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.