Monthly Archives: September 2023

Task 3: Voice to Text

Oral Anecdote:
I used the Google Chrome extension “Voice In” for speech-to-text. 

last night went to the Arctic Monkey show with a buddy a show that we had bought tickets for around a year ago I was a pretty big arctic monkeys fan back in the day but I kind of have a stopped listening to their music in recent years but I thought it would be an awesome opportunity to ReDiscover their music and really get back into them over the year as things go sometime it never really happened and I never really started re-listening their music so all of a sudden last night was the concert but I was still excited because it was a night out and it was going to be some good music and I get to hang out with a buddy so what also happened is that over the past year I’ve moved quite far away from where the venue was so initially when we bought the tickets I was living in Richmond and I could take the sky Train downtown and become you know pretty easy to get to The Venue but now I live in South Surrey and so to take public transit to and from the venue it would take about an hour and a half so I decided that I was going to drive and because it would be more convenient and I would save myself a bit of time at least I thought and yeah so I set off yesterday headed downtown to meet my buddy for some dinner before the show so we went to a pizza place I’d never been to in a in East Van can’t remember the name but it was pretty good had a good selection on alcoholic beer and I had a pretty good one that was Philip’s pilsner and I was pretty tasty after dinner we headed to the show and it was it was that moment where I said okay are we going to find parking or are we going to try and pay for parking but you know I’m trying to save some money so I decided that we were going to park in a residential area nearby the venue but not too far off but not too close because all the streets around the venue said you know permit parking only for residents of this that and the other street but you know we were looking at the cars didn’t really see any permits or anything so I don’t know if they register them online or how that all works so we took our chances I parked the car there hoping that it obviously wouldn’t get told we wouldn’t get a get a bill on it and so thankfully not but anyways we headed off to the concert of people it was pretty wild just all the way down the sidewalk usually when I’ve gone to concerts you know there’s tons of entrances so I think you know they can let people in pretty relatively quickly and there’s not a huge lines outside but in this particular venue it seems like there was only one main entrance and so the lineup was going down the sidewalk block blocks and blocks between this moment where he said okay you know should we go to the end of the line or should we you know head over towards the front of the line and at the same time we’re walking towards the back of the line so you know we had made her decision you know we’re not as young as we used to be so we said yeah we better follow the rules and enjoying the join the queue like everybody else and so there we get in there it’s pretty good the opening acts already happening so we find our seats and and yeah we’re just hanging out listening to the opening act and waiting for the Arctic Monkeys to come on and then the show finally starts starts with the bang it was really good show but I definitely didn’t know I would say you know a quarter or maybe you know a third of the songs I would imagine that many of them are from albums that I had never heard of or never listened to maybe they were too recent but in any case a lot of their hits from several albums ago they played a lot of those so it was great to hear them and you know to have a good time at the concert after the concert I decided that I would drive my buddy back downtown he lives on your Granville Street and so I said yeah you’re not going to Uber I already have my car so I don’t mind dropping off before I head back to South Surrey and then we get into downtown and it is madness I thought the trip was going to take you know even on Google Maps said it was going to take like 9 minutes to drop them off but we hit downtown and the Coldplay concert I guess they were also playing last night was just letting out tonight I’m assuming they played BC Place just based on the amounts of people that were coming where they were coming from so we were just deadlocked in traffic so what was supposed to be like a nine minutes drop off turned into you know a 30 minute Adventure downtown before I even started my Trek back to South Surrey but anyways all in all it was a really good time it was a good night and it gave me excuse to start listening to the Arctic Monkeys again

Reflection:

First and foremost, I found this week’s task to be extremely challenging. I never realized how much of oral communication is conversational based and that orating a longer story without a conversational partner is both awkward and somewhat uncomfortable. I was surprised by just how much casual daily spoken language is built on small bits of oral language at a time, usually interspersed with questions, prompts or at least non-verbal prompts from people you are speaking with. With the absence of these things, I struggled to tell a non-rehearsed story for five minutes. I needed to restart my story many times before I was able to just flow with it and keep it going. Initially, I kept getting stuck a sentence or two into the oration because I was stumbling over my words or something sounded “stupid”, for lack of a better word. Eventually, I just let go of those feelings and let the process happen.

This text deviates quite a bit from the conventions of written English. Most strikingly, the text is entirely composed of one huge, run-on sentence. Punctuation is absent from this text entirely. This causes the text to read like the ramblings of someone’s (my) inner thoughts more than an actual story. Beyond that, capitalization and the division of the text into logical paragraphs also make this text stand in contrast to standard English written conventions. These missing elements result in the text lacking emphasis, pacing and the indication of emotions. 

Overall, this text does capture the essence of my anecdote. The information is all presented in text form, though there are minor errors with how the “speech to text” program captured some of my words which does change the context. For example, in mentioning the pizza place we had dinner at, I made a point of saying that they had a good selection of “non-alcoholic beer”. In the text version, it reads as saying “good selection on alcoholic beer”. This error is both grammatically incorrect but also changes my intended meaning. At another part in the story, I was expressing how I hoped that my car would not get towed. The text reads “wouldn’t get told” which, again, changes the intended meaning. There are a few more examples of these misinterpretations of my story. This points to the fact that speech recognition software is certainly not error-proof. In truth, I think it would be quite challenging to design a program that is free of errors unless the system is trained extensively on the speech patterns of the individual speaker using it. Otherwise, so many factors can potentially impact how we pronounce and enunciate words. 

I would say that the most common mistakes in my text, beyond the issues with the software interpreting some of my words and transcribing them incorrectly, were simply mistakes in the way that I told the story. What I mean by that is that upon reading the story I was amazed with the amount of “filler” phrases that I used. Specifically, I seem to speak with a lot of “you knows” when I am orally telling a story, at least when orally telling an unrehearsed story. When that is translated into a written story it reads as though it should be a piece of dialogue and not a narration, per say. If I had sat down and scripted the story, I believe that the finished product would be more interesting overall. I would have paid close attention to the construction of my phrase and selected verbs and adjectives that really captured my feelings and actions more authentically. 

Through this activity it has become abundantly clear to me that oral storytelling and written storytelling are two very different types of texts that require unique skill sets. Beyond conversations, most oral storytelling I have done in the past has largely been in the form of formal presentations. These presentations are actually more like readings of written texts as I have often written scripts or at least developed talking points that I have practiced beforehand. When writing stories, one can spend any amount of time meticulously crafting the text. In oral storytelling, you need to deliver the text in that moment without having the time or luxury to undo, redo, take a break or consult other resources. At the same time, oral storytelling is more than the words spoken by the orator. Oral storytelling is also told through the use of one’s voice, one’s actions and body language, one’s context to a community and the place in which you are telling a story. 

A quote from one of our reading’s this week really stood out to me and helped me consolidate my thinking on this topic. Gnanadesikan wrote, “writing is generally done more deliberately than speaking, so finished written pieces are much more carefully crafted than a typical spoken  sentence.  Written  texts  can  thus  convey  their  message  more  precisely” (p. 5). While I agree with Gnanadesikan I also believe that oral texts require crafting of a different nature. It seems to me that some of the skills required to deliver a powerful oral text may have been lost over time. Being so reliant on written texts, and even using written texts for the purpose of delivering them orally has, I believe, caused us to underdevelop oration skills. We spend so much time in school preparing students to develop oral communication skills but often use formal presentations as the main means through which to achieve this. Perhaps more attention should be paid to helping students develop their otal communication skills without pre-planning the text and writing it out beforehand. 

References:

Gnanadesikan, A.E. (2011). The first IT revolution. In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the 

Internet (pp. 1-12). John Wiley & Sons.

Task 2: Does Language Shape the Way We Think?

 

Timestamp: Topic: Response:
00:00-08:00 Dr. Boroditsky discusses the constructs of languages. I think that this idea is important because it serves as a reminder that all language has been invented. I have often taken for granted the concept of language as just being an inherent part of everyday life. Here, Boroditsky really breaks apart language to show how these are truly unique sound inventions that vary vastly in structure. By this line of thinking, I am reminded of the activity in Module 1 wherein we were asked to define technology. I think this part of the video showcases how language can be seen as a technology for communication. 
11:00-14:30 Dr. Boroditsky looks at the idea of representing time directionally and with gestures. This part of Boroditsky’s talk reminded me of some of my own personal experiences traveling and encountering movements and gestures that did not align with how I interpreted them here in Canada or, largely, in native English-speaking countries. Specifically, when traveling in India I found myself very confused when asking questions. It seemed to me that oftentimes people were shaking their heads, which I interpreted as them essentially saying “no” to my request of question. While I do not know enough about the culture to make a blanket statement, I came to find out that many times this gesture actually meant agreement with what I was saying. This video reminded me of this realization and of the fact that beyond the spoken words, how language is delivered and what accompanies language in terms of gestures and expressions can also be unique to a particular language. This means that in order to truly know a language, one needs to also be fluent in the associated elements.
20:00-26:00 The relationship between language and gender is explored by Dr. Boroditsky. This portion of the talk made me question whether or not there exist correlations between languages that assign genders to words and more tightly assigned gender roles and gender norms in the wider society associated with that language. Assigning gender to words also stirs up memories of growing up as a French as a second language learner, like many in Canada. I always found it so interesting yet confusing how gender was assigned to words and that that impacted spelling and the use of other words to describe that word. I remember one of my teachers at the time saying that one could usually “guess” the gender of nouns based on their characteristics. Going back to my initial point, I wonder if this leads to the perpetuation of what individuals feel are male (masculine) vs. female (feminine) qualities. 
27:00-34:00  Dr. Boroditsky examines the link between language and how individuals retain information.  I feel as though this is a particularly important portion of Dr. Boroditsky’s talk as she proposes and provides evidence for the idea, in a broad sense, that language shapes how people see the world. This causes me to question another nuisance unique to languages and how that affects one’s acquisition of another language. I wonder if, in learning another language, how one sees oneself and the world shifts somewhat. This idea seems, to me, to be a culmination of many of the points Dr. Boroditsky has made so far in the talk. Not only the question of whether language helps shape who you are but also whether acquiring another language shifts this at all. 
34:00-40:30 The relationship between language and one’s mathematical reasoning skills is examined.  Dr. Boroditsky’s point resonates with me here with regard to math instruction, especially at the junior school level. For those involved in this level, “the science of reading” is an approach to reading instruction that has grown in popularity in recent years and is considered by many to now represent best practice. Based on what I have observed, approaches to math instruction have not seen the same broad consensus in best practice. Dr. Boroditsky highlights an element of what I think could be considered part of a “science of math” approach to instruction. Language, according to the examples explored in the talk, is the single most essential skill associated with math reasoning and understanding. Perhaps more time needs to be spent on exploring the language of math, especially with students who may have a first language with a different approach to numbers.
45:00- Ideas around how language and culture shape our world and our perspective are presented.  I felt that the final portion of the talk highlighted the difficulty in being able to fully communicate across languages. As Dr. Boroditsky mentions, it is impossible to precisely translate between languages, even with those that are closely linked. I am reminded of my time living abroad and some of the miscommunication I encountered with coworkers. While these coworkers would be considered fluent in English, there were countless instances of miscommunication between us. This miscommunication may have stemmed from a range of factors, including those that Dr. Boroditsky mentions. Beyond that, I remember times when I needed their assistance in translating something into their first language from English. Sometimes my coworkers struggled with how to capture the exact meaning of my communication and translate that. On one particular occasion, I remember how the tone of a translated message was completely off and highlighted the dangers of miscommunication.

Does language shape the way we think? This is an interesting question that it touched upon throughout this module. While Dr. Boroditsky takes a scientific approach and attempts to explicitly answer this question, both Alexander MacDonald and Christine de Luca address this idea in their own ways. I think that language does play a part in shaping the way we think, how we see the world and how we interact with others. That being said, I think that language can also extend beyond what may be formally considered language. Alexander MacDonald makes me consider whether language has a broader term that includes any way of encoding and decoding texts. For MacDonald, I wonder if he thinks differently based on the way in which he receives and interacts with tap and dance texts. For example, I am curious if the rhythm and cadence of speech hold any stronger meaning for him when decoding spoken language. 

In both Dr. Boroditsky’s article and video she presents empirical research to back her claims. For me, many of her points resonated with my years living and working abroad. Oftentimes I chalked up the miscommunication I experienced abroad as a product of cultural difference. While I think that cultural differences are very much a real thing and have notable effects on understanding, I had never really considered the power of language. Before engaging with this module I had considered language to largely be a predetermined set of rules that allows for the formalic encoding and decoding of written and spoken texts. What I had not considered was the possibility that language impacts the ways in which we see and interact with the world around us. Looking back, I wonder how many of those instances of miscommunication were rooted in the languages we spoke and the fact that language can never truly be translated as it is much more than simply words.

References:

Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65.

TEDx Talks. (2016, February 26). Oral tradition in the age of smart phones | Alexander MacDonald | TEDxFulbrightDublin [Video]. YouTube.

Wikitongues. (2014, September 21). WIKITONGUES: Christine speaking Shetlandic [Video]. YouTube.

Task 1: What’s in My Bag

Hi everyone, my name is Nicolas Robitaille and I am a K-5 STEAM teacher at an independent school in the Vancouver area. This is my eighth MET course and I am looking forward to navigating this course’s content and working alongside you all. 

I suppose I am also here to show you what’s in my bag.

This particular bag has been my work and school bag since I was in teacher’s college at the University of Ottawa. It was with me through that program, through my teaching practicums, teaching overseas at an international school in Vietnam and since I have lived here in BC. I’d say that my bag, in and of itself, is a text of sorts. If my bag could talk it would reminisce over the excitement of its owner upon taking it out its box over ten years ago. It would think back fondly on the polished floors of the university campus and of the dusty floors of the restaurants and bars in Saigon. If my bag could feel it would remember the day that one of its outside pocket’s stitching came undone. It would agonize over the worn out buckles that fell off when the metal finally gave out. This bag is not simply a bag, it is a companion of sorts. When I sat down to start writing this I didn’t expect myself to feel so sentimental over a simple bag, but it is one of the only possessions that I have kept with me for this past decade. Thinking about it now, it really is more than just a bag to me. 

While this bag has served as a school bag and a work bag, it has also been a carry-on bag for trips, a weekend bag for getaways and gym and grocery bag in a pinch. Currently, it serves exclusively as a work bag. I usually don’t carry too much inside the bag. The bag currently contains: my work computer, a couple half-empty packs of mint flavoured gum, a magnetic school calendar for this school year, my wallet, a pen and a cloth mask. While random things do tend to accumulate and get cleaned out from the bag from time to time, my computer is the item that is always there. I would say that my computer also serves as a profoundly important text technology. Through my computer I both access and create a range of texts each and every day. From watching movies to recording screencasts, from writing emails to listening to music, from taking photos to assessing students’ work- my computer is a gateway to texts. My computer is a text, my computer creates texts and my computer accesses texts. Beyond that, my computer case even serves as a text giving individuals insights into my profession and desired balance as a STEAM teacher

I believe that my bag highlights the importance digital literacy holds both in my personal and professional life. This is due to the fact that my computer is the only item that is guaranteed to be in my bag. While the ability to read and write still remains paramount and essential literacies, I strongly push for digital literacy within my professional context. As a STEAM teacher, preparing students to be able to succeed in digital and online spaces is a huge focus for me. I particularly enjoy exploring ways that digital literacy causes more traditional literacies to morph. For example, online content is increasingly becoming more and more multi-modal. Because of that, a digitally literate person needs to know how to both navigate and understand these types of texts but also how to go about producing them. 

In the future, if someone was looking at my bag and its content I think that they would not initially be too entertained, unless they were fans of a minimalist aesthetic. They may also be slightly confused as to why a bag was used to essentially exclusively carry one piece of technology. In their reality, I’m sure that technology would be a lot more embedded into wearables which would make having a bag to carry said technologies redundant. Upon closer inspection though I think that they would be interested in quite a few things. While they would assume that most of my text creation and consumption was digital, hence the laptop, they might be left wondering why I had a physical school calendar. Upon looking through my computer they’d realize that I already had that school calendar digitally embedded into my Google calendar making that all the more puzzling. The pen may also be of interest to them. They may wonder what the pen was for and why there was no paper for the pen to write on. The mask may help them place my artifacts historically and link them to the time in and around Covid. My wallet may also be odd to them both in terms of the wallet itself and its contents. It may be that these individuals have no concept of a wallet or purse and the physical five dollar bill in my wallet could be quite collectable as they may operate their finances entirely digitally.

Most importantly, I hope they will try the gum though and see if it’s still any good.