ETEC540 – Tzu Hsu Chu

The Maker In Me

Brief

Introduce yourself as a maker and reflect on your own professional philosophy and how you view yourself as a maker, as a critical and innovative thinker, and as a designer. You will align your own personal and professional philosophy for your learners within a maker environment. Your introduction will include:

- A visual representation of your values, approach to making, and educational/leadership philosophy inspired by the course readings
- Investigate multimodal means to design a creative and critical introduction
- Include your goals for this course within your introduction

Some guiding questions:

- How do you describe yourself as a maker, and your maker philosophy?
- What is your current educational/leadership philosophy?
- How does your philosophy fit into the maker movement?
- What is your experience with Makerspaces?
- What is your experience with EDIDA Frameworks?
- Why are you taking this course? What are your expectations and goals?

Linking Task 12: Speculative Futures (Joseph)

ETEC 540 – Task 12: Speculative Futures

Joseph chose to use Twine as the medium to explore the two different futures — a utopian “sweet dream” and a dystopian “nightmare”.

This was a clever design decision, as “Twine was a natural choice [to display two different viewpoints] as I could have a split narrative path to contain both of these options” (Villella, 2022).

In the opening of the game, the player is prompted to enter their name and location in the text box, in which it is used as the main character in the narrative. This already immerses the player within the story, in addition to the background music and sound effects.

Utopian “Sweet Dream”

The utopian viewpoint had a more upbeat, cheery background music that plays throughout the game.
The narrative is set in a world where nature and humanity thrive in harmony. There is emphasis on renewable energy and eco-friendly technology, which is seen on the air-hovering eco-Translink buses and the newest model of Meta Headsets powered by oxygen.

The storyline splits into two side quests, one is finding your “brother”, and the other is the journey to school.

The brother provides more context of the world through the dialogue you have with him. The player finds out that it is 2025, and personal assistant driod eRobots help with taking care of your everyday needs. There is reference to the continuing existence of technology moguls, namely Elon Jr.

On the journey to school, physical classrooms that afford collaboration still exists, yet with heavy utilization of VR headsets. The classroom environment is surprising to me, as one would think there would be complete digitization and heavy emphasis on virtual interaction with the ubiquity of VR Headsets, such that a physical classroom could be deemed unnecessary. However, it seems there is still a focus on human interaction and physical presence in the classroom, especially given the set-up of the desks to be conducive to collaboration.

Dystopian “Nightmare”

The dystopian viewpoint had a more somber and desolate background music. The narrative is set in a somewhat post-apocalyptic and barren environment, where humanity seems to have reach destruction and is in the process of rebuild.

The education environment has become a mere “virtual daycare” where students are there to be supervised as they learn digitally. Remnants of technology is strewn across the classroom, interspersed with analog methods of teaching, yet students lacking the literacy skills to successfully learn.

Through the dialogue between the player and an “officer” with the same name, context of the current world is given. The hyper-development of technology has broken down the geopolitical borders between nations, and the influence of politics has created fear and paranoia of cyber-information warfare, which in turn causes a regression of civilization to the early 2000s. When asked about the origin of this dystopian disaster, we are left on a cliffhanger and wake up from this nightmare.

Reflection

I thought the world-building was very interesting and reminds me of very distinct futures.

The utopian narrative reminds me of the vision of a solarpunk future. Solarpunk is an imagination of the future where nature and humanity are able to maintain an equilibrium without exhausting all natural resources, even proposing that technology can enable humanity to exist sustainably.

On the other hand, the dystopian narrative, “technology has replaced our own abilities” (Villella, 2022) reminds me of the grungy textures of dieselpunk , especially with reference to the “retro-futuristic” aspect of technology. It very much alludes to the downfalls where “humanity collapses on itself” and the unforeseen consequences of needing to revert to previous technology, yet without the ability or skills to do so, due to over-reliance on technological advancement.

Overall, one main aspect I really enjoyed in this Twine game is that the narration brings the player to explore both the utopian “sweet dream” and dystopian “nightmare” scenarios in a way that flows with each other; there are paths that return back to a previous point and allows the player to explore the other option, while staying cohesive to the overall structure within a dream.

References

Dieselpunk (n.d.) Wikipedia. Retrieved August 10, 2022 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieselpunk

Solarpunk (n.d.) Wikipedia. Retrieved August 10, 2022 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk

Villella, J. (2022, August, 3). Task 12: Speculative Futures. ETEC540 Joseph Villella. https://blogs.ubc.ca/jvillella540/2022/08/03/task-12-speculative-futures/

Task 12: Speculative Futures

Project Proposal – (retro)speculative futures

For this project, I wanted to take a different approach to thinking about speculative narratives in a way that is grounded in reality such that it can be conducive to actualizing our imagined futures in practice — (retro)speculative futures, a practice of looking into the past to project ourselves into the future.

To stay true to the spirit of “retrospeculation”, the foundations of this concept/ idea will be drawn from the course modules of Multiliteracies and Speculative Futures in addition to my own personal lived experiences, thoughts and feelings as an exercise in “transformed practice” (The New London Group, 1996) Therefore, this project will be self-referential in both the framework structure and in methodology.

Foundations:

In Speculative Everything, the authors pose “design speculations as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality” with the idea of possible futures as tools to understand the present to discuss the future people want and do not want.

However, they also mentioned that “for us, futures are not a destination or something to be strived for, but a medium to aid imaginative thought- to speculate with”.

Though speculation about the future is indeed necessary and important, in some ways, it can become limiting. Without enacting agency and taking action in the futures we desire to create, it continues to stay immaterial and almost ethereal, an intangible hope on the horizon. There seems to be a large gap between “theory” and “praxis”, in which (retro)speculative fiction hopes to bridge in-between.

In the book, the authors take a diagram inspired by futurologist Stuart Candy to illustrate the potential different kinds of future they propose:

Book: Speculative Everything. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby set out… | by Lorenzo Iuculano | Medium — PPPP, Illustration by Dunne & Raby

Probable Futures: describes what is likely to happen unless there is some extreme upheaval of natural or societal disaster
Plausible Futures: describes “what could happen” and exploration of alternative economic and political futures to ensure that organizations will be prepared for and thrive in number of different futures.
Possible Futures: describes the linking between today’s world and the suggested one. The scenarios should be scientifically possible and have a path from where we are today to where we are in the scenario.
Preferable Futures: describes the intersection between plausible and probable but poses the questions “what does preferable mean, for whom, and who decides?” Currently determined by government and industry, though limited by citizen-consumers.

With the above proposed structure, (retro)speculative futures will be operating on the level of Possible Futures, as it aligns with the authors beliefs that it will ” allow the viewers to relate the scenario to their own world and use it as an aid for critical reflection”.

Though not totally aligning or deviating from the author’s belief that designer’s roles “should not define futures for everyone else but work with experts, including ethicists, political scientists, economists, and so on, to generate futures that act as catalysts for public debate and discussion about the kinds of futures people really want.” (p. 6) , it should be noted that (retro)speculative futures is a retrospeculation of an individual’s own future, and is hyper-personal in that regard. It aims to plant the seed of imagination in the individual first and foremost, before extending it to speculative futures as a community, or even on a larger scale as a society.

This social hierarchical structure stemming from the individual-family-community-society is highly influenced by a central concept of social harmony within Confucianism, which is informed by my own cultural upbringing and education in Taiwan. (re: “highly-self referential”) Implications of cultural literacy will also be discussed in-depth and the influence it has when it comes to the structural decisions I have made.

Methodology

Borrowing from Pedagogy of Multilieracies, given this new “critical framework”, I hope to “retrospect” on my past to see how my previous experiences has influenced my passions, habits, literacies, decision-making processes, desires, etc. in the present as “situated practice”. With the help of “overt instruction” from the reading materials, I will use the concepts as metalanguage to describe and interpret the design elements. I will then “speculate” on what my current skills, talents, knowledge, lack of knowledge, etc. are, and how that aligns with the future I would like to create for myself as “transformed practice”.

In this case, I will limit my retrospeculation in the realm of language and education, which is relevant to my own personal life, professional career, and the scope of this final assignment, in regards to ” potential relationship with media, education, text and technology”. I hope to reflect upon the focus in three different facets:

Personal: personal interests, decisions, defining moments related to topic
Interpersonal relationships: important figures, family relations, friendships
Environments: location, cities, community, educational environment, etc.

Further Development:

So far, I have yet decided on a medium in which to deliver the concept and idea. One potential would be hyper-text Twine zine, in which the medium would have enough flexibility for multi-media, and room for serendipitous exploration of different node-paths.

References:

Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Kunjo. (2017, February 12). Speculative. Retrieved August 7, 2022, from https://speculative.hr/en/introduction-to-speculative-design-practice/

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. (Links to an external site.) Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.

Linking Task 6: An Emoji Story (Trista)

Task 6: A Emoji Story

I wanted to link to Trista’s post, similar to my Emoji story, the title was not in an English language, therefore we both had to go in roundabout ways to describe them.

Please take a look at Trista’s post before reading the following, as it will contain spoilers to her Emoji story!

The movie that Trista chose was Mulan, which is not very apparent from the Emojis that she chose, UNLESS, you know Chinese.

Mu: 木 is the character for wood

Lan: 蘭 is the character for orchid

Given that, I presumed that Trista has knowledge of the Chinese language, which I was able to confirm after going back to her Task 1: What’s In My Bag blogpost. I was able to know that Trista was born and raised in Shanghai, China, and moved to Canada 7 years ago.

“I started with the title, and actually, I chose this movie because I feel that the title is easy to visualize by emojis” (Ding, 2022), which contrasted with the comments from Jessica and Emily about unable to figure out what movie it is. Some guesses included “wood flower”, “log flower”, “log blooms”. I found this quite amusing , as this is definitely a case of information being lost in translation!

I am unsure if this is the case for Trista in Shanghai, but The Ballad of Mulan is a required piece of poetry in our education curriculum in Taiwan. The context in which I learned about it is very different to the one that of a Western audience.

I think most people know of Mulan in the context of the Disney movie. Therefore, if Trista were able to narrow down the category of movies to “Disney”, it might be a helpful hint, especially for those who do not have the linguistic or cultural background that Trista and I both share.

Trista then continues a chronological re-telling of the story through emojis. Similar to my experiences, Trista mentions “spending a lot of time selecting events that the emoji can represent” (Ding, 2022) as the emoji choices can feel limiting when it comes to more general and abstract concepts.

Even without the movie title, given the events that happened:

Mulan deciding to cut her hair to look like a boy, enrolls in the army on behalf of her father was one of the big transitions in the plot, which Trista made clear with the “haircut” Emoji, and one that reaffirmed my guess.

Reflection

One thing that Trista’s post made me think about a lot is this concept of “common ground” in Linguistics. For successful conversation and communication to happen, there is a presumed background information shared by participants in the conversation.

From the phrase ” I chose this movie because I feel that the title is easy to visualize by emojis” she is leaving out “the title is easy to visualize by emojis (for her given the cultural and linguistic context)” which is normal and natural for someone who is immersed in that context, after all, how would a fish know it is in water?

Along the same topic, Trista ties multi-modal communication with Kress’ commentary, adding on that “it illustrates how speech and writing are controlled by the author, and the interpretation of pictures largely depends on the viewers” which can be seen here in this instance of the author (Trista) intending “[wood emoji] [flower emoji]” to be “Mulan” whereas the viewers (Jessica and Emily) interpreted it differently.

All in all, this is to say, that in the same time we are using multi-modal communication to express ourselves, there is also a need to review and unpack what we assume to be “common ground” amongst us and others participating in the conversation, in order to meet each other in the middle such that what we are expressing, is also what others can interpret.

References

Ding, T. ( 2022, June 25) Task 6: A Emoji Story. ETEC540 Personal Web Space. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540trista/2022/06/25/task-6-a-emoji-story/

Task 11: Detain/Release

First of all, I wanted to point out that this module included some of my favorite podcasts that I listen to regularly, so I really enjoyed that we were using it as learning material in class!

From the Reply All Podcast on The Crime Machine, the Compstat system was created with the original intention of “treating every crime seriously”, which quickly turned into a “management tool” as crime rates dropped throughout time. The shift in mindset upstream in the system very much so trickled downstream, the higher-ups were finding loopholes to jump through whereas the police doing the actual work were forced to adhere to quotas, and normal people are being profiled and given summons from police to fulfill the quotas. It seems like no one is benefitting from this crime detection system anymore.

It was one of the stories that left a strong impression on my mind, as at the time one of the “hot topics” in our Cognitive Systems courses was “biases in algorithms” in the realm of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. If the data we are feeding algorithms is tainted with human biases (which will most likely be unavoidable), then algorithms will also learn our human biases, and reproduce them in their analysis results as well. This sentiment was echoed in the 99% Invisible Podcast, The Age of Algorithms.

Cathy O’Neil points out that many of these algorithms are used as “weapons of math destruction”, which act as proxies for profiling via race and class, often penalizing individuals for societal and systemic issue that they have little control over.

 "Algorithms aren't very objective even when they are carried out by computers. This is relevant because the companies that build them like to market them as objective, claiming they remove human error and fallibility from complex decision making, but every algorithm reflects the priorities and judgements of its human designer" (The Age of the Algorithm, n.d.)

Use of algorithms are more ubiquitous than we think in our daily lives, from employee hiring assessments, to social media algorithms shaping the news on our feeds.

Currently, the Vancouver Art Gallery has an exhibition called “The Imitation Game”, which “surveys the extraordinary uses (and abuses) of artificial intelligence in the production of modern and contemporary visual culture across disciplines around the world”

(Sidenote: this was a very fun and engaging exhibition for me – a COGS student- since this encompasses almost EVERYTHING I learned in my undergrad, so I am VERY BIASED. It is also a great introduction to those who are not familiar with these subject matters, so please go take a look and see for yourself!)

One thing I really liked about the curation is that they showed what AI could be used for in everyday application, but at the same time, pointed out the “dark side” of such applications. One exhibit from Algorithmic Justice League (AJL) questions the implication of facial recognition software that refused to recognize faces of people of color. The AJL advocates for “equitable and accountable AI, to offer agency and control for people that interact with AI, and transparency and redress for harm caused in the use of AI.”

Reflections

When I was going through the Detain/Release tasks, the first few things I tend to look at was:

- Type of committed crime : if they tend to be more violent (unlawful use of weapon, assault, etc.) then I usually detain them than crimes that are “less” violent (fraud, drug possession, etc.)
- Violence: whether or not they will pose a threat to public if I release them
- Statement from prosecution: I feel like this adds weight to the decision making process for me, as I am more likely to go with what the Prosecution Team also thinks in some ways

Factors that I didn’t consider as much in my decisions included:

- Statement from Defendant
- Name
- Age
- Gender
- Photo

Usually cases that I release have:

- Low levels of Failure to Appear
- Low levels of Commit a Crime
- Low levels of Violence

As long as Violence and Fail to Appear are low, I usually release them.
If their Commit a Crime is not low, then I check the type of crime they committed before deciding to detain or release.

I tried running the simulation 3 different times, with varying results in Jail Capacity and Fear.

The first time, I had a 40% Jail Capacity, and little Fear.

**Edit: I was able to get hold of my statistics afterwards, and have included them below in the textboxes with the actual percentage. As you can see, my guestimation is very not accurate to the actual data.**

Defendants processed: 25
Detained: 17 
Released: 8 
Violators: 3
Jail: 75% 
Fear: 8%

The second time, I had 60% Jail Capacity, with 50% Fear.
(I think I was more lenient with my release criteria this time)

Defendants processed: 25
Detained: 13 
Released: 12
Violators: 5
Jail:60%
Fear: 43%

The third time, I had 80% Jail Capacity and little Fear.

Defendants processed: 25
Detained: 13
Released: 12 
Violators: 5
Jail: 65% 
Fear: 62%

I wasn’t able to access the actual statistics for the simulation, so I am curious what the data can reveal about my judgements and assumptions in the process. Though I think I am aware of the biases that I subconsciously project onto my decisions, I wonder if showing the data and statistics of my performance and further inform me on the underlying prejudices that I carry when it comes to making detain or release decisions. By making it transparent and bringing it to the forefront of my awareness, I think it will impact my decision making processes moving forward.

References

Algorithmic Justice League – The Imitation Game. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2022, from https://imitationgameexhibition.ca/15-Algorithmic-Justice-League

The Age of the Algorithm. (n.d.). In 99 Percent Invisible. Retrieved from https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-age-of-the-algorithm/

The imitation game: Visual culture in the age of Artificial Intelligence. Vancouver Art Gallery. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2022, from https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/exhibitions/the-imitation-game

Vogt, P. (n.d.-a). The Crime Machine, Part I. In Reply All.

Vogt, P. (n.d.-b). The Crime Machine, Part II. In Reply All.

Linking Task 8: Golden Record Curation (Mark)

[8.2] Golden Record Curation

For this linking task, I decided to take a look at Mark’s post, specifically knowing his background in music, as I wanted to see how he approached this task from that perspective!

Coming from a music background, Mark definitely draws from a lot of music theory when it comes to analyzing and justifying the songs he chose. For his criteria, he wanted to find pieces that “contain an obvious example of universality of musical elements, tempo, harmony, melody and texture” (Pepe, 2022). Some common element included “ostinato patterns, chant, call and response musical phrases and representations of nature”.

The first 4 tracks he chose belonged to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Stravinsky, some big names in classical music history. Mark explains his choice with some musical jargon, but then adds more information in an accessible way for those who might not have as much background knowledge in music. He also points out the significance of the composer or the piece, and uses very descriptive expressions to compare and contrast it with each other, providing some context in the realm of classical music.

"Compared to Mozart where emotions begin to surface, Beethoven brings it to a boil" and later on "If Beethoven brought emotions to a boil, Stravinsky boiled them over"

Mark then picks some tracks in the world music genre, and uses them to demonstrate some of the universal commonality between them, such as the call and response in chanting, pulsing trance-like rhythm, and nature imagery.

Lastly he chose a more contemporary blues song, Dark Was the Night to complete his curation. Mark chose this song specifically as blues took elements from the world music previously listed, and became a foundation of North American popular music.

Reflection

I thought Mark’s post was very insightful, as much of this information about these songs is unknown to me, as I do not come from a musical background and therefore do not have the skills to decipher them directly from the music tracks alone.

The way Mark put each piece next to each other for comparison and contrast helped with extending it into a greater context such that one can see why it was significant to include a certain track. He did not look at each track solely on its own, rather, he built on more to the foundations that he had laid down, such that his track-list curation and decisions felt cohesive as a unit!

References

Pepe, M. (2022. July 10) [8.2] Golden Record Curation. Mark Pepe’s ETEC540 Course Site. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540mpepe/2022/07/10/8-2-golden-record-curation/

Linking Task 5: Twine Game (Jessica)

Task 5: Twine Task

Cardiac Arrest Management is a hospital simulation game where you are a nurse making your rounds, helping your patients stabilize in various cardiac arrest scenarios.

Though it was a “text heavy game”, it was interspersed with many vital chart graphics and pictures. It also offered a lot of clues and hints when returned to a previous step upon a mistake. This allowed for the continuation of the narrative, while providing correct information without taking the player out of the scenario.

The bustling hospital environment and sounds of beeping machinery makes it a very immersive experience reflecting the day-to-day as a nurse in medical care.

This game is very much catered towards those with a background in medical care settings, as there is a lot of medical terms and jargon. One should also be literate in ECG charts and know what the visuals mean to make the right decisions of what to do next to save the patient.

Once the patient has been stabilized, the player can return to the main menu and move on to the next patient. The “onus was on me to ensure this virtual pathway through my game was well planned out” (Presta, 2022) given the details and true-to-life nature of the game, was an important detail to keep in mind.

Reflection

This was a very anxiety-inducing game, because 1) I am not from a medical background and 2) I don’t know anything about cardiac arrest management!

Only a few minutes in, due to my medical malpractice and neglect, I already had to perform CPR on Patient #2 and use a defibrillator with maximum of 360 joules and some injection to get him breathing again (ಡ‸ಡ)

That aside, I thought it was very informational, and though I don’t know how to read the ECG charts, I came out of the game with more knowledge about defibrillators than I had in the beginning!

Using Twine as a medium for this game was a great idea, as it co-creates a learning environment where the player is an active participant of their own learning through this hospital simulation game to manage cardiac arrests. I am grateful that Jessica took the time to share her medical knowledge in a step-by-step manner, making professional experience and information accessible in an interactive way!

References

Presta, J. (2022, June 13). Task 5: Twine Task. Jessica Presta’s Blog ETEC540. https://blogs.ubc.ca/jpresta/2022/06/13/task-5-twine-task/

Task 10: Attention Economy

-internally screaming-

This was a frustrating and anxiety inducing hell-scape of a game to navigate through (＋_＋) It felt like one of those escape rooms where you’re trying to find an exit, but the more you click around, the more dead ends you run into!

I first learned of ‘dark patterns’ in my Cognitive Systems undergrad courses on human cognition and design, from none other than Don Norman’s book “The Design of Everyday Things”. He introduces some foundational concepts in design, specifically affordances and signifiers, which I find most relevant to this task.

Affordances are "the possibilities in the world for how an agent (person, animal or machine) can interact with something." In other words, potential interactions between people and the environment.

Signifiers are "signals" for what actions are possible and how they should be done. The must be perceivable signals (e.g. signs, labels, drawings, instructions, etc.) or else they fail to function.

In the slides below, I try and describe what makes these signifiers “unintuitive” or more maliciously, “misleading” when it comes to our everyday habits of navigating webspaces online.

Reflections

For this task, it seems like the signifiers are more important than affordances, as they communicate how to use the design.

In some ways, it almost presumes that there is an “expected” or “intended” way for users to interact with webspaces, whether it is through the many years of priming, or due to the fact that we are forced to change our interactions with each update and iteration of new software. Once we are habitualized to a certain way of interacting with the virtual environment, it almost becomes an expectation that all websites would follow this convention, and therefore our brains fall into autopilot mode, and that is where our attention fail us, especially in this game.

In true UI/UX Researcher style, I asked two of my roommates to play this game and observed their interactions. One of them happens to be a UI/UX designer themselves! Both of them struggled with navigating through these websites, and in similar places too!

For example, in the password set up stage, they both read aloud “your password can have at least 1 Cyrillic character” and both their reactions were “how do you even type Cyrillic characters!?” without registering the important “can have” part!!

Besides the “misleading signifiers” that miscommunicated what they actually meant, another great challenge of this game was “paying attention” to what we were doing — whether it was reading the instructions fully, or whether it was making sure that certain things corresponded with each other — it required one to exert more cognitive processing energy to respond correctly to not fall into their dark pattern traps!

References

Norman, D. A. (2013). The design of everyday things. MIT Press.

Linking Task 7: Mode Bending (Erin)

Task 7: Mode-Bending

I chose to link to Erin’s post because of her unique audio and visual form to share what is in her bag in a very familiar, effective and clever way through Tik Tok.

Erin approached the task in a very literal way, showing the contents of what is in her bag. In terms of the content in her bag, I would say we both have similar items with similar purposes. One main difference is that Erin drives and I rely on public transit, which might be the deciding factor of the divergence in our blog posts.

Erin’s post expands across both audio and visual media, with a few components that work cohesively in conjunction, which is distinctive of a Tik Tok:

Background Music: considered the mood and length for the Tik Tok
Text: visually displayed the key words on screen next to items as they appear
Audio Speech-to-text Description: brief text-to-speech description “with key words to describe a sentiment without actually saying what it was” (Duchesne, 2022).
Video: using trending zoom-in/zoom-out effect of items in her bag

Should one isolate any one component, they might not understand the context of what is happening as they rely on each other to make-meaning.

Though it is not required, having some background knowledge of the trends on Tik Tok can help understand the context of the presentation format and why it is “entertaining”.

Reflection

Though I have seen Tik Toks and understand this format of social media, I personally do not use the platform at all, so I am impressed by her use of the functions that the app has to offer. It is a very entertaining way to condense information in such a short amount of time, and grab one’s attention!

” It forced me to think about many possibilities that I normally would not pursue and work out the creative details of different ideas until I found one that would fit the criteria and that I could execute.” (Duchesne, 2022) reminded me that social media can be a powerful tool and robust platform for the intent of creating and sharing information in the realm of educational technology. It definitely breaks down the barrier and idea of “educational technology” being confined to the structure of institutions, and is more ubiquitous than we make it seem!

References

Duchesne, E. (2022, June 30). Task 7: Mode-Bending. Erin Duchesne ETEC 540. https://blogs.ubc.ca/erinduchesneetec540/2022/06/30/task-7-mode-bending/

Task 9: Golden Record Network

Seeing the data of everyone’s choices for their record curation was somewhat difficult to interpret, due to all the edges and nodes that were involved.
Therefore, for my reflection, I will do an analysis on a smaller scale.

I had parsed the information according to the different communities first to see who I overlapped with the most– Agnes, Alexis and Emily.

Next, I tried positioning the nodes of our names in the four corners to form a quadrant. In the center are the tracks that all four of us have. Depending on who has similar tracks, the nodes of the track names are listed in relative location to our names.

Criteria

I was prompted me to take a look at their blog post and read up on the criteria of their choices and what their justifications were behind their decision-making process.

Agnes: “showcase aspects of civilization on earth and how humans live and interact with the planet; varied types of musical formats” (Plourde-Doran, 2022)
Alexis: “geographical and cultural diversity of sound, instruments, and languages” (Reeves, 2022) with more tracks for larger continents (i.e. Asia and Africa)
Emily: “songs that included vocals, for sampling human voices in different frequencies, languages, dialects and tones” then filtered geographically (MacDougall, 2022)

Both Agnes and I thought about the aspects of civilization as a criterion.
Alexis, Emily, and I all had geography as a criterion.
Agnes, Alexis and I included tracks in music, vocals or both (i.e. we did not exclude based on musical format) as a reflection of diversity.

Connectivity

Now knowing the above information, I assumed that I would have greatest overlap with Alexis, given we chose the tracks based on geography; next would be Agnes, as we considered the civilization aspects of the tracks; lastly with Emily, as she first filtered via whether or not tracks have vocals, which would have disqualified a good portion of tracks to begin with.

According to the network visualization, below is the count of our overlapping tracks (i.e. connected nodes). This reflects the assumptions that I had made!

Top Hits

Looking into the track choices, I found 3 songs that all four of us had chosen:

- Track 2: Kinds of Flowers
- Track 5: Morning Star Devil Bird
- Track 23: Wedding Song

Geographically speaking, Track 5 was the only song from the Australia/Oceania region; Track 23, as it was the only song from South America region; Track 2 was the only song from Southeast Asia region.

One interesting thing to note is the ways that each of us have categorized the geographical regions.

Alexis categorized America into North and South America, but did not divide Asia into sub-regions. She did account for continent size and included extra songs accordingly from Asia and Africa.

Emily did not clarify the regions when choosing the tracks, though in her list she did include Mexico which was separate from her choice for North America, so, there is an assumption that it was divided by sub-regions, which was made clearer when she decided to prioritize Indigenous voices when it came to narrowing down the three songs from “North America”.

In looking at the visualization, though one can see the commonalities of tracks chosen between each person from the cohort, and where we overlap and “connect”, it does not reveal the “why” and decision-making processes, which needed to be supplemented with other sources of information.

Along similar lines, even when the “why” and decision-making processes were clear, differences in the “algorithm” such as weight in the sequence of information parsing or categorization can also influence how the original data is processed “upstream” which then alters it as it flows “downstream” to data-post-production of the visualization.

References

Code.org. (2017, June 13). The Internet: How Search Works . Retrieved from https://youtu.be/LVV_93mBfSU

MacDougall, E. (2022, June 29 ). Task #8: The Golden Record. ETEC 540. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540emilymacdougall/2022/06/29/task-8-the-golden-record/

Plourde-Doran, A. (2022, July 8). Task 8: The Golden Record Curation Assignment. Agnes’s Webspace ETEC540. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540ag/2022/07/08/task-8-golden-record-curation-assignment/

Reeves, A. (2022, July 9). Task 8: Golden Record Curation . Alexis’ Communication Junction. https://blogs.ubc.ca/communicationjunction/2022/07/09/task-8-golden-record-curation/