My name is Trista Ding. I am an Early Literacy Teacher in the Surrey School District, mostly working with Kindergarten and Grade 1 students. I was born and raised in Shanghai, China and I moved to Canada seven years ago. This is my fifth course in the MET program and I am very excited to start this new journey.
For this task, I picked the purse that I carry the most when I go out. It is usually this purse plus another gym bag for other things I need for different activities (e.g. dance, volleyball). All the things in this bag are essentials for me: my car key, home key, cardholder, lip balm, and lip gloss. In the cardholder, I store my debit card, credit card, driver’s license, insurance info card, and my Teacher Qualification Service(TQS) card. The only thing that is missing is my phone which I used to take this photo. I carry my phone with me wherever I go so it stays in this purse most of the time.
The two things I did not expect to find in my bag on the day I took the picture were the receipt for grocery shopping and the care card for the purse. The receipt showed that I went to T&T Supermarket on May 16th, 2022, and picked up a few things. The care card demonstrates how to take care of the bag in seven different languages. I can read three of them. I am sure that I read the care card when I first bought the purse but I simply forgot that it has been sitting in the inside pocket all these years.
Text Technologies:
Even though the digital technology that I use every day, my smartphone, is missing from this photo, I still want to mention it. I have an iPhone XR and I use it all the time to gain new information and to stay connected with my family and friends. I use apps like WeChat, WhatsApp, and Instagram to text and post. I watch videos and shows on YouTube and Netflix and since English is not my first language, I am used to turning the English subtitles on to help me understand. I am immersed in the world of text technologies and so deeply connected to digital writing and reading that imagining life without it seems impossible. I still enjoy reading a print book and handwriting in my journals, but it is interesting for me to realize that I am not doing these things every day anymore. Instead, I am always on my phone and this fact says a lot about how my life has been profoundly shaped by text technologies.
Despite the technology itself, the links between print and digital writing are plentiful. All the text that appears on the item in my purse was digitally generated. The grocery receipt is printed out from a self-checkout kiosk at the supermarket. The barcodes on the products were scanned for the machine to collect price information and complete the transaction. I used my credit card for the payment, which is a system designed for digital banking. My insurance info card, driver’s license, and TQS card are all linked to digital identification systems in different aspects.
A couple of things in my bag also reflect multilingualism. The receipt of T&T Supermarket has Chinese on it to promote their digital app and loyalty system. My lipstick is produced by a Chinese makeup brand called INTO YOU (notice that it has an English name) and on the bottom, it has the Chinese name for the colour. The instruction in the care card for the purse is displayed in seven different languages.
Text is not always needed to deliver meanings and messages as can be seen from my MINI car key. Two pictures are used to indicate that the buttons are for unlocking the vehicle and opening the trunk.
It is eye-opening to see that almost every item in my purse has text/print on it. This task makes me realize how my normal daily life is tightly intertwined with text technologies and digital systems. It also reminds me that the influence of globalization is affecting everyone whether people are aware of it or not. This bag is just a quick snapshot of my current daily life and with ever-evolving technology breakthroughs, it is difficult to predict what might appear in my purse ten years later. I wonder what I am preparing my students for when teaching them how to read and write.