ETEC540: Text, Technologies – Community Weblog

Hi,
My name is Deborah Schell and this is my 9th MET course. This is my fifth year of teaching and I’m currently the Program Head of Business and Co-op at a Catholic high school in southwestern Ontario. Prior to embarking on my teaching career, I worked as a CA with a large Canadian life insurance company for 16 years. It was a big change, but I love teaching! On a personal note, I have a 17 year-old daughter who just started university and I love travelling.

I chose this picture because it reflects where I started my journey with technology and text in high school, the typewriter, and where I am now. I am constantly amazed at the speed with which technology changes. I’m not that old but today’s technology seems light years away from the Underwood typewriter I used in grade 9 typing. My goal is to learn more about the history of text and technology as I like to know how things have evolved as it helps me put current technological developments into perspective.

Looking forward to working with you.

Deborah

Hello Everyone!

I’m May Bacon and this semester I’m taking my 8th and 9th MET courses. I live in Ottawa  where I am currently beginning a Pre-K curriculum with my 3-year old daughter while searching for work.  I’ve been a stay at home mom for a few years now, but before that I was a second grade teacher in the Montreal area.

I chose this lovely photograph because it represents the type of writing I enjoy most: typographical layouts. Since high school, I have been interested in design, graphic editing, video editing and digital artwork.  I’m particularly curious about the juxtaposition of design and writing, and how layout can affect text perception (as in the case of advertisements, logos or signs).  Recently I’ve become more observant of the importance of layout to communicate, since I’ve started making and editing graphics for display at my church.  I’ve also noticed that no matter how well-written texts may be, if they are not laid out in an aesthetically pleasing (or at very least, aesthetically neutral) way, the message is harder to retain and decipher.  This includes everything from graphics to weblog interfaces, all of which are fascinating for me.

I also chose this image because it refers to obsolete technology and is somewhat nostalgic. Paradoxically, I find old technologies charming (though sometimes comical in their size and design) but I am also very interested in the effects and affordances of emerging technologies. I am really looking forward to examining the effects of technology further through this course.

Looking forward to getting to know you,

May

Hello everyone, my name is Jeff Miller, and I am one of the authors and instructors of ETEC540. Welcome to the community weblog space that will quickly grow with your postings and assignments over the coming weeks. You can find out more information about me in the instructor bio section in the Prefatory Module in the course website.

I selected this image, a keyboard from an old Underwood typewriter, in part because I am attracted to all manner of old machines (from typewriters, to old printing presses, and telegraph keys). I was also drawn to this image because it so nicely captures both the aesthetic care we bring to a technology as intimate as writing, as well as the way that technology fades into the background as we become accustomed to using it. All we see in this photograph are the letters on the keys while the gears and linkages that actually drive the keys to leave an imprint on the page are hidden from view, even though they do all of the work, make all the noise, and provide both annoyance and an odd pleasure when it comes time to separate jammed up keys!

Even now, when there is no need for mechanical linkages and gears to mark our pages, there are still traces of this early QWERTY keyboard configuration on the multi-touch devices that print (?) to a screen, not paper. And if you really want the nostalgia of an earlier age of writing, you can find odd assemblages of old and new technologies like the iTypewriter (a somewhat whimsical proof of concept). While highly impractical, such historical pastiches show how difficult it is for newer technologies to be completely cut off from the past, and this is a topic that we will explore from a variety of theoretical perspectives in the modules in ETEC540.

Jeff

I’m Teresa Dobson, one of the authors and instructors of this course. You’ll find some information about me in the Instructor Bio and Author sections of the “Prefatory Materials.” I look forward to working with you in the context of this course!

A couple of years ago I traveled to Ethiopia with one of the research teams to which I belong, the Ethiopia-Canada Educational Research Collaborative (ECERC; https://blogs.ubc.ca/ecerc). My colleague Jeff Miller, the other instructor of this course, was a member of the team at the time as well. During that trip I wrote a weblog documenting our activities. I’ve uploaded one of the images from the blog, a picture of a scribe writing on a vellum roll with a bamboo stylus outside one of the rock-hewn churches in Lalibala. In reflecting on the image at the time I wrote the following, which in retrospect seems particularly relevant to the topic of this course: “It seems the history of technologies for writing and literacy development is somehow encapsulated in this beautiful, ancient nation. Papyrus grows thick on the shores of Lake Tana. In the churches and monasteries incunabula and other early examples of the book on vellum are still consulted and used in services. Scribes write with bamboo styli on scrolls of vellum outside the the churches of Lalibela. Books of every type are in demand — rare and expensive. The cost of publication is high. Perhaps here we have an example of what Graff (e.g., The Labyrinths of Literacy) would call a ‘newly literate’ population” (Dobson, 2010). You may find the complete entry at the URL listed in the citation below.

Dobson, T.M. (2010). A last day in Lalibala. [Weblog posting.] Available: https://blogs.ubc.ca/ecerc/2010/03/17/a-last-day-in-lalibala/