Check out Jessie’s Task 5 here.

In case the files on her site don’t work, you can try downloading this one:

Jessie’s Twine Game

Jessie created a Twine game where you attempt to put your baby to sleep. Upon playing the game, you will encounter various options you can choose from, with a variety of coloured backgrounds and GIFs to keep you engaged, and add personality and humor to the overall experience. Beware of the consequences of your choices, as you may be required to restart or go back in time if you make a questionable choice.

I chose to link this assignment because of how different it was compared to my Twine game. My game was quite plain in appearance as I chose to focus more on having more detail and complexity in the dialogue/gameplay. Jessie also included hyperlinks to other text and audio, where mine did not. It was also completely different in terms of topic as mine simulated a conversation with a person/bot, whereas Jessie’s was guided by narration from a third party. My situation was purely fictional, whereas I can’t help but feel that Jessie’s seems to be (just a hunch, not sure though) based off of true personal experiences. I thought this was interesting because although we were both inspired by the Temple of No, each of our approaches to our games were different.

Yet, both games would elicit similar emotions of frustration and happiness, cause laughter, and require similar knowledge of language and technology to navigate. It did have similar design choices in the fact that some choices were “incorrect” and required you to go back, or having multiple options lead to one outcome (not that I knew that, because I skillfully chose all of the correct choices on my first try- am I ready to be a parent now?) Also, I did not know of  the “You Are My Sunshine” song before playing her game. Sue me. I guess I had a deprived childhood, thanks mom and dad.

Anyways, give her game a go and see if you can survive the nightmare! Good luck and thanks for reading!

I decided to film myself going through the contents of my bag, explaining the rationale of items, and answering the guiding questions as a way of redesigning my first task. The process was quite simple, and I surprised myself because I wanted to do a practice run and it ended up being the actual take I used, first try and everything (I usually require multiple takes for these kinds of things). There was no script that I followed besides the guiding questions that I read off of my computer screen. I felt that this would be more natural for viewers, as well as provide different and more detail compared to the text that I typed out for the initial first task.

The New London Group (1996) discusses two key concepts on the topic of redesigning: “the increasing multiplicity and integration of significant modes of meaning-making”, as well as “multiliteracies” (p.64). I think that my redesign of my first task is able to provide another mode of consumption as it includes audio and enhanced visual cues for the learners, as opposed to static images and text. This can be beneficial for people who struggle or are too lazy to read text and/or want a more engaging mode of delivery.

However, there is a lack of consideration for the multiliteracy part of that discussion, as people with linguistic or cultural differences may still have difficulty understanding my tasks. If I were able to, I would also redesign my task by typing it out or speaking in a different language to try and include other language speakers.

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.

Check out Elaine’s Task 3 here.

Elaine also completed the Voice-to-Text Task, and used Google’s Voice-to-Text technology. For her 5 minute speech, she described a situation in her elementary teaching job where one of her teaching partners accidentally dismissed a student with what seemed to be the wrong adult, but thankfully it was resolved in the end.

Afterwards, she analyzes her speech according to the guiding questions from the task, and adds a great example that contrasts reading text language from a screen and reading text out loud.

I chose to link Elaine’s task 3 because of how similar her experience was with mine. We both spoke naturally (though rushed due to the nagging features of our respective Voice-to-Text functions) and did not say punctuation words to format our speech, so our scripts ended up being one big run-on sentence. Both of our scripts also had some misinterpreted words, but properly capitalized proper nouns. 

I linked her assignment to show that we experienced problems that the majority of English speaking people would probably experience if they were to do the same task. The Voice-to-Text function is imperfect, no matter which device or company, and one must be aware and actually speak punctuation words to format their text if they do not want it to be one big run-on sentence.

• I used the emoji search bar available on my iPhone to help find emojis that could relay the information about my idea. Obviously, it was difficult to find emojis that could replace the words 1 to 1. I found that for some words I had to use multiple emojis to try and get the message across.

• It required me to put myself in the shoes of my readers and wonder whether the emojis I was using could be interpreted differently or not.

• Reading it back to myself in the end, I found that unless the reader knew exactly what idea I was referring to and had watched/read it before, they would only be able to have a very basic idea of what I was talking about. Specific ideas and names were broken down into their most basic form (like the name John being shown as a male emoji, for example).

Did you rely more on syllables, words, ideas, or a combination of all of them?

• I relied more on a combination of words and ideas. The thought of using syllables did not even cross my mind.

Did you start with the title? Why? Why not?

• I started with the title because I figured that it could at least give some context to the reader before reading the synopsis. However, the title itself is not included in the synopsis.

Did you choose the work based on how easy it would be to visualize? 

• I chose this idea because I recently watched/read it, and also thought that since it is recent and somewhat popular, that readers could recognize it. 

“Words no longer seem to carry conviction without the reappearance as a picture of the imagery that was latent in them. Throughout the history of writing, there have been visual puns and designs that combine words, icons, and pictures.” (Bolter, 2001, p.54) One thing that came to mind is how often I see emojis used on social media nowadays, specifically on Instagram. Emojis are used to convey emotions, replace words/ideas, and deliver the message with more strength by adding a visual component to the text. It is interesting how society is able to perceive certain emojis as a completely different meaning than the original context was. For example, the skull emoji ???? is perceived as an image used to portray someone laughing or finding something humorous, as opposed to a symbol of death (I am 99%  sure no one has ever used the skull emoji when referring to death, if someone has a real example please let me know). 

References

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

Hello, everyone, here is my Twine game for Task 5. There is a way to reach the end “win” screen, but play it as you see fit and I hope you enjoy 🙂

ChatGPhiT

Firstly, some things I noticed while playing the Temple of No:

• Humor, exaggerated punctuation, sound and images are nice touches to add more emotion to the game
• I noticed that the author must be British or from the UK because of the way this part was written: 

“Anyway. So Charles knew he proper wanted the map, to tell him the secrets of the universe. If he brought the map back to civilisation, he would truly achieve greatness. He knew it in his warm fleshy human heart. The temple that held the map was close.”

• • Notice the use of “proper” and the spelling of “civilisation”.
  • Also, the audio when he meets the great leader is an english  voice with a british accent.

Secondly, my reflection upon finishing the creation of my game:

My game was partly inspired by the recent hype around ChatGPT (conversing with a bot), as well as the Temple of No (using humour) and a video game called SUPERHOT (illusion of control). I like choose your own adventure games, so while on a flight to Hawaii, I started having a conversation with myself and went with the flow by writing out the interactions in Microsoft Word. Obviously, the chat options are quite limited and the game is plain in appearance, but I found myself noticing the advantages and disadvantages, the things that are afforded and things that are not when communicating in a text-only based language. Trying to pull off certain types of humour like the “underwear” joke and the concept of sarcasm was difficult and not as effective, whereas the “boobless” joke was slightly easier due to it having a visual punchline. Yet, all of the jokes and conversations are definitely lacking without audio to support their deliveries. After all, I imagine the intonation of the words in a certain way and I have no control of how others will interpret the words and say them in their heads. At the same time, the ambiguity of the words allows the players to say it in their own way, and that in itself can be more engaging and personal for each player as they read their own unique version of the story, similar to reading a novel. Eventually, the script ended up emphasizing the illusion of free will and choice when it came to speaking to the “bot”, and I decided to structure the conversation around that.

I did not end up finishing the script on Word, but transferred it over to Twine and continued to write the script from there. I was able to pick up on the basic functionality pretty quickly, but had to do a little extra research to code the pathway to the ending screen. Overall, the user interface of Twine is clean and straightforward to use, and with more time I could have added more flair to the game such as colour, images, and even audio.

To conclude, I enjoyed making this game because I got to incorporate my own ideas, I love playing games, and I was able to see and notice the themes of language and technology in this course while completing the task. Truly one of the coolest graduate assignments I have done to date!

For this task, I used the Notes application on my iPhone, and used the voice to text option. Here is what I ended up with after about five minutes:

“All right so I guess for the story I’m going to talk about on my background and just kind of how my life is been up until now so I was born on September 27, 1996 in Vancouver my mom is Filipino and my dad is Vietnamese and so they decided to name me Phiviet because they took the fee from the Philippines and yet from Vietnam and put them together Finally enough and the second child in this family so my older brother his name is Viet-Phi I guess they decided to just take his name and reverse it and that’s how I got mine I was born and raised in Vancouver for the first part of my life up until about grade 4 until that’s when I moved to Burnaby and I really enjoyed playing sports when I was younger and just trying out new things I I made a friend here who lived in the same complex as me and Burnaby and he show me how to do a lot of different things like skateboarding scooter ring mountain biking and so I’m really thankful for him because it gave me the beast to do all the things I do now I think that athleticism that physical ability I also went to the cadets program when I was younger set it off in the Navy league which was in Stanley Park for first five or six years and then I transitioned to the aircraft program that had a squadron here in Burnaby that was from ages 12 to 18 and an hour I learned about leadership discipline aviation and I think the best part of it was I got to go on these summer camp sort of expeditions in Victoria where we would stay on a military base and learn about different things there I learned how to exercise there I took a basic fitness in sports camp I learned how to play in a marching man there and just a lot of different things and and the best part was that we actually got paid to go there during the summers so it was almost like my first little taste of a job back then and about grade 11 or 12 I decided I wanted to be a teacher like my mom is high school physics teacher so I looked at what programs are available here in the lower mainland and I stumbled across this dual degree program at UBC in science and education and I decided to pursue that thankfully I was able to get into UBC with my application and it was a five year program it was really difficult because I had to major in other math and physics I decided to major in physics and yeah that was that was very difficult time but thankfully the education courses I took alongside was with those were a nice break and a change of pace again just very thankful that I made it through and yeah so I graduated in 2019 with my dual degree in science and education specializing in physics I COC for three years in various school districts and I’m just recently I decided that I wasn’t really feeling it and I Chi wanted to try something new before I really committed to the teaching profession and so now I am an admin assistant at University Canada West”

Analysis

If I paused for too long it would automatically turn off voice to text, which was kind of annoying because I felt like I had to keep talking. Upon doing this task, I thought of how a lot of my Asian friends and my grandparents use voice messages as their main communication method, which is similar in nature but instead records the voice audio from the person and sends it as a message. It is quite helpful for people who want to use digital messaging platforms but lack the fine motor skills (or motivation) to type out their messages. It is faster than typing, and it can convey more emotion due to being able to hear the way people are speaking. Also, in some Asian languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese, accent and intonation can completely change the meaning of a word, so these voice recordings are less likely to be misunderstood in conversations.

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

• My text is missing any form of punctuation, period. This basically reduces my monologue to a very large run-on sentence. There is a way to add punctuation using voice to text, but it involves literally saying the names of the punctuation, which nobody does naturally when communicating orally.

What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

• Along with the missing punctuation, some words were not correctly translated from voice to text, as highlighted in my text. There was also a case where I stuttered/repeated myself and that was transcribed. However, all of the words themselves are spelt correctly. I bet that if I had a strong accent like my mother or father, there would be even more incorrectly transcribed words.

What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?

• The most common mistakes are not using punctuation where it is needed and using the wrong word in a sentence. They are considered mistakes because they do not follow the rules/conventions that we abide by when reading and writing English text.

What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

• It would have been clearer in terms of progression, I jumped from topic to topic, or whatever came to my mind when describing my background. It would have been more concise and used more sophisticated words, as I would have had more time to think of what expressive words to use. It also would have taken longer because I would have to read it exactly as I scripted it before accepting the finished product, whereas I completed this text in one take. Although,  I would have felt less nervous and less pressured to not mess up because I could do multiple takes with the scripted version.

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling? 

References

Gnanadesikan, A.E. (2011). The first IT revolution. In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet (pp. 1-12). John Wiley & Sons.

Hello! My name is Phiviet Vo (He/Him/His), and this is my introductory post for the course! A little about me: I was born and raised in Vancouver/Burnaby, BC, and worked as a teacher on call in various school districts for 3 years. I am now working as an administrative assistant at University Canada West. I enjoy playing sports and other competitive activities in my free time. I look forward to connecting with you throughout the term.

I chose my backpack that I take to work as I use this every time I commute to the office. It has the all the items needed for surviving a day at work: Laptop for tasks, notebook for general notes and observations,  water bottle and lunch for sustenance, blue-light glasses and moisturizer for comfort, tissues for hygiene, multiple headphones for listening and communication, charger for devices, compass card for transportation, and wallet for identification. My phone is not included here because for one, it was used to take the picture, and for another, it is usually in my pocket. 

How might these items be considered “texts” and what do they say about you, the places you inhabit, the cultures with which you engage, and/or the activities you take up?

My notebook contains handwritten text relating to work policies and observations. My laptop gives me access to infinite amounts of text, and allows me to communicate using digital text. My wallet contains identification texts that show my personal information. All of the text is in English, mainly because I reside in Canada, but coincidentally, English is the only language I speak. 

The large “University Canada West” branding on some items represent the place which I work at, and can communicate that I am involved in and experienced with academia. The lululemon Olympic bag shows that I support the Canadian Olympic team and have interest in athletics/sports.

There are some items, such as the keychain attached to my bag or the sticker on my compass card, that do not have any text but speak to the Japanese animation show (commonly referred to as “anime”) culture that I engage with. These items reference the show “Demon Slayer” which I thoroughly enjoy and represent by having main characters decorate my personal belongings.

Thinking about the title of the course, what are the “text technologies” in your bag, if any? What do these items say about how you engage with language and communication?

In terms of text “technology”, my laptop and headphones are both technology that can be used to create and interpret text. However, one could consider the notebook and pen as text technology, as they are also used to create/store text, though they are not electronic devices. In reality, I use the former text technologies much more often, due to the need for constant and remote communication with others. It also reflects the evolution of human connection as more and more physical interactions are being replaced with online interactions (my work is sometimes remote, where I do not need to physically interact with anyone during the work day.)

Moreso, each of my cards have text and barcodes that are specifically designated for my use, such as the compass card and credit/debit cards. The print on the card communicates with digital when scanning or swiping the cards.

How does the narrative of the (private) contents of your bag compare with the narrative produced by the image you have of yourself or the image you outwardly project?

I think the contents of my bag match my image; I am aware of asian stereotypes and so one might assume that I have a natural inclination for academia and asian pop culture(s). 

What would this same bag have looked like, say, 15 or 25 years ago?

There would be no laptop (if there was, it would be much bigger and much less efficient) or chargers, there would be no wireless headphones, only the wired in ear or  bigger over-ear type along with a classic ipod or walkman. There would be no items related to Demon Slayer, although anime did exist back then so it would probably be items referring to a classic anime such as Inyuyasha or Mobile Suit Gundam.

How do you imagine an archeologist aiming to understand this temporal period might view the contents of your bag many years in the future?

I believe it would be similar to how one would analyze the contents of someone’s bag 50 years ago from today. The design and functionality of objects and items, such as the bag, paraphernalia and technology can give some indication of what kind of fashion and what technology was available around the time. Perhaps in the future there is even less presence of printed text, and so they would be trying to compare the functionality of the ID and compass cards to their futuristic technology, where all personal identification information and payment methods are stored within a small chip in the body or bracelet. 

Anyways, I apologize for the lengthy post but I enjoyed answering the prompts and I hope that you have an idea of the face and person behind my name that you see online. Thank you so much for reading and feel free to provide feedback or ask questions!