Mark Pepe’s ETEC 540 Course Site

The ETEC 540 Podcast with Mark Pepe
The 2022 edition of What’s in my bag?

For this weeks task, I decided to create a podcast in the style of the tech reviewer and lifestyle YouTuber Justine Tse. He has many videos about the tech contents in bags: What’s in my School Tech Backpack being an example. 

My goal was to share the significance of the contents in my bag as a YouTuber would review tech. I would like to tie this in with the New London Groups idea of Transformative Practice. I chose to recreate the discourse of an academic assignment into a YouTube tech review by taking on the identity of a tech YouTuber. I did this by changing the delivery of linguistic design, speaking energetically and attempting to emulate some of Justin Tse’s vocal mannerisms. I could have simply read what I wrote, added some music before and after, upload it and call it a podcast. But we are redesigning the original task. I wanted to keep the essence of the original by stating the significance for the Italian books, for example, but to bend the mode I had to change the medium from text to podcast; intertextuality.

This was a fun task that gave me to opportunity to role-play being a YouTuber and podcaster. I found it interesting that I had to consider the script and text when delivering the same message on two different mediums.

References

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

Sage’s Manual Scripts Task

Sage and I had a similar experience regarding manual scripts. One point I resonated with was how a manual script “forces me to reflect before putting pen to paper.” Sage talks about making an annotation to move a chunk of text and this reminded me of outlining. In high school, I was taught to create an outline before writing an essay. That way, I can have a clear flight path for my written work; the reflection before putting pen to paper. For me, I have stopped using the method of creating a proper outline for my writing. For large works of writing, I’ll create an Apple Note, and I’ll put my thoughts and ideas down, then I would cut and paste to the section where I want that idea to go. Or, I just start typing and see where things go, then cut, paste, and revise. After I have the work mostly complete in Apple Notes I’ll then copy the text to Apple Pages, Microsoft Word, or to the blog.

Another point regarding annotating, I didn’t realize how much more effective annotations can be in a digital form. My classmates and I are constantly collaborating through a shared Google Doc. Since we are usually working on the document at different times annotating gives us the opportunity to give insight of our ideas to others. For example, I can convey an idea but maybe I don’t articulate it as effectively as I want, then I would leave an annotation (a comment in Google Docs) for a classmates input for revision. Kalir & Garcia (2019) say that annotations makes your thinking visible and allows others to see how one responds to ideas. Digital annotation is a powerful tool for the user and for collaborating with others.

The digital script wins over the manual script for professional and academic writing. It provides flexibility, an ease of use, and affords more productivity.

References

• Kalir, R., & Garcia, A. (2019). Chapter 1. In Annotation (0 ed.). Retrieved from https://mitpressonpubpub.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/926svib6

I thought the best way to explain the plot of this TV episode was to express ideas, though I tried using syllables just for the name of the TV show.

I started with a syllabic visuals for the title of the show because I thought that would be the best way to understand the ideas conveyed. If one knows the title they should, hopefully, be able to connect to the four human emojis. I tried my best to use emojis that represent their look and somewhat convey their personality.

My strategy to base this assignment was to browse the series by episode and pick one that had a straightforward plot. Just so happened that the next episode in the list made a good candidate. It started with the four main characters at a coffee shop and their discussion on the use of the subway, then they go their separate ways, and the episode concludes with them back in the coffee shop. I used emojis to establish their place then followed by emojis conveying their situation and or feeling. 

Bolter (2001) says, “MOOs may be stories, but they are not sophisticated fictions” (p. 75). I had to break down the scenes to their most basic structure: who and where, or who and what they are feeling. Using just emoji’s it is not possible insert the nuances of the story. Furthermore, Kress speaks of “mode” and “medium,” changing the mode of a story while also changing the medium of the story is quite challenging for the same reasons as above. Changing the mode and medium of video, which has moving pictures and audio, to a static emoji is going to degrade the amount of detail in the story.

I’m looking forward to deciphering everyone else’s emoji story.

Spoiler Alert!  This is an emoji story of Seinfeld Season 3 Episode 14, “The Subway”. I tried two variations for the title sign + wheat (field) or sign + stadium (field) and I chose the later.

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

A screenshot of my map for this Twine project.

I created a walking tour of the city of Florence, Italy. Firenze, in Italian. It is also my favourite city in the world. I used Twine to create a walking tour of a few points of interest as well as introducing some of its famous inhabitants.

I went to Florence to study Italian and to visit the place where my favourite art was created, it’s the birth place of opera. While at language school, we would go on a passeggiata (a leisurely walk with friends and or family, usually in the evening) through a historic neighbourhood. The passeggiata is what I had in mind when creating this creating this Twine (note: this is a second, and expanded, iteration of something that I used in ETEC 524). I picked five points of interest, and for four of them I connected historical figures and events to those locations. In the virtual tour, you can side step back and forth to a person from a location, but not back and forth from location to location. I did so to only allow forward motion on the tour.

Twine uses visual space to help organize connections within your story and it uses text in two ways. Bolter (2001) says, “we tend to conceive of hypertext spatially: the links constitute a path through a virtual space and the reader becomes a visitor or traveller in that space” (p. 29). Twine allows you to see the connections between screens spatially, along with their directions, when creating a story. To view the connections on a map spatially made it easy to organize. Furthermore, Galloway (2004) says, “natural languages such as English of Latin only have a legible state, code has both a legible state and an executable state” (p. 166). I find it interesting that to use Twine one needs just a basic level of coding knowledge to put together their story. To create these stories on Twine we are required to write text that acts as prose and as an instruction to our web browser (hyperlinking forward, back, to the side; linking images and possibly other media). I found the code to insert images online and I copied and pasted them to a basic text editor. That way it’s easy to insert into the Twine screen editor.

Screenshot the code for inserting an image.

This task reminded me of Dr. Vannevar Bush’s Memex machine, and the demonstration video, but rather using sets of buttons and levers we use some text and symbols to code our journey.

Use the widget below to go on the virtual tour of Florence that I created. Enjoy!

References

• Bolter, J.D. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 77-98.
• Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic Monthly, 176(1), 101-108.
• Galloway, A.R. (2004). Protocol: How control exists after decentralization. MIT Press.

I have to admit that I did not reach the expected 500 word limit because my hand started to cramp. That goes to show that I definitely do not write by hand nearly enough, or long enough. When I do, it’s to jot down notes into my notebook, or in the margins of my printed typed work. These are usually lesson and unit plans.

Essentially, I did find this task difficult in a few ways. One was tension in my hand, and the second I will call a cognitive workout. When writing, I found that I was pressing hard into the page and holding on to my pen tightly. This may have been because when I usually jot down my notes I am writing in a mix of cursive and printing. To compare, I added a few lines of how I usually write below my official entry. I needed to write in a clean manner for the diary entry so that others could read, but I don’t write like that which is why it was a struggle. All this printing brought back memories of high school English essays, and short reflection paragraphs in university. In the past, I embraced typing as soon whenever I could.

This diary entry was also a cognitive workout for me because I had to really think ahead while I was writing my entry. Though I never ended up thinking that far ahead. Rather than think of the whole sentence, I would just think of the next word to write. Usually, when I type a sentence I’ll take a look to see if it works, or sometimes I’ll just type a few paragraphs just to get my idea out on to the screen, and then I would revise after. Since writing on paper doesn’t afford that option I would end up just changing what I wanted to say so that it matched the word that I had just wrote. For example, the point where I confused the recipes for Tinga de Pollo and al Pastor (which is where I wrote ”…wait…”) I changed my mind from writing my original idea of the process of making those dishes to just wrapping up the idea and moving on. Why did I do that? Because I did not want to crumple up a piece of paper and start again. Furthermore, I would just scribble out the penmanship errors that I made. Unlike the printing press, where one would have to disassemble an entire stamp if there was a mistake. No thanks! 

I prefer to type than to write by hand, the reason is that the document is never in a final state. It is malleable and can be ever changing. I can delete and undo. Certain word processors will allow me to view and edit versions from a few days before. I don’t have to rip out a piece of paper from the note book and throw it in the recycling bin.

That being said, I do find some handwritten work visually appealing which has also helped me learn and make connections.  To conclude, I have added some past work of mine below. Here, we have a concept map that I created for ETEC 524 using ProCreate on my iPad. Like typing, I was able to erase, redo, and even add a grid to keep things symmetrical. Not only did I have a lot of fun being able to get creative, but that creativity and the writing down those concepts really ingrained those connections.

This is a photo of a few pages of an opera score from a show I did a few years back, Dvorak’s Rusalka. For a while, I was in the habit of colour coding musical directions as a way of check marking that piece of content off the learn list. Also, there are three languages, Czech, German, and a poetic English translation that I wrote; not sure what I taped over to write though. Then various pencil marking for direction, breaths, and phrases are written during rehearsal and coaching. Writing down the translations, making coloured highlights for musical directions, and other pencil marking help me learn the opera deeply.

Broadway Across America’s Hairspray at the National Theatre in Washington, DC.

For this assignment, I used the dictation feature in Apple Notes. I am telling a brief story of a weekend trip to Washington, DC to visit my friend and watch the musical Hairspray.

About a month ago I went to Washington DC I went to visit my friend Peter who is a guitar player for the touring company Broadway across America the show he is in is hairspray the trip started with me going to the airport for my flight to Toronto that started that was supposed to depart just past midnight that was delayed by over an hour I finally take my overnight flight by the time I arrive in Toronto the I missed my flight to DC so then I got rerouted to Montreal and then to Washington DC arrive there at about three in the afternoon and this whole trip was arranged by me and my friends friend Addison so we surprised Peter when I arrived at the hotel he was so shocked and so surprised he was so happy when I arrived I settled in and then we went for dinner at this place called circa by George Washington University it was actually pretty cool staying there because George Washington University was having their graduation ceremony so he saw a lot of graduates walking around with her cap and gown it was really cool and then we went to the theatre and I watched the very first very first I watched my first show of of hairspray it was fantastic it was so good I couldn’t believe how well trained those singers and those musicians were the show was really really tight and it’s not an easy show to perform so that night we walked back from the theatre to our hotel and we got to walk by the the the national monument the Lincoln Memorial and then the next morning we went for breakfast at this I can’t member the name of it but done it’s really cool breakfast the place and I noticed the the bartender was making was making Caesars so I asked the bartender on my cake can I have a Cesar and he just looked at me funny and then I remembered of my old they’re not cold Caesars in America they’re called bloody Mary’s so I ordered a bloody Mary it was delicious had a really good breakfast also had grits for the first time then we took a walk around DC we took a really good look at the Lincoln Memorial then took her a good look at the at the national monument and then there were also many protests going on this is the same week as Roe versus Wade was was in the headlines so it was really interesting being in Washington DC the home of democracy and seeing democracy in action pretty neat and I watched one more performance of of hairspray that night was absolutely fantastic then the next day we went for breakfast one more time and me Peter and his friend Addison we had a really good breakfast I had grits for the second time these grits were way better than the one before but this place they specialize in making their own pop tarts they weren’t bad I got the s’more‘s but I probably should’ve gotten the strawberry instead of dry and then after that just before I was gonna leave I just took another tour of the national mall and then I wanted to go to the capital building but there was there was a big event going on so I couldn’t get in and then I flew home and that was my trip to Washington DC. The end

Let’s look at how my spoken text deviated from the conventions of written English through spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar. Spelling was fairly accurate, thought there were a few words in the text that I did not say but was what the dictation feature notated. Here are some examples, “so I asked the bartender on my cake” and then a little later “they’re not cold Ceasars in America.” Not sure what I said for “on my cake,”  but I could have pronounced the word “called” better rather than my utterance that sounded like “cold.” There weren’t any spelling errors, just some cases of mis-dictation, or mispronunciation on my part. For capitalization, the dictation feature did a good job of automatically capitalizing the names of people, places, and points of interest. Had I known how to add a period while dictating there would have been capitals at the beginning of sentences. Punctuation was picked up by the app for the marking of contractions and possessive nouns. Though on one occasion it didn’t pick up on a possessive noun, “my friends friend,” rather than ‘”my friend’s friend.” Interestingly it notated “s’more’s.” However, there were no commas, or periods; until I added that period at the end by saying “period.”. Regarding grammar, my text looked like strings of clauses and phrases. It turned out to be a poorly executed recreation of James Joyce’s stream of consciousness. Words were often repeated, and I found that this happened when I stopped to think about what I was saying. Also, there were too many words to convey a point, it could have been more concise. As explained, there were plenty of mistakes and things that were wrong, but the story that was told was right.

Boroditsky (2011) says “the way we think influences the way we speak” (p. 65). I previously mentioned stream of consciousness, scripting would have put those thoughts and ideas in order. Like I am doing right now with this task, I have deleted words, changed words, and reordered sentences and paragraphs. If the story was scripted, it would have been more concise. There would would have been more details conveyed with a fewer amount of words. The story would have been linear and there would have been an opportunity weave intricate details and nuance. Gnanadeskin (2011) says “writing is generally more deliberate than speaking, so finished written pieces are much more carefully crafted than a typical spoken sentence (p. 5)

How is oral story telling different from written story telling?

I always thought a well written story would be just as interesting if it was spoken. I recently had a conversation with someone about an assignment I did with my Italian classes. I had the students recite, with text in hand, the first six lines of Canto 1 of Dante’s Inferno. I was asked, “isn’t that old Italian? Would it not be hard to read and understand?” I replied, yes, it is old Italian but it is easy to be read out loud and sounds beautiful. The famous Italian actor and director Roberto Benigni is famous for reciting cantos from La Divina Commedia across Italy. See the video below for an example.

Haas (2013) says that “for Plato… material implements and artifacts of writing are a psychological crutch” (p. 8). As musician, I often feel that I use the musical score as a crutch even though I have the text and music memorized. Just a quick glance makes me feel comforted in being able to convey those musical ideas. Though when I see a performer using music I do wish it wasn’t there because then I would see a true representation of their craft. Though, I must say, that I too am guilty of that. Listening to Orson Well’s perform Julius Caesar is a more authentic representation of the text, and more entertaining.

Oral story telling would have to be captivating. The retelling of my trip to Washington is far from captivating, it’s just a step or two above nonsensical rambling. Ong (2002) says that “speech is inseparable from our consciousness” (p. 9), so to conclude, I am left with the questions, how did orators think about what they are speaking? If it was not written down, how were their thoughts organized? Did they rehearse their speeches? Were they orated exactly the same every time? The more I think about it, the more questions I have.

References

• Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65.
• Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).
• Haas, C. (2013). “The Technology Question.” In Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy. Routledge. (pp. 3-23).
• Ong, W.J. (2002). Orality and Literacy: 30th Anniversary Edition (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203426258
  

Hi everyone, my name is Mark Pepe. I was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. I have been teaching elementary music for the past seven years, but this year I have begun teaching modern languages in high school.

I am currently teaching Italian, I also taught French last year, and one unit in every text book always wants to know what in our bag, “dans ma sac il-y-à” or “nello mio zaino ci sono.” I finally get to answer this question! In this Herschel messenger bag there is:

• Apple MacBook Pro
• AirPods Pro
• Whistle
• Vater musicians ear plugs
• Pencil case with pencils, pens, highlighters, pencil sharpener
• HDMI to USB-C adapter
• USB-A to USB-C adapter
• USB drive
• Guitar pick
• Amici d’Italia Teachers edition 1 and 2
• Amici d’Italia Italiano 1 to 3 student work books 
• UBC notebook
• Conductors baton
• Not shown, but there’s usually an opera piano vocal score

Let’s start with the actual text books that I have in my bag, Amici d’Italia Teachers Edition and Italiano 1 – 3 student workbook. These text books which contain the “authoritative” rules of how to read, write, speak, and listen to the Italian language. They also represent my Italian upbringing, a culture that I love, my passion for language, twenty years of studying and performing Italian opera, and my career as an educator. Teaching those courses bring everything together. Burnaby North Secondary, where I work, is the only school in the district to offer that course because of the large Italian community in the neighbourhood.

To digress for a moment, I want to share the lesson I taught last week; I like to include cultural presentations of history, music, and such. Dante Alighieri, the author of La Divina Commedia, wrote in vulgare, the vulgar street language of medieval Florence. Usually, latin would be used for published works. The language that Dante used was then used by Bocaccio and Petrarch in their works like the Decameron and Canzoniere. This vulgar street language of Florence eventually became the official Italian language once Italy unified.

My MacBook and my AirPods are important “text technologies” in my bag that facilitate communication. For personal use, I use these to for work, listen to podcasts, listen to audiobooks, and watch videos. For work, I send and receive assignments, grade student work to log in an Excel spreadsheet, and listen and watch student dialogues and monologues. I thought of Postman (1992) with his point of the seemingly harmless practice of assigning marks and grades. Also, I feel like a computer technology winner, I could log my grades in a paper log book, but the magic of Formulas in Excel allow me to calculate grades instantly. 

The earplugs and the baton indicate that on top of written and oral language I also have musical literacy. I bring these around for the days when I am a teacher-on-call. I could be conducting concert bands, jazz bands, or elementary music (which is why the earplugs are very important!). 

The conductor’s baton represents someone who has an extensive musical education and experience. One usually sees a maestro waving the baton in front of an orchestra. Scholes (1992) writes about the etymology of canon, and giving one of its many meanings, the French use it as “the word for the law and sacred texts” (p. 140). A true maestro, there aren’t many, knows the musical canon very thoroughly, and the orchestra looks to the maestro for a musical interpretation that true to the sacred text, or law, of the orchestral score. The conductor’s baton is a signifier that the one who holds it is on their path to becoming a maestro, or already is one.

The narrative produced by the image of my bag contents does coincide with what I outwardly project, I think. Those text books show my passion for language and education, the MacBook and AirPods show my love for technology, but the whistle is out of place. That’s for when I have to be a teacher-on-call for P.E. class!

25 years ago, this bag would have a Sony Discman with over ear headphones, clothing for soccer and football practice, a script or musical score for drama class, and no text books because those just would have been left in my locker. My priorities at the time were sports and drama class.

I feel that an archeologist would not be surprised to find my laptop, earbuds, and adaptors, but they would probably be surprised by the UBC notebook. Even though I keep all my work materials on my laptop, I still use a notebook for my lesson plans. Writing helps me sort out my thoughts, and give me the ability to quickly jot down a note immediately.

This was an excellent task that allowed me to think about how I use the contents of my bag. There really is a lot of meaning behind the objects that we carry with us.

References

• Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology (1st ed.). Knopf.
• Scholes, R. (1992). Canonicity and Textuality. In Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures, 2nd edition. Ed. Joseph Gibaldi. New York: Modern Languages Association of America.