ETEC540: Text Techologies

Greetings all,

I’m currently working on a poetry unit in my class so I decided to use an example that I created for a poetry unit. We are writing haiku and then finding images that match the poem. Here’s my example:

Andrew

What a journey! I decided to make my connections with the use of visuals (cartoons created on Bitstrips) and text.

When looking through the names of people posting to the ETEC 540 Weblog, I saw several familiar names of people that have been in a few of my courses before and many new ones.  This being my ninth course, posting an introduction was a familiar process, but there is always a twist.  For this course we were to write what literacy meant to us.  I went down the path that today people need multi-literacies as they have to navigate through many different types of “reading spaces”. At the end of this course, I still believe this.

Looking through some of my cohorts’ assignments, there was a range of platforms that were used to present their projects, all which incorporated different types of multimedia and Web 2.0 tools.   As many have stated in their own connections to this course, I couldn’t help but wish that our actual course material better utilized visual representations and multimedia to further our understanding of the material.

Until I read Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy I had never thought of a world without writing or that writing was a technology.  It is so ingrained in our society, that it is hard to realize that it is artificial, that the letters you are reading right now are symbols that have a coded meaning.  We also now have to add in symbols associated with electronic technology such as HTML coding or navigation symbols, never mind the different types of multimedia that can be used.  This again supports the idea that people need to have multi-literacies to find their way through the many different types of platforms and interfaces.

It took the written word an extensive amount of time to become commonplace and to have an efficient way of being produced.  In saying that, the book has been quite unchanged for a very long time.  We are now seeing changes to this medium, as more and more digital text is being produced.  As Jay David Bolter stated, with the rise of each new technology, there will be remediation with the old technology that it is replacing.  Right now, this is occurring between printed text and digital writing, but I feel the book will not be completely replaced by its electronic counterpart in the near future.  I still think that we are finding our way through this new, electronic landscape and have not yet come to the point where we are using technology to its fullest potential.  Electronic devices can allow other forms of media to be used to express ideas and I think we are just at the tip of discovering how that will look.

When viewing my cohorts assignments, I found I was drawn to the ones that were easy to navigate, made use of videos, included pictures, and had some text, but not too much.  I then realized that I must do this for my students and this can be done by utilizing different Web 2.0 tools (such as in our Rip.Mix. Feed activity).  I can make interactive, authentic assignments or allow my students to hand-in products that all don’t look the same, but still meet the learning outcomes I want to see.  I believe that everyone must have multi-literacies, including myself, if we are to utilize different electronic devices and view various types of multimedia and text.

Lisa

This course was relevant to the advancements currently occurring with technology and education and has provided me with so much knowledge, deepening my understanding of literacy and what it means to live in a digital world. The evolution of technology is one that not only excites me but also scares me. The rate at which the tools and resources are changing is overwhelming at times and I worry I will not be able to keep up. I found the assignments in this course manageable, interesting and practical. The rip.mix.feed activity, in particular was a great way to get to know some of the tools I had previously heard of but not yet able to explore. The opportunity to see peers’ activities added to our bank of media tools for future exploration. The blog created another dimension to the course. It was a fun way to reflect, share and connect with peers. That said, at times I felt confused as to where I was “supposed” to post? Some students posted in both the forum and blog. I found myself often looking for posts, where to comment, and noticed they repeated due to the multiple possible areas available for us to post.

I am recording my connections in the format as 3 stars and a wish:

3 stars:
1. Group work/presentation tools: Working in groups and viewing the other presentations (and the Rip.Mix.Feed activity) I learned about a various tools that I can utilize when I present information. I am a visual learner and for me, it was nice to see the tools used, as it made it easier for me to see what sorts of things can come out of using them.
2. Social Book: I have never used this before. I enjoyed it because I could mark up the text and refer back to the highlighted notes, by myself and my peers. It’s useful because the comments in the margins allowed us to further develop or expand on the text. I really appreciated this, as sometimes concepts are unclear.
3. Flexibility: I really appreciated how we were able to choose how we wanted to present our learning. I am not fond of writing papers so having options was great!

1 wish:
– Very minor: I have seen this in another course where the weeks are divided up instead of modules on the discussion board. Since a couple of the module topics were not in sync with the weeks we were to complete them, my postings were in the wrong spots. (I hope that makes sense)

▪  What motivated you to explore the application you used?

Before this experiment, I think I have never expressed my opinion with only fixed images. I chose Dumpr, because I wanted to examine how the process is different in doing without narratives or texts.

▪  What have you attempted to achieve in your project?

I attempted to represent the current relationships between technologies and us in which sometimes we are not aware of technologies leading our view of the world.

▪  What are the particular affordances (for knowledge mobilization, learning, etc) of the form of production you’ve selected in relation to previous forms of production we’ve considered in this course?

 This online photo effects program inspires us to explore the images that we recreate on the web. In the process of  finding and remixing images, we seek the meanings that we would like to convey through incorporating the multiple images found throughout the Internet. When we represent our own idea only through texts and narratives, I noticed that we directly choose the words that most fit in, and do not define meanings as we do through images. In the remixed images, the meanings are more flexible depending on the viewers, and Dumpr allows us to share the products and seek feedbacks from the viewers.

 ▪  What are the potential drawbacks?

The remixing process was automatic, and it is easy and fast. On the other hand, if we could explore the process of remixing more, we can experience the small effects adding different meanings to the same materials. The more the remix culture is advanced, the more it will become harder to consider what is original or what is the “reality”.

Image Asim18