasing for the reader when typed out. However, there is a niche advantage to handwriting. That is, it allows you to extend your creativity through your pen. My handwriting – which seems to be a mix of cursive and non-cursive – is unique to me and my thoughts, and this skill provides me with an outlet for my ideas.

So many people ask me about my bicycle technology class that I teach at Riverside secondary and it is essentially your course where students have the opportunity to work with their hands how to learn repair and maintenance tasks on bicycles and also how to ride them safely in the community because what we’re trying to achieve is a well-rounded 2 approach to everything that is related to bicycles so that includes manufacturing it includes mechanics and includes Transportation commute healthy lifestyle fitness so a bike program is it is unique in that it includes many different areas curricular areas we are also in partnership with a local Tri-Cities charitable zation which is kids sport and kids sport raises money through selling used sporting equipment to donate to kids in the community who are unable to afford sports and they helped fund or subsidized the funds so that so that kids don’t need to worry about the finances in terms of being able to play sports now what they do is they provide us with a class set of bikes for our students to fix and repair and all these bikes come in either broken or in need of two knots or need a replacement parts and we spend the semester fixing and repairing and tuning up these bikes and we spend about a week sorry we spend every Friday once a week learning road safety and learning how to ride your bike in the community and properly and learning how to communicate learning more about how the rules of the road and Healthy Living so that on Fridays we eventually go on local bike rides within the community as a class in this is a great and safe way for us and the students to learn how to ride their bike properly so at the end of the semester be then give these bikes back to kids sport where they then sell the bikes where the proceeds then go to students who can’t play sports and this happens every year so it’s a pretty cool cycle where we get bikes we fix them we ride them and give them back they sell them for money and they donate that money to families and then we get more bikes we fix them and then so on and so on now this program started about three years ago with only the skills development programs for students with special needs and it overtime has become a full-fledged it’s where anyone is able to take it and I feel pretty fortunate that I’m the one who was able to teach these students how to work on bikes as well as how to ride them safely and encourage a healthy option for commute patient as well as and an alternative to physical exercise for myself I have also learned a lot about biking in the different disciplines in Viking I recently got into mountain biking because of this I’ve become more into Road biking as well and it has become more than just a Leisure sport has become now a recreational sport for myself and i’m excited to continue building the program and continue growing the culture of bikes at our school.

Reflection

This activity was interesting because of the fact we were not supposed to edit or monitor our story while it was being typed on the screen. I attempted to tell the story as I would if I were speaking to a friend or colleague and was surprised by the results. Firstly, there are numerous grammatical errors and punctuation errors that make it difficult to read. This reiterates the importance of revision! The sentence structure does not appropriately capture pauses, breaks, enunciation, etc. Furthermore, I noticed there were multiple words that were translated incorrectly which causes confusion when reading through the paragraph. Although, one would still be able to understand the story based on assumptions and guesses. This may be a result of multiple factors, including hardware, software, speaking tone, volume, and speed.

The most common mistake is that there are no breaks – periods or commas. Therefore, the entire story seems to be one long run-on sentence. Another mistake that I noticed is that the voice-to-text software will also pick up speech disfluency or other filler words such as uh, um, well, sorry, etc. If this were a true written text, an author would never include these types of filler words. These examples of speech disfluency would be some of the major changes made if the story were to be scripted. However, in a voice-to-text program, it may be difficult to add breaks such as periods and commas.

The main difference between oral storytelling and written storytelling is the speaker. Oral storytelling involves more than just words, there are also expressions, body language, enunciation, volume, tone, etc. which can have differing effects on the story itself. Overall, I thought this task was an intriguing experiment to gauge some of those differences.