1. Manual Text by Anna Rzhevska
I have decided to visit Anna’s blog as she has chosen to write a 500-word reflection by hand which has been one of the options available to us in Task 4. I wanted to choose someone’s work that is different than mine. I have opted for making potato stamps to fulfil the requirements of this assignment, although I absolutely love handwriting. It has been interesting and captivating to read Anna’s blog for a variety of reasons.
First, she is referring to the works of Albert Bandura who is of Ukrainian origin and famous for his Bobo doll experiment. I have been studying his work in my first course of the MET program and it has been nice to refresh my memory and see how Anna has made connections to his work as well.
Second of all, Anna speaks Russian and I am assuming she has roots there. Being Ukrainian myself, it is always exciting to see other people from that part of the world pursuing their education, careers, and dreams in Canada. Anna’s manual text has been written in Russian, yet I am unable to read it as the picture is taken from a distance. I assume it has been done deliberately and would like to respect Anna’s privacy.
Third, Anna mentions in her post that she prefers pencils and likes the possibility of correcting everything neatly. Unlike Anna, I am not used to writing with a pencil. I went to primary school in Ukraine and still remember using fountain pens when I was in grades 1-4. We had to bring ink reservoirs to school to refill them and it has been a messy process. We used pencils only for drawing. I did my Bachelor’s in Philology in Ukraine as well and during my University years, we were still taking notes during lectures using a ballpoint pen and a notebook. None of our instructors have been incorporating technology into their practice. I do not know if things have changed since then, but it has not been that long ago (about 7 years from now!). When I moved to Canada, I did my B. Ed and it has been fascinating to see every student bring their devices to lectures and quickly and swiftly typing their notes on them. I definitely wanted to fit in and tried doing the same. And let me tell you, it soon caused me a lot of frustration and disappointment. I have quickly realized that I am much faster at handwriting than typing and hence more efficient and productive. Moreover, I was able to draw and scatch in my notebook which helps me tremendously visualize and remember the concepts I am learning about. Now that I teach in Canada, I like that my students are using pencils and are encouraged to make mistakes and correct them if necessary. It has been totally different when I was a student and mistakes made in ink were not that easy to correct. They were meant to be visible so that the teacher can remove the points for the assignment. For such an overachiever and perfectionist as I am, it has been hurtful and difficult to go through that punitive process especially when those mistakes were not deliberate. I remember my parents using bleach to remove the ink from my notebook and help me correct the mistakes before handing in my work and assignments to the teacher. Erasers did not work 🙂
This assignment has inspired me to research the origins of pens for my final project.
2. Vera Xiong’s Emoji Story
I have come across Vera’s emoji story and have been pleasantly surprised to see her mention my name in her post. Thank you, Vera! 🙂
Unfortunately, I have never watched a Squid Game television show and therefore, could not guess Vera’s emoji story. I can definitely get a sense of what it is all about by looking at the selection of emojis that reveal the plot. I absolutely loved how Vera disclosed the title of the show in an interactive and engaging way. Unlike me using my notes app on my iPhone, Vera decided to use a bilingual keyboard called Sougou Keyboard. We have both faced the same difficulties when completing the task as there are not enough emojis to correspond to the words we were using regardless of the app and keyboards we have tried. It is evident that they both had their limitations and caused some difficulties.
Vera makes interesting connections between Egyptian hieroglyphs and modern-day iconology, typology, and semiotics expressing that they somewhat resemble and have common features. Moreover, she draws parallels between Egyptian writing and the use of emojis in modern-day communication. Similar to Vera, I can also see how these ancient communication tools have found their way into modern society. When I was reading her post, it made me think of the phrase “everything genius is simple“. Thousands of years ago, Egyptians have been using hieroglyphics instead of words and yet again Millenials are going back to using emojis to convey emotions and feelings when texting, for example. Even though it is evident that there is technological progress, it can still be argued that humans are going back to the basics in the way we communicate. In many cases, words are being substituted by pictographs, emoticons, and emojis of popular culture.
Technology has increased students’ ability to use emojis in schools and Universities, for example, blending Japanese culture, where they were first invented, with other cultures and creating new norms of communication (Freedman, 2019). Oftentimes, the participants adopt emojis as a global set of signifiers, despite “the necessity of understanding emoji’s local cultural contexts and corporate origins” (Freedman, 2019, p. 62). Macfadyen et al. (2004) argue that “human cultures shape and are shaped by technological development” (p. 280). I think that emojis, even though they resemble Egyptian hieroglyphs, reveal that Japanese popular culture is being globalized and inherited by people from diverse cultures and show the need in learning more about cultural literacy and the use of emoticons in text-based communications.
References:
Freedman, A. (2019). Cultural Literacy in the Empire of Emoji Signs. Emoticons, Kaomoji, and Emoji, 44–66. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429491757-3
Macfadyen, L. P. (2006). Virtual ethnicity: The new digitization of place, body, language, and memory. Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education, 8 (1).
3. Victoria Cameron’s Digital Bag
I absolutely loved Victoria’s creative and innovative approach to this task. Instead of taking a picture of her bag and describing the contents of it, like I did, she has decided to record a video of the contents of her phone. It has been fascinating to see which apps she has downloaded on her mobile device and the reasoning behind that.
Right from the beginning, I can tell that Victoria likes to organize her apps into categories and group them based on how frequently she uses them. I have started using a similar approach to the apps I have on my phone, but so far I have only grouped them (finance, health, social networking, etc.). Keeping work and life balance has been a top priority for me this year, so I have decided to move work-related apps to a whole new page on my device away from other applications so that I refrain from checking my work emails when I am off the clock. Similar to Victoria, I also like taking pictures and have a ton of them on my phone. I have never heard of an app called Libby and will definitely download it on my phone, so I can listen to books as well when I have free time.
Victoria has made many excellent points that highlight the technological progress and the benefits of having different apps on your phone such as a library app, an online shopping app, a banking app, etc. Although I benefit from using such apps on my phone too, I refrain from providing my fingerprints, for example, to Apple and use a regular passcode. I feel like nowadays the boundaries between what is private and what is not have been very blurry and big commercial companies such as Apple request and collect so much unnecessary information about their customers (for example, IDs, banking information, fingerprints, vaccination records, etc.). The question is, why is this necessary and can we still benefit from using the product without having to provide all of this private information to a third party? Where is this information stored and who is using it, and for what reasons?
4. DeeDee’s Mode-Bending Assignment
DeeDee’s approach to mode-bending is very creative and eye-catching. She has used Thinglink and many interactive features to describe the contents of her bag. It was really fun to click on interactive buttons and watch her use items from her bag. I have used such applications as Wordwall and H5P in the past to create multimodal and interactive maps, diagrams, presentations, and videos for my students. I have never heard of the application DeeDee used, the ThingLink, and will definitely add it to my tool kit. As teachers, we often create online learning environments for our students and aim for them to be engaging, interesting, educational, and stimulating for our students. I feel that DeeDee’s design is a great example of such a space that engages all of the students’ senses and activates their metacognitive processes. Besides, it is easy to embed it in a blog and the students could have fun creating something similar as part of their homework assignment.
DeeDee’s mode-bending assignment has completely been different than mine. I have chosen to rewrite my long “What’s in my bag” essay and come up with acrostic poems for each of the items in my bag. Then, I have recorded myself reciting those poems with appropriate background sounds, so that the listeners can guess the keyword ascribed in my poems. DeeDee, on a contrary, has chosen to present the contents in her back in a different format which is multi-modal, self-explanatory, and self-directed. I have been inspired by her work as I have not thought of such a format when I was working on this assignment.
5. Braden’s Twine Story
Creating Twine stories has been one of the most exciting and engaging projects in this course! When I was creating my story, I had my primary students in mind and that was why I had used a plot of the story that they had already known (“There was an old lady who swallowed a fly”) as a base to create my own. In that way, it would have been easier for them to understand how to create stories in Twine.
When I completed my assignment, it had been a challenge uploading it to my personal blog and when I was reviewing my classmates’ stories, I was experiencing some difficulties accessing theirs too. To my surprise, Branden’s twine story has been easily accessible and quick to download (this is something I would want to learn from him!). In just a few seconds, I was playing an interactive story with a super engaging plot!
I could tell that Braden has put a lot of time and effort into his work. His story is very organic, funny, and extremely engaging! In his reflection, Braden says, “Typically, higher levels of engagement and enjoyment can be linked to higher levels of comprehension of what was being read”. I could not agree with him more! Because Braden made some of his text appear and disappear on the screen, I was glued to the screen the whole time. I was eager to click on the next line as soon as possible to reveal the next line of the story! In the future, I would definitely want to learn more interactive features of Twine to engage my readers in the same way Brendan did. I think the plot of the story, its multi-modal and interactive features have contributed to his overall success with this task. Congratulations, Brendan and well done! Your work has been a true inspiration for me!
6. Whitney’s Golden Record Curation Assignment
Whitney had very different reasoning for curating the list of her songs than I did. She has chosen geography to be the main criteria and decided to include as many cultures and sounds from around the world as she could regardless of the time period. If there were more than one song from the same geographic region, Whitney chose one based on her own preferences. It has been interesting to read her reflections and explanations of why she has included some songs and not others. Most importantly, I think she has challenged herself in including nature sounds, such as the ocean, earth, and whale sounds, as this criterion is quite specific and unique.
This task has been a challenging auditory experience for me as I am a visual person. I was initially thinking of listening to all music compositions and then grouping them based on the type of instruments they have used to produce the music. I have quickly realized that it is very overwhelming to do so for me and decided to pick only classic music compositions. The fact that Whitney managed to pick such a distinct parameter to curate her list has been very awe-inspiring for me.
In our reflections, Whitney and I discussed personal biases and White privilege. We both seemed to agree that those factors reveal themselves as the lists are being compiled. I agree with Whitney, that people often make decisions and choices based on their cultural backgrounds and biases, which can lead to shortsighted decisions and choices. That is why, in my opinion, it is crucial to be aware of such biases and stereotypes we have and ensure they are not affecting our decision-making. In my reflection, I have included a link to the Project Implicit which reveals people’s potential biases based on their test responses.