Speculative Future 1 (Dystopian):

Emily is 5 years old and she will be starting Kindergarten this September, 2051. Today is the day she gets her kinder shots, and her parents are both excited and anxious to finally receive the insight and prediction of Emily’s future professional career. Emily’s parents have gathered all the artifacts and records of the first 5 years of Emily’s life, and they submit them to a computer and AI analyzes the data and tells the parents their child’s future career path. Often what AI predicts the future of a child can be far different from what the child wants to be when he or she grows up and it can bring disappointments, frustrations, and challenges. Before participating the future career prediction program, parents should agree that they would not reveal the future professions to their children for the analysis results to be accurately applied to their children’s future. Just as with any agreements, accidents can happen, and some children can be unintentionally exposed to their AI generated future predictions. Some may feel happy and impressed with their future prediction and decide not to put their best effort into their lives just because they feel their perfect lives are already mapped out for them; others fall into despair and disappointments because of the difference between the prediction and the desire. Some may feel that they can challenge the AI and become what they want to be to prove against the AI prediction. But would taking a different career path against the prediction make the person’s life happier and more satisfying? Maybe what the AI “suggests” could be for the human’s happiness, success, and wellbeing in the future. Also, another possibility is that some organizations can sneak into behind the design and manipulate the algorithm to “balance” out the variety of jobs in the future. I really cannot tell the true intention of the AI future diagnosis program until how the algorithm is designed and how the data is analyzed.

Speculative Future 2 (Utopian):

Emily is 5 years old and she will be starting Kindergarten this September. In 2051, there are still physical school buildings exist in public education, but a lot of children are learning from home with the help of AI super Teaching Assistant (TA). In the past, especially during the COVID pandemic in 2020 when schools were locked down, home schooling or distance learning was challenging for many working parents to find balance between their work and their children’s education. Thanks to the development of AI super TA and its availability 24/7, now parents can afford to homeschooling their children even if they have to work during the school hours and students can receive instant assistance and personalized learning in their education by AI super TA. Also, this development of AI super TA has resolved the childcare crisis in the past: shortage of childcare workers, facilities and increased cost of child care.

Inspiration: https://engineering.stanford.edu/magazine/article/how-ai-based-super-teaching-assistant-could-revolutionize-learning

It was a great way to visualize connectivity of members in each community generated by Palladio. The size of nodes indicates the “order” of the track among the community members. The higher order (the track is shared by higher number of members) means the bigger node size.  I could move the nodes around and extend/shorten the edges to see the connections more clearly.

I noticed that each track is selected by at least two people and the most popularly selected tracks are shared by 14 out of 22 people. Comparing my 10 choices with the above table, I noticed that majority of my selections are in the top half of the table.

There are 22 curators (ie, the participants to the Voyager’s Golden Record curation quiz) and they are grouped into 4 different communities. Examining the number of nodes and edges in the graphs, I noticed that one of the curators in Community 0 has selected only 9 tracks as opposed to 10 tracks and this explains the total number of edges (49) in Community 0. Also, I noticed that in all 4 communities, there are no tracks shared by all members of the community.

To attempt to figure out Palladio’s criteria of generating these 4 communities out of these 22 curators in such ways, I examined each community’s shared tracks, frequency/degree, “null” choices (ie, unselected tracks), number of nodes, average degree, and density. The last two properties can be found under Global Metrics in Palladio.

Both Community 1 and Community 2 share the same number of tracks (22), the same number of curators (6) and the same average degree value (4.28571429). I have looked through the data and maps/visual representations and some mathematical calculations to justify Palladio’s interpretation of the data. Despite my efforts to discover logical or mathematical reasons behind creating such communities, I could only conclude that the most popularly shared tracks in each group of Community 1, 2, 3, and 0 tend to be in lower part of the frequency table of 27 tracks as their average degree values decrease. (I am not sure if that makes sense to explain my findings to you)

I can only assume that the program performed some mathematical calculations to generate each group’s highest possible average degree value. As I did not indicate my reasons for selecting my 10 tracks when I completed the Quiz, obviously, reasons for choosing and not choosing such tracks are not evident in the visualization. Just because two people chose the same track does not mean that they made their choices for the same justification. The members who share the same community may have been connected by misleading, misinterpretation, or assumption of the given data.

I have selected the following 10 tracks from the Voyager’s Golden Record with the help of my children as if we were aliens listening to the record for the first time. Our criteria of selection were being pleasant enough to finish listening to the complete selection of the tracks and being inclusive of diverse cultures of humans. We tried to avoid including the tracks that have loud and high pitch sound because we did not want to scare the aliens away with unpleasant hearing experience, assuming that they would have similar range of audio spectrum or hearing abilities as human. For young children it was very prompt and easy to identify pleasant sounds to their ears.  Also, we wanted to better represent the cultural diversity of humans by selecting songs from different parts of Earth.

After completing this week’s required reading and viewing, I contemplated the rationale of this Golden Record assignment. I think this curating activity was to experience the preparation and process of digitization: deciding which one to keep and which one to lose and justifying the selection. As Dr. Smith states in her article, “In order to digitize them, curators familiar with the materials sift through collections and make selections from them. The amount of physical preparation and intellectual control work that is needed for every digital project is very large indeed. Scanning is a very expensive process, and most of the cost occurs before the item is laid on the scanner. Part of that cost is the physical preparation of, research into, and description of an item” (Smith, 1999).

Smith, A. (1999). Why digitize? Retrieved June 15, 2019, from Council on Library and Information Resources

Woah!

I am so glad that I finally finished recording myself talking about my typical day with my “diaper” backpack. Reading and referring to the multimodal layer diagram in New London Group’s (1996) article, I contemplated how I could change the semiotic mode of Task 1 to a different one for several days and I finally decided to verbally talk about my day with my essentials in the backpack with some audio effects to help listeners visualize my day, the bag items and myself.

So, my story starts with a key jiggling sound at my garage in the morning, trying to double check if my essentials are all in the bag before leaving home with three my children. After dropping off two of my daughters at their school, I am heading to a recreational centre with my youngest daughter for her dance class. Toddler’s nut-free snacks and diaper changing necessities are pulled out of my bag to use. On the way to a park for play time and lunch my daughter falls asleep and once again my MET studying essentials: cellphone, pen, paper, and Air Pods come in handy to utilize this waiting time.

I tried to use two different modes of meaning:

• Audio Design: oral language and audio effects help visualizing how the bag items are used and what they are meant to the storyteller.
• Visual Design: even though my story does not include any pictures or animations (if I had more time and technology skills, I would have included animations or movie to make this task more complex), the setting of the time and the place that I take my bag allows the audience to visualize objects and movements.

After learning and thinking about multimodal literacies this week, as a mathematics teacher, I think this multimodality can also be applied to numeracy and mathematical representations. For instance, abstract mathematical concepts can be delivered and understood more successfully using various modes of meaning and their design elements, such as visual, spatial, or gestural design as opposed to merely using written texts.

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

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Reflection:

To complete the task, I started with the title. As I could not find emojis to transcribe the exact text in the title, I used multiple emojis that may help readers decode the title. I showed the array of the emojis to my 7-year-old who does not know the exact word(s) in the title, and she was able to describe what each picture may represent and how they would link to each other. Even though she could not come up with the correct word(s) for the title because of a lack of vocabs in her word bank,  she was able to get the “idea” of what I was trying to represent using these emojis. What I experimented with my daughter can be described by Bolter (2001) as he contends that “two readers could explain the same message in different words, and speakers of different languages could share the same system of picture writing. Picture writing is perhaps constructed culturally (even today) as closer to the reader” (p. 59).

Readers may not share the same languages, but they may share similar cultures, then the intended ideas and meanings of picture writing can be successfully delivered across. But then again if the writer’s intention is for readers to decode the picture writing into the exact text and readers have not watched or heard of the show before, then it would be challenging for them to interpret the pictures to the writer’s intended word(s).

In English we read from left to right and from top to bottom and I assumed that my readers would read my emoji story in the same direction as I created the story as I would write it in English text. If it was read by someone whose language uses different script direction, then it would cause confusion and the intended meaning of the story would not be able to be delivered successfully.

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110

Title: Will You Have Time for Your Assignment Today?

Inspiration: This is based on my life every day, juggling work, kids, family, and study. I can so relate to this interactive story because my life is full of making choices to complete my daily tasks successfully. There is also a true bitter lesson at the end of the game if you fail at completing the assignment.

Goal: To make time to work on your assignment and complete it today so you can spend the weekend with your family.

Reflection: I had a whole week to complete this task, creating an interactive game using Twine, but I really procrastinated on starting this assignment this week because creating an interactive game using an unfamiliar program was very intimidating. I did not feel confident and I had to read several introductory how-to tutorials on the web. I also browsed through many interactive fictions created by Twines as examples to get a good sense of expectations of this week’s task. These are my “excuses” for dragging myself until this weekend to do the assignment, but to be honest, I was too intimidated that my game would be too simple and silly compared to those games that I found on the Internet.

Okay, so here is me sitting at a table and jotting down a story line. As I normally write a rough work on paper first before start writing, I started brainstorming the big ideas using flowcharts on a notebook. Once I decided the start, choices, and the end, I started creating the story on Twine, carefully following the step-by-step manual. Creating screens, linking them using hypertexts and manipulating functions were not as complicated as I had thought they would be.

While completing the task, I have found a few things that could be improved.

• Spell checker was not available on Twine. I noticed several typos when executed the game and I had to edit, re-save, re-upload the file on an external website, and then re-embed the link on my blog numerous times. If I had to create another Twine game, I would create a flowchart on MS Word and then copy and past the text on Twine to save time for spellchecking.
• Word counter on Twine would be helpful to display the text on the Twine game screen. When testing my game, I noticed several pages were not displaying the full text. Some hyperlinks were not displayed on the screen because of word count limit, so the game could not be continued to the next page. To resolve this problem, I divided the long text into two pages using a hyperlink such as “Next Page” and I think that it also helps players follow the story easier, not overwhelming them with too much text to read on one page.
• Twine is case sensitive so if I use the words “You” and “you” then they will not link to the same page. I do not think that it is something the program needs to improve, but it is something that Twine users need to be careful. Make sure to double check your links.

Overall, I really enjoyed this week’s challenges in learning to use Twine. I just wish that I had more time to make the game more complex and learn to modify the appearance of the game. And again, stop procrastinating for the next week’s task!

As I tried this potato stamp activity on National Day of Truth and Reconciliation in Canada on September 30, I decided to create the stamps for the word, “child” from the slogan Every Child Matters in orange to reflect on the meaning of the orange shirt.

Before starting with the process of carving or cutting out the shapes on the potatoes, I sketched the desired images of the letters on paper, examined them and planned how and what configuration of the letters need to be carved on the potato pieces.

H and I are symmetrical both horizontally and vertically, so they were the easiest letters to carve as I just needed to carve the letters as I see them on paper. Also, even if I stamp them flipped, the correct images will be produced.

C, L, and D are asymmetrical so there were some plans and confirmations required in designing these letters.

C and D are easier than L as they are asymmetrical only in the horizontal direction (vertically symmetrical) while L is asymmetrical in both directions.

At first, I thought I would have to take the horizontally flipped images of C and D to create the correct stamps, but as they are vertically symmetrical, it was fine to carve the letters as I see them on paper, just like H and I. After creating the stamps, I just needed to rotate them 180 degrees then I could produce the correct images of C and D on paper.

For the letter L stamp, I took the mirror image of L to carve on the potato.

As the three stamps required attention to the direction of holding them when stamping, I wrote the letters on the top of the stamp “handles” to indicate how I would need to hold them to stamp the letters correctly.

Before printing the word in a good copy, I tried stamping on scrape paper a few times. I tried dapping the stamps directly in the paint and the outcome was not so successful. So, I tried brushing the paint on the stamp to ensure that the surface is evenly coated and it was much better. I tried stamping on paper placed on the surface of the table, and some of the letters were not printed clean as the surface of the potato stamps was not flat and smooth. So, I tried putting a towel underneath the paper and the cushion from the towel helped printing the letters evenly.

As you can see from the first letter from the first copy of the word, more paint was printed. Cut-out potatoes tend to develop moisture on the open surface, so before applying the paint on the stamp, I dried the surface first to control the amount “ink”.

The whole process of designing the images, creating the stamps and printing the word twice took me about 40 minutes. I was only creating an image of a 5-letter of word, but if I was printing a book or a page-length document using this method of printing, it would take so much time and effort.

However, considering the time, cost and the amount of man-made mistakes in handwriting, the letter press system in mechanization of writing is far advanced and as long as the stamps are available to use, reproducing the text is much faster than handwriting.

This week’s activity has made me appreciate the convenience of writing technology that we have today. Type, erase, copy, paste, and print. So convenient!

Unscripted storytelling using the Google speech recognition on voicetotext.org

Before I start talking about how I prepared my middle child Caitlin her name is Caitlin for her kindergarten this year you have to understand her personality and how she was attending when attending our daycare Caitlin started her daycare at Age 2 and 1/2 and her older sister Allison went there together for about a year before she went off to kindergarten during the last three years of going to the daycare Caitlin was very nervous to be separated from me and cried at drop off almost every morning so basically she hated good to go anywhere away from me because of her separation issue Caitlin was not able to participate in any extracurricular activities she was very interested she is very interested in sports such as skating gymnastics that’s swimming God since these programs require kids at age over 5 to attend without parents she was unfortunately not able to enjoy it too. She is interested in I understand. It is. It is common for young kids to be nervous and new environment but she is so different from my job first child Alison when she was at Caitlin’s age so it was a bit challenging for me and my husband as we were not able to make my make Caitlin you feel comfortable safe and happy sometimes I think maybe the anxiety and depression issues caused by be perfect breastfeeding her too long until she turned a 15 months . so it has been over two weeks now since she started kindergarten this month and she cried when you first 2 days last week and she tried standing against the wall and waited for the start belt so it’s surprising me she’s been doing she’s been doing so much better than what the anticipated but she is still or she still gets nervous in the morning and as the weekend gets closer to Monday so there are about two things that we’ve have tried to prepare Caitlin to be successful in kindergarten first thing is to talk about fun things about kindergarten and bake basically the school in general so since her older sister is already attending the school that she is attending she’s starting so we talked about fun things School events playground Parks anything interesting things dad kids do in in the school and also sometimes we go to we go to the school on the weekends just to see the school the building to get her to be more comfortable in the environment second thing that we did was to talk about her emotions why she’s nervous and why she’s about to cry so we asked her to talk to talk to us when she get nervous and when she’s about to cry so he asked her to talk about what kind of emotions and what kind of Heelys she is experiencing so so that we can come up with some solutions that we can help her feel better and safer so every morning I asked her how she’s feeling are you nervous what is what kind of emotions do you have inside your belly. That’s what I asked and she sometimes tells me she’s nervous nervous because there is no one she knows and she feels that there’s going to be no friends that she can play indoor recess time  and then I asked her if I  I could give her a hug to to help her feel better and that has been working well too 2 to help her cope with her anxiety and a separation issues so so far Caitlin has been very positive about going to school and she even said she can try going to to a gymnastic class by herself. so whatever we’ve been trying to help our nervous middle child to be successful in a new environment has been successful and now we are working tours to helping her be more independent

Analysis:

The transcript text is different from the written English in its organization and details of the story. Even though I had thought about the topic and the contents of my story beforehand, as soon as I hit the microphone button on the program, I became under pressure to come up with what I was going to say next as my story continued. There were frequent pauses and Ums and Ahs in the recording which fortunately were not transcribed to the text. If my story was scripted, then it would have been more organized and included more descriptive details to improve the story more interesting.

Despite the pressure and spontaneity required, when storytelling orally and unscripted, it takes only the duration of your speech to complete the task (here I took 5 minutes to tell the story). On the other hand, if the story was scripted, it would take longer than 5 minutes to brainstorm, organize, write, proofread, edit, and practice the written text to deliver the story more effectively to its audience. After listening to Walter J. Ong’s lecture excerpt saying writing changed how people talk and how people organize their thoughts (Abe Aboud, 2014). I think that one of the reasons why literate people tend to take longer time to write a text is that they want to produce written pieces in similarly sophisticated ways that they have read and heard before, otherwise they do not look and sound educated and do not fit into the world that they live in.

The most common mistake in my text is the absence of punctuations and it made the whole story written in one single sentence. I consider this the most critical mistake because it makes hard to understand and follow the story in the transcript form. Even if I made a clear pause during the speech to indicate an end of a sentence and a start of a new sentence, the program was not able to detect my intention, unless I would specifically state the name of punctuations, such as period, comma, exclamation mark, or question mark.

Another common mistake is repetition of words or phrases in the text. As the story was recorded unscripted and required spontaneity to come up with what I was going to say next, there were some moments where I spoke the same sentence all over again or repeated some words and phrases to buy myself some time to think the next part of the story.

Imagine a person with a speech or language disorder was using a speech-to-text program. The outcome of the transcript text would contain numerous repetitions and other “mistakes” and the readers of the text would not know if these mistakes were intentional, accidental, or program errors. If the story was delivered orally, the audience would understand the underlying conditions and it would help the audience to comprehend information in this unique setting.

Also, I believe that scripted or unscripted oral storytelling has benefits of conveying the speaker’s emotions in facial expressions (visual storytelling) and in voice (audio storytelling) which will enhance the story than when it is delivered in the written form.

Reference: 

Abe Aboud. (2014, September 8). Walter Ong – Oral Cultures and Early Writing [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvF30zFImuo&t=360s

This is me with my kids and the bag in July, 2020.

Hello, everyone!

My name is Esther Yang and I am a secondary mathematics teacher working in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. ETEC 540 is my 5^th course in MET program, and I am looking forward to learning with you all this term.

As you probably can tell from the picture on the right, I am a mother of three girls in ages from 2 to 7. For Task 1, I have chosen this “diaper” bag because it reflects me the most at the current stage of my life as a mother of young 3 children. I carry this backpack everyday whenever I am with my children, going to parks, school/daycare pick-ups, or grocery-shopping.  Also, the type of my bag (backpack) says the lifestyle and activity level of my kids as I need to have my two hands available to hold the kids’ hands and carry my high-energy toddler in parking lots. When I had only one child, I used to have a medium-sized shoulder bag to carry baby necessities, but now I must have this backpack to fit all these items in the picture and some extras for my three kids.

Here are the items in my bag:

1. Diapers, baby wipes, diaper changing pad: one of the most important necessities for my youngest child. We have initiated a potty training about a month ago, so I hope that these items would be absent from my backpack by this December when she turns 2 and a half and starts a fulltime daycare.
2. Hair elastics and hairbrush: on some busy mornings, I have to tie kids’ hair at the drop-off parking lot, and I keep them in my bag just in case the kids have messy hair after a nap at the daycare or they loose or break hair elastics.
3. Band-Aids: the ones with popular cartoon characters printed are the best remedy for boo-boos for young children. Product description, instruction and ingredients are digitally printed in both English and French languages.
4. Sunscreen: for kids’ outdoor playing on sunny days. Product description, instruction and ingredients are digitally printed in both English and French languages.
5. Moisturizing lotion: for kids’ eczema and for my hands after frequent hand washing and sanitizing. Product description, instruction and ingredients are digitally printed in both English and French languages.
6. Extra face masks: it has been the norm to wear masks indoors and outdoors for the last 1.5 years. The kids sometimes lose masks, the ear ties break, or they just need to change to clean ones.
7. Epi-pens: two of my daughters have severe allergies to tree nuts so we are the “Epi-pen family” carrying multiple Epi-pens for emergency. The auto-injector has the digitally printed instructions in English and French and a picture to guide caregivers and patients to ensure that they can follow the necessary steps in the emergency.
8. Wallet, coin pouch, receipts: money, banking cards, credit cards, library cards, zoo membership cards, and important identifications for me and my family. Receipts contain printed texts and some of major brand retail companies, nowadays, offer sending electronical receipts to email. I think this is such a great option for people who constantly lose receipts and have to dig their wallets for returns/exchanges/price adjustments. Digitally printed receipts can be convenient to store, retrieve and organize because they exist in the digital space where the information will not be lost unless you purposely delete them.
9. Cellphone charger, external cellphone battery, wireless earphones: during my girls’ gymnastics classes or when my youngest falls asleep in the car, this is the golden time for me to do my assignments and catch up with readings for my MET courses.
10. Cellphone (not shown in the picture as I took the picture this picture with my cellphone): when I am out with my family, my phone stays in the front pocket of the backpack unless I am taking pictures of the kids and the family. Again, keeping the phone in the bag allows me to pay full attention to my people, have my hands available for other things and keep the phone safe and not losing it. I wear a smart watch, so I do not worry about missing calls or messages.
11. Nut-free snacks (for kids and me): hungry kids or adults are not so pleasant to work with. Product information and ingredients are digitally printed in English and French on the package. It is important to double check the ingredients before giving them to my kids. I try to buy nut-free snacks that clearly state the products are made in a nut-free facility. 
12. Rock collection: I was asked to keep these rocks picked by my nature-loving middle child while we were out in our neighborhood. She picks up random things and wants to bring them home then forgets about their existence in my bag.
13. Pen and drawings/pictures/memos from my kids
14. Toys for my youngest to keep her still during diaper change and to entertain her on car rides.
15. Keys, grocery store membership cards, hand sanitizer on a lanyard with my school district name and number printed. The grocery store membership cards are designed to hang on key chains and make them easily accessible. They have bar codes on the back and cashiers scan them or customers scan them on a designated scanner on the cashier counter to get discounts or collect points. Many stores offer digital copy of their membership and there are many apps organize such cards on your cellphones. I understand the convivence of collecting and organizing all the cards in one place, but I have not adapted to organizing things in virtual space, just yet. This reminds me that I really need to organize my folders and files on OneDrive too.

In my bag, the cellphone is the only text technology and I use this technology device to do so many things everyday.

• to communicate with friends and family mostly by sending text messages, phone calls and video calls.
• to document my days and special events by taking pictures and videos
• to organize work, school, and family schedules and appointments and share them with my spouse.
• to do my schoolwork, read articles and watch videos when I am out without my laptop.
• to do online shopping
• to do online banking: sending e-transfers, deposit cheques, paying bills
• to watch news, movies, or tv shows
• to read news articles and e-books
• to check weather forecasts and driving directions on Googlemap

Looking through all the things I do with my cellphone, I realize that I have traditional literacy, information literacy, digital literacy, financial literacy, health literacy.

• Traditional literacy (reading and writing) & Information literacy – I use my phone to study and work on assignments. I can search information, assess the validity of the information, and use it to complete tasks.
• Digital literacy – I can use my smartphone effectively and understand how all the features in this digital device and utilize it to solve problems.
• Financial literacy – I do online banking and online shopping on my phone. I can set my budgets for big purchases and effectively look for deals online.
• Health literacy – I am confident that I can identify products that may contain allergens for my children and when and how to use medications for emergency. I can identify when to see a doctor when there is a medical emergency.

You have probably noticed that I have quite a bit of items for emergency uses. I used to carry more things for the kids when they were younger, such as extra clothes, socks, underwear, more diapers, nail clipper, medications, more snacks, water bottles for each child etc. The age of the kids and the number of years of experience with toddlers have made me realize that I do not have to carry everything and have learned to pack my bag efficiently with only necessities. If an archeologist was going through my bag items in the future, I would be described as a parent or caregiver who had young children with anaphylactic allergies and who spent a lot of time with children outdoors in nature and value time and memories with her children by examining places, traces and pictures she left in her mobile phone. As there is not much personal items for myself in this bag, I would be viewed as a main caregiver who would have prioritized my children’s needs and interests.  Also, the messiness of the inside of my wallet with lots of old receipts would describe me as a not-so-organized person. If it was 15 or 25 years ago, I would have been a student so most of the contents would be for school, such as textbooks, notebooks, writing supplies, and some personal items, all for myself and no one else.

When I am in public with my three children, often I receive comments from strangers like, “Wow, you are a busy mom! You have three children. Are they all yours? They look handful!”

I am grateful for my children and my family, and I truly treasure every minute of my life with my children. I cannot deny the fact that it is challenging and sometimes exhausting to work full time and raise three young children, but I think I want to feel and present myself as a fun, calm and well-organized mom who enjoys challenges that I encounter while raising my children. I hope that my bag items narrate myself as the same way I want to be viewed!