1. Response to Dee Dee’s post “What’s in your bag?“. Here, I connected with DeeDee in regards to her comment: “[m]y discman has long been replaced by my smartphone and I always have a set of headphones with me to listen to music.” Growing up in the 1990’s and being a huge fan and consumer of music, I think about the analog->digital evolution of music on a daily basis. As we progress through the modules of this class, there is a strong connection to our conversation about music and the material presented in Week 8 – The politics of text (Why digitize? Digitize what?). Music has become almost exclusively digital, for better or worse (easy access versus loss of sound quality, no name one example). Vinyl, CDs and cassettes have been replaced by Spotify, Apple and Youtube. I miss my CDs, but, I relish the abilities to access most of the world’s music in a centralized database, to create playlists, individually and collaboratively, and to use an app like Shazam to tell me what I am hearing as I navigate the analog world.
2. Response to Nataliia’s post “What’s in your bag?“. I was hoping to connect with Nataliia about paper versus ebook use in education. I straddle both of these worlds in my career as I respect both mediums and appreciate the advantages of each. As a language teacher, the pen-to-paper process is extremely important in the acquisition / retention process. Tech facilitates my teaching though, and as a MET student, I am learning on how to incorporate it more. I suppose I will always straddle both worlds.
3. Response to Braden’s “Voice to text story“. I wanted to connect to Braden about the voice-to-text experience. Our samples were different as mine included many spoken sentence connectors. I wanted to know if he was paying attention to this as he was speaking. I also wanted to know about whether or not he had rehearsed.
4. Response to Rifa’s “Attention Economy“. Rifa and I had similarly frustrating experiences interacting with the website. I wanted to know if help chat boxes actually help, or how often they do. During Covid, many people have spent hours and days trying to recoup money for plane tickets and vacations. People have also experienced extreme delays due to supply lines being affected. Companies that have utilized chat boxes on their websites during this time are passing the buck… but can we blame them?
5. Response to Neil’s “Speculative Futures“. I commented on his video where he talks about the advantages of tech for teachers. I was interested in his comments about the death of the Smartboard and the decline of our students’ social skills and socializing. Neil says “people are there, but they aren’t there” and I struggle with this notion of tech bringing us closer yet separating us dramatically in the real world. I ask Neil his thoughts on schools banning cellphones… I want this desperately!
6. Response to Johanna’s “Emoji Story” . I figure out Johanna’s film, or at least, I strongly believe that I did. I was hoping toe engage Johanna in the topic of translating / delivering a message as her film choice is Lost in Translation, and whether she realized it or not, her film was very connected to the topic of the week. She acted in a parallel way to how the translator worked in the Suntory Whiskey scene of the film. What interests me is that Johanna probably spent a good chunk of time trying to figure out how to convey the movie plot to her audience, when all I need was the Japanese flag, the man, the woman, and the karaoke mic. A glass of whiskey really would have helped too!