Category: Linking Assignment

For my final linking assignment, I am comparing Carla’s Task 12 with my task 12. I have chosen to link with Carla’s speculative future because we both chose to use Twine to deliver our narrative. While unsure of Carla’s rationale to use Twine for this task, I thought Twine was the perfect platform to easily showcase multiple narratives.

Carla’s Twine was a captivating narrative. Her speculation of Andre and Maya’s interpretation of this experience in this course led to very different futures. While Andre’s Xcell concept is frightening, there is something believable about it! I appreciated Maya’s rationale thought – it is quite like my own ideas in that they aren’t too far fetched! The highlight of the Twine though was the fun speculation that Ernesto will soon be the MET program director! I guess his scholarly lurking finally paid off!

Carla’s Twine was more story-like than mine. I tried to keep the writing concise on each page and supplement with sound effects and photos. I enjoyed the effects Carla chose, but did find that when the hyperlink was mid-paragraph, I would sometimes click the link before I read everything! And then there was no back button and no restart option at the end. This meant I needed to re-open the link to go through the game again to choose Maya after first choosing Andre to get the job!

Looking through Carla’s blog, her posts show exceptional thought and clarity for each task. Her posts are well written and always supplemented with a video, link or relatable gif/meme. I think I remember in one of our first video conferences she mentioned that this is her last MET course. I just began this program in January, so I have often looked at her posts and seen the experience and insight she brings in from the other courses she’s taken.

When reading her introduction to her blog, she mentions the unexpected twists and turns yield the most rewarding experiences. I wonder if she is referring to this program and her experiences throughout her journey. In only 8 months, I’ve already seen these twists and turns (being in the middle of a pandemic probably helps with this!).

Carla’s blog layout is similar to mine, with a running list of posts on the main page, allowing easy access to each by scrolling down the page. I appreciate how she also organizes her blog with the menu across the top of the page. Her mutlimodal posts make use of many of the affordances of WordPress – hyperlinks, video integration, etc.,  all leading to a rich experience for the reader.

For this link I’ve chosen to explore Helen’s Task 12, as compared to my task 12 we, because we both speculated about the future of food in 2050.

 

Helen’s restaurant of the future requires two health scan options – one is almost similar to the current Covid-19 scanning some places are doing now and the other is far more in depth, accessing health records. I didn’t go into as much detail about health requirements for my Simply Food Movement, other than there is little choice for food options, but any changes must be physician approved. I like that she has included health concerns (like diabetes), pregnancy and allergies. These are things that I didn’t include in my future.

Helen’s infographic is well laid out, making her ideas easy to follow. While the visual works well on it’s own,  she also includes a full reflection and links to this week’s readings. Her reflection helps to give more insight into her thoughts behind the task. 

Both of our speculations draw on current changes happening in our food system today. This helps to make our speculations believable, which I have found makes it easier to follow. (I am not a fan of the speculations that are too far fetched – I’ve never been a fantasy fan for that reason!).

We also both used the same “story” as a base for our speculations and relied on subtle changes for show the two narratives. I find this particularly effective as it made the narrative easier to follow. For mine, I didn’t see the point in creating two totally different pieces – I liked that I could link the two and show two perspectives. This is what I liked about Helen’s – it is totally believable that restaurants will (and already have started) change to become more tech-savvy and intuitive to personal preferences.

In looking thorough Helen’s blog, I came across her final project on the exclamation mark. I resonated with me because I am one of those people who uses a lot of exclamation marks! While I don’t often use them in work emails (emails to colleagues or parents) or in my course work, I do (over?) use them in texts and occasionally in my comments on blog posts. I loved this visual as it is a constant struggle for me!(!!!)

Helen’s blog is well laid out, with headings for each of the assignments in the course, creating an organized way to access her tasks, links and project. I have put all of my assignments as a running thread of posts, as I have limited experience with blogs and I went off of the recommendation to not put things on separate pages.

Looking thought Helen’s tasks, I appreciate her use of various media – infographics, photos and screen-casting presentations. This media makes her posts eye catching and easy to follow. Great work!(!!!)

For this post I’m linking Kristin’s Twine experience with my own.

Kristin and I had a similar experience putting our Twine together – it was much more time consuming that we thought and in the end we both felt our Twine’s were fairly basic. I really enjoyed the background images as I felt they added such beauty to her story. As someone who grew up on a farm (although a dairy farm with no pigs), I can totally related to the trials and frustrations of chasing escaped animals!

Both of our stories are simple and slightly cheeky/funny but have many layers and possible directions to follow. Kristin’s story has a few different endings, but they all end with the same phrase “all’s well that ends well.” I decided to have all of the paths in my story end with the same outcome – so my story starts and ends the same place no matter which choices you make. I found it difficult to link to my common ending for some of the paths, so I had to edit my text to better lead to that point. It would have worked for me end my paths in a similar way to Kristin’s – maybe on my next Twine!

In looking through Kristin’s blog I really like the theme she chose (almost to the point where I want to change the theme on mine!). I love the colours and the way the tasks and assignments are on a tool bar on the right – I find it makes it more obvious when looking to move to another section or page.

Our home pages are similar – a running list of our blog posts. I find this a bit harder to follow on my blog and prefer to use the toolbar to access the tasks on her page. I have just been adding each task as a new post, but I’m feeling like I need to play around with my page to make it easier to navigate like Kristin’s.

I find her blog interesting to read as it is informative, insightful and filled with pictures and links, which as a new MET student I appreciate! Thanks for the insight Kristin!

For my second link, I’ve chosen Sasha’s Manual Scripts task to compare with mine.

I related to Sasha’s post because I experienced a similar issue when writing out my story – physical pain from writing for an extended period of time! While my issue was that my hand went numb, Sasha also needed to take regular breaks to stretch out her hand. It’s crazy to think that we used to write everything by hand ….

Another interesting similarity is we both made a conscious decision to use  pen. This speaks to the permanence of our text and how we both knew we were committed to the words we were putting on paper. My response as a “diary” type entry would not have necessarily required a ton of revision, so I even more so admire Sasha’s writing ability.

Both Sasha and I are teachers, yet we vary greatly in our penmanship. My writing is usually legible, but it can get messy and I find it difficult to keep in a straight line (especially on a whiteboard!). Sasha has beautiful, clean and clear writing, which means that her carefully thought out words are always legible for the reader to understand. Her clean writing and thoughtful words effectively portray the message she is sending. Maybe this is why I am not an elementary teacher and she is!

Sasha’s writing and reflections for each task are scholarly and thorough, yet still easily understood and relatable. I appreciate this as a “newbie” to the MET program – I haven’t had much time to brush up on the academic speak that fills so many journal articles where I have to read them twice. She has added an audio component to most of her tasks, which ensures added understanding for her readers.

The organization and theme of our blogs differ – my blog’s main page is a run-on list of all of my blog post, while her’s is her intro. I think that is a great way to greet people visiting your page as our backgrounds and “real” lives can provide so much insight into our posts and reflections in an academic sense.

In general I am finding it difficult to preview all of the blogs of my classmates because they are so varied – the limitations set out for our blogs allow for some flexibility, but I feel that we could offer much more if we were able to set up the blogs however we wanted. To have all tasks and linking assignments on one page can make everything look like it runs together. I prefer the set up that Sasha has with each on a separate page.

I think I link to Sasha’s blog also because we are both mom’s to two lively boys and we spend the majority of our spare time in the outdoors! It’s amazing to think how well we can connect with others completely online!!