ETEC 540 Momina Abid

This was a really fun task and sort of eerie too! I kept imagining aliens listening to these sounds at the same time as me. It was even more challenging trying to pick out 10 musical pieces that represent all of humanity on Earth. 

I picked the following pieces:

1. Senegal: percussion recorded by Charles Duvelle
2. United States: “Johnny B. Goode” written and performed by Chuck Berry
3. Japan: shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi
4. Austria: Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14 by Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor 
5. Peru: panpipes and drum collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima
6. Azerbaijan: Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes recorded by Radio Moscow
7. Germany: Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano 
8. Germany: Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor
9. India: raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar
10. Java: court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers” recorded by Robert Brown

I tried to include most geographical locations. However, I also chose some that I think would be useful in communicating with extra-terrestrial life if it exists out there, such as Bach, as mentioned by Tim Ferris in Twenty thousand hertz podcast. I chose some classical music by Mozart. Some sounds I included sounded soothing, welcoming, and yet mysterious such as the Peru and Azerbaijan Bagpipes. I included Beethoven because of the varying pitch and frequencies of music. As a South Asian myself, Jaat Kahan Ho felt like a natural choice and made me feel represented. 

References:

Music from Earth. (n.d.). NASA.

Taylor, D. (Host). (2019, April). Voyager golden record [Audio podcast episode]. In Twenty thousand hertz. Defacto Sound. 

I turned my submission for Task 1 into an interactive game that you can access through this link:

https://arcade.makecode.com/S40247-06221-41179-50822

Initially, I was unsure how to redesign it in a way that was unique but still carried significance. I had many ideas, like designing an augmented or virtual reality scenario, or even making a twine game again. But in the end I went with Makecode Arcade as a tool to build my game. There were several reasons for this. I could design the items of my bag myself, adding a visual layer to the game, I could add fun sounds to each action or item, and most of all, I found it easy to use.

This task combined with the second reading of the week made me think deeply about the benefits of mode-bending. The many examples mentioned by The New London Group (1996) including the example of spoken language being a matter of not only audio but also linguistic design made me understand how multimodality works.

References:

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

This task seemed easy at first but turned out to be a challenge. I just chose the last movie that I saw. Initially I thought it would not be too hard since the premise of the movie was simple enough. I started off with the title but learned soon enough that it’s going to be hard with all movies. I began by focusing on all the words, then ended up going for the common nouns, then tried to use emojis for ideas. However, even with a plethora of emojis available to choose from, I was still struggling to come up with appropriate ones to describe the movie. For instance, I wanted to include a ‘road’ emoji but could not find it. It made me realize how we’ve gotten used to the availability of so many emojis that describe almost every experience we feel when not so long ago, we only had a handful of emojis available to choose from. And even though I do use emojis often to communicate and express how I feel, it can be hard to use them for things such as movie plots. When Bolter (2001) said, 

“Words no longer seem to carry conviction without the reappearance as a picture of the imagery that was latent in them”(p. 51).

It made me reflect on my own emoji use in my daily life and it was obvious that if I wanted to say something that I thought might offend someone, I would include a silly emoji to show it’s not that serious. I started conveying emotion through emojis or hiding what I actually meant to say.

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Gamenight Murder.html

I have used twine once before to create a sort of choose your own adventure game. That was over a year ago so using twine again required a bit of practice once again. I went back to find my old project to see how I had incorporated images and linked different things to each other. I also had to do some additional research to find out how to center align images. But I used this task to explore my creativity. I always wanted to design an escape room / murder mystery type of scenario in a game so I tried achieving that with this twine task, however once I began doing it, it felt like I had bit off more than I can chew as the time for this task was limited and I had to do the readings for this week as well. 

However, I still enjoyed the process. My game is still a work in progress but as I have worked on it throughout the week, I have used my creativity muscle which I hadn’t in a very long time. And as I kept using it, more and more ideas opened up in my mind. And just like a tree spreading its roots or branches to make connections, that is exactly what it felt like designing and thinking whilst using twine. And when I read the required reading for this week, it stuck in my head that tree diagrams have been used for many, many years to do exactly what we are doing in twine (Bolter, 2001). Using twine to make so many connections and links felt like I was building a canopy of tree branches linking together to tell a story.

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

This task was harder than I thought! I started off thinking how hard would it really be to write down a few words but I had no idea writing five hundred words by hand would take me this long, and make me think so hard. I wrote a page thinking this may be five hundred words but it was only a hundred! I use my diary to occasionally write down my feelings, make plans, track goals etc but writing something creative after so long turned out to be a challenge. At this point in life, I am more used to typing although back when I used to be in school, writing by hand was the norm and not a challenge at all. 

When I made a mistake, I either just went along with the mistake, disregarding it, or cut out the word to write what I wanted. While writing by hand, I realized I care less about the mistakes than when I am typing. I also tend to reread my typed sentences for grammar or spelling mistakes, or they are automatically highlighted so I am more aware of them. While writing, I did not bother rereading what I’d written and just went along with it. 

Also after writing for a while, my handwriting automatically became sloppier than when I had started and it almost looked like I changed fonts. But I did not care as I realized I am immersed in the process. Much more so than when I am typing. 

I definitely used to think typing and writing by hand were interchangeable ways of jotting down words but I was wrong. Typing on digital devices has literally changed the way we think on a very deep level. At least for me, it no longer requires the same attention span or focus. 

I think I prefer both ways for different reasons and contexts and would not want to lose the ability to write with my hand ever. 

Unscripted Story

“Last year, I think this was, actually, this was December, 2023. Um, and my husband and I and a few of our friends decided to travel to Pakistan together. So we all booked the same flight and got our seats together, and then, um, we flew to Pakistan. This was really exciting because we were taking such a long international flight together for the 1st time. And We were really excited, looking forward to it because usually, uh, during long haul flights, um, You’re really lost as to what to do, especially with this airline because, um, the airline that we flew, uh, did not have any in-flight entertainment. Um, and so we were like, okay, we’ll have each other and each other’s company. So we packed a few board games in our carry-on so we could play during the flight and it was really fun. We could also talk to each other easily. Um, And yeah, it was a really pleasant flight and then when we reached Pakistan, we um, had so many weddings to attend. Um, One of my friends who flew with us, he also had his wedding. Um, so it was a really packed trip. Um, I remember we had to attend this one day we had to attend 3 weddings at the same uh, during the same day. 2 of which were also in the same time slot. 
Um, and so I I wanted to spend more time with my family, so I told my husband, I can’t do this. Um, especially because it was, um, weddings were of his friends. And so I said, I’m not going to attend. 
I instead spend time with my family and you can go ahead. And, you know, attend for the both of us. And so then what he did was he, um, drove to the 1st wedding of the people who knew, um, who he knew would start their, um, Pentagon time, and then he drove to the 2nd one and he changed his clothes in the car, and then he attended the 2nd wedding, and then at night he ended 3rd, and by the end of the day, he was so exhausted. 
And I was glad that I didn’t do that. Um, and then there were a lot more, um, weddings and we got to socialize with so many people. December and January is usually the time when all immigrants are usually visiting back home, Pakistan, and so we’re all able to sort of get together from different parts of the world. 
And um, yeah, just talk about life and it’s, it’s a very nice break. It’s also a very nice break from Um, the really, really cold Canadian winters. Um, because over here we usually feel the absence of family more during winters. 
Um, with the days being really short and um, People just preferring to, you know, stay at home, um, do their own thing, and then with like, um, during winters, the energy is also really like low and people are just, um, generally not up for making plans. Um, So yeah, um, this year I am looking forward to winters because now I have a baby and his uh, birthday falls uh, in January. And I’m also like determined to make this winter a lot of fun. 
Maybe plan a trip or do more activities and it’s also a lot of fun to plan the day with my kid because it’s lovely to see the world from his eyes. Um, And the way that he’s experiencing things for the 1st time. really makes me happy and excited to do things with him. Um, and he’s just so entertaining. 
So I really enjoy his company. So yeah, that’s my plan for the winter.”

My Observations

This was a very interesting task. I was unsure how I would speak unscripted into a microphone for five minutes but once I got going, I started linking things together and made it to the end. After I was done and I saw the written text, I was pleasantly surprised by the small number of errors. I used the voice memo application on my phone. Usually when I receive a voicemail which is converted into text, it is almost completely incorrect, so I was expecting something similar. But this was different. It was not 100% correct but it got pretty close. I have been an English speaker since the very beginning so I think that plays a critical role in this. I believe my accent is also not too heavy. I have been around English speakers for forever and living in a country where it is spoken daily so naturally I have a lot of practice. 

The written text however does have some deviations from a text that may be typed out. There are random capitalizations of words, numbers are mentioned numerically instead of in words, some words are repeated, all the things that make it easy to identify that it was not typed out thoughtfully. I know these things because as a student who has studied in English all her life, I have been made to follow very specific grammatical guidelines for the submission and acceptability of my work. So it is easy for me to identify when it deviates from the norm I have been taught. 

The text also reflects the mistakes I made while speaking and then how I corrected them. It also shows the many ‘um’ and ‘uh’ I say while speaking. In a way, reading back my mistakes and their correction looks like it may be helpful in some cases where I need to look back at my thought process. But the repetition of some words and unnecessary pauses as well as ‘ums’ would affect my reading speed and overcrowd the text. 

I think if the story was scripted, or I had done a few takes of the same story, or even was reading off of something, the errors would almost be non-existent. There may be some words that may be incorrect such as spend may be spelt as ‘spent’ or vice versa.

11:44 Dr. Boroditsky mentions if you read and write in a language that goes from right to left, then you’ll also organize time from right to left

This is an interesting thought for me because I am a multilingual speaker which includes languages that read from both right to left and left to right. So when I am thinking in English, I think of timelines as right to left, but when I think in Urdu or Arabic, my timeline switches from left to right. 

13:25 Dr. Boroditsky mentions in mandarin the past is up and the future is down

The concept that time does not solely exist on a horizontal axis in all languages is very unique and eye-opening to me. I always thought this has nothing to do with language and just how people think but actually many languages differ in how they think of the past and future. It’s also almost disorienting for me to think that the future is backwards and the past is forwards when gesturing.

18:39 Dr. Boroditsky mentions language has causal power so you can change how people think by changing how they talk

Five minutes after I heard the previous concept and was still wondering how it’s possible, Dr. Boroditsky addressed my question by talking about how we know language is what’s causing people to think about time in different ways. So I realized it is not just language but also other aspects of culture that may be playing a part in this.

25:03 Dr. Boroditsky mentions that hurricanes are given female names because people underestimate their strength and do not evacuate

This was such an interesting fact that Dr. Boroditsky highlighted and even though it made me a little angry, I got to thinking if I do the same. And it’s true. In Urdu, everything has a gender and so whenever I have to describe something that has a female grammatical gender, I use feminine adjectives and vice versa. 

35:32 Dr. Boroditsky mentions that if you want eight potatoes, you say I want elbow potatoes

This was also very interesting to hear. You never stop and think that numbers may not exist in some languages or there may be a different way of describing them. It is obvious that other languages have different alphabetical scripts or letters but you almost never think about numbers. 

42:00 Dr. Boroditsky mentions that if you renamed prunes to plums, then young people would be more excited to buy them

This point really hit deep as it made me realize how deep-rooted some of our stereotypes are, relating to some words. And how products are marketed to make us want to buy them. A similar example would be ‘organic’. Ever since having a baby, I’ve been looking for more ‘organic’ options to buy but even those sometimes have a million things in their ingredients that I do not understand. This makes me think that sometimes just writing organic on the product packaging may push you to buy it when really it may have many preservatives and additives in it. 

References:

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Hi everyone. My name is Momina Abid and I am currently living in Toronto, ON. Presently, I am a stay at home mom to an almost 8 month old. Previously, I have worked in a wide range of roles, my most recent one being a Learning Designer and teaching coding to students and teachers across Canada. This is my last MET course. 

For this task, I chose the bag I have been carrying around everyday for nearly a decade now.

I’ve been carrying around this bag with pretty much the same items for years now. Even after going through major life changes such as graduating from college, getting a job, getting married, moving countries, and then having a baby, the contents have more or less remained the same. I find that this size and these contents work best for me when I am on the go, no matter what phase of life I am in.

For instance, having a hand cream has always been a constant because I have very dry hands which really irritate me. I am also a no-makeup person, so having a lipstick that I can apply during commute makes me look ready for the day. I also always keep a hairclip because I hate when my hair gets in my face. I also always keep some cash on me in case I need to use it. Even though almost everywhere you go now, you have the option to pay digitally but I still encounter people only accept cash transactions.

I have a cardholder which holds all of my important cards such as credit and debit card, Driver’s license, and health card. Even though all payments can now be done via phone, I still like to keep my cards handy in case my phone dies. After Covid-19, sanitizer became a common item in my bag. And I always keep a pad in case I start my period out of the blue and do not have access to one. The key is to a storage locker where my sister in law’s furniture is stored as she is in the process of moving. Not pictured here but usually in my bag are my own house keys as well as my phone and any receipts I may have acquired during the day. However, I clean out my bag regularly so you will not find any extras or things not needed in here.

The items in my bag have a lot of printed text on them giving them a name, identifying manufacturer, instructions of use among other things. There is a lot of text on the cards I carry as well. Especially my driver’s license which includes my current home address and other personal details. The hand creams and lipsticks were made in different countries, and bought from different countries around the world. They have text in different languages apart from English as well. And they all have a barcode as well. The cards I carry also have barcodes or microchips embedded into them. All of these things show that communication in today’s world is not limited to words only. It also takes place via numbers, patterns, and microprocessors. 

Since I am in my late twenties, this bag would not have existed 15 or 25 years ago. I only started carrying one, once I moved out of my parents’ home and started college. 

An archeologist would be able to identify that this bag belonged to a female, younger than the average age for menopause, and would know exactly where I lived and in which time period (probably post COVID-19). Also would be able to guess the languages I used to speak, my banking preferences, my ability to drive, and my obsession with hand creams.