Describe or narrate a scenario about a candy found a millennium into a future in which “progress” has continued. Your description should address issues related to artificial intelligence and elicit feelings of anxiety.

In the year 3023, earth has become a wasteland. Humans live in pods, protected from the elements outside. Temperatures are extreme and the air is toxic. Within the last millennium deforestation continued, fossils fuels continued to be burned, the oceans were overfished, and habitats of animals were destroyed. Governments were too late to implement laws against the negative impacts humans have made to the planet.

With the downfall of our environment, technology continued to advance. Artificial intelligence has got to the point where it is in the shape of a small piece of candy consumed by almost every human still alive on the planet. Being stuck inside their pods everyday, the artificial intelligence provided humans with all the social, informational, and entertainment needs. Without the need to think and learn information, human’s overreliance on artificial intelligence started to deteriorate the brain both in its functions and its size. Once the candy is digested, the effects of artificial intelligence wore off. Most humans immediately take another one to function normally. It has got to the point where these AI candies were consumed to think and function on behalf of the human. Without the need to think or to make decisions, humans functioning without the AI candy were zombielike. The AI candies provide humans with entertainment inside of their brains as well. Whatever visual media the human prefers can be played inside of their brain and consumed instantly. The AI candies are filled with nutrients a human needs to survive. This makes the additional consumption of food unnecessary.

The multi-trillion corporations responsible for this technology are ungoverned as they control all the politicians with their AI candies. The world continues to crumble but time seems to be at a standstill as everyone is living within their own heads and waiting for the world to implode.

This was an interesting task to complete. I would’ve gotten to the completion page sooner but I was taking notes on every deception and annoyance the website is trying to put onto the user while completing the task. One of the subjects I’ve taught in my career is game design and a couple of the core principles of game design apply to this website as I was reflecting upon this task. When designing games, it’s important to build them with the player in mind and optimize the player experience. To do this there are many considerations such as user feedback and telegraphing. I believe both of these things apply to website design as well, especially the forms the task asked us to fill.

When playing a game, it’s important for the player to know when they think they’ve done something. Games usually have feedback in place to confirm the player’s action. For example, when attacking an enemy there are usually sound effects, visual effects, damage bars, etc. to confirm that the attack happened. This makes game play more straightforward and avoids any confusion from the player. In the website, there were buttons that didn’t respond as a regular button would. It didn’t highlight when the mouse was hovered over it, it didn’t change colours when pressed, and the cursor did not change to the hand with the finger icon. All this goes into giving the user feedback that this is a button and that it’s working. Another instance of lack of user feedback was not being able to create a proper password without proper feedback for what was needed. I had to try a number of different passwords that seemingly met with the password criteria but it still would not let me proceed to the next page without any message to tell me what was missing.

Another consideration when making games is predictability. The mechanics within the game need to be consistent and sometimes predictable. Predictability is sometimes called telegraphing in video games. An example of telegraphing is seeing a certain enemy animation happen and knowing the attack that will happen shortly after because you’ve encountered this enemy before and learned that the attack follow the animation. In the website, what users would normally expect a yes button for cookies on a website would do is to agree to the cookies policies. However, the yes button in this case refers to if the user has a problem accepting the cookies. This is not what a regular user would predict and can create confusion for the user. Another example of this from the website is the use of double negatives that confuses the user. On the password page, there was a statement “your password is not unsafe”. This create extra work for the user to figure out the double negative and to decide their next course of action.

On top of all this, there were lots of non-user-friendly features in the website that made progressing through the forms difficult.

• Unhelpful pop-ups and the time it took to dismiss the pop-ups were unnecessarily long.
• Needing to delete information in a fillable area before inputting your information
• Irrelevant or un-ordered information from a drop down menu
• Can’t directly type in information for some fillable areas and have to use sliders and buttons to get to the right information
• Creating difficulty by using captchas that can have multiple meanings

Overall, the task was eye opening on how users are accustomed to filling out forms and browsing websites. The website demonstrated how easy it would be to manipulate the user by placing hidden information or forcing users to make assumptions about the forms to misguide the user.

Top 10 Voted Songs

1. Track 25: Jaat Kahan Ho
2. Track 18: Fifth Symphony (First Movement)
3. Track 23: Wedding song
4. Track 3: Percussion (Senegal)
5. Track 14: Melancholy Blues
6. Track 24: Flowing Streams
7. Track 1: Brandenburg Concerto (First Movement)
8. Track 7: Johnny B. Goode
9. Track 20: Night Chant
10. Track 9: Tsuru No Sugomori (Crane’s Nest)

After running the results through Palladio, I was at first intimidated by the amount of bubbles and the lack of information I can gather just by looking at the visualization of the data. Upon further tinkering, I was able to use different facet dimensions to start making meaning out of the data. I was able to pick out the top 10 most selected songs from our cohort (listed at the top). On top of that, I was able to track how many other people picked the 10 pieces I did on the survey. There were six “communities” that were generated by Palladio. Every member of our cohort belonged to either one or multiple of these “communities”. These “communities” showed people that chose the same songs and also made connections to other songs and other people. Unfortunately I was unable to draw any conclusions to the reason of song choices of people from different “communities”. The visualization of the bubbles did not contain enough information regarding the reasoning of each person’s choice.

By looking at the top 10 songs picked by our cohort, we can see that all of those songs had at least 45% of the class votes. Everybody in the class had their own criteria and considerations when selecting their top 10 songs. With the data presented in this visual format, it is difficult to pin point the reasons why everyone chose the songs that they did. On top of that, it’s equally difficult to uncover the reason for “null” choices without knowing the people or have a written explanation. However, by examining the songs themselves, a few assumptions could be made regarding people’s choices.

Familiarity

In the top 10 songs of our cohort, there is a song by Chuck Berry and a song by Louis Armstrong. Both of them are royalty of the blues and jazz genre. People could’ve selected these 2 songs based on recognizing their names and also the songs themselves as they are commonly covered by other musicians. Here are links of all the covers for Melancholy Blues and Johnny B. Goode. In the top 10 songs, there were also a couple classical pieces such as Fifth Symphony and Brandenburg Concerto (First Movement) composed by Beethoven and Bach. Not only are the composers’ names recognizable but classical pieces like the Fifth Symphony are often used in media such as movies and TV shows.

Region

One of my criteria for selecting the top 10 songs to include on the Golden Record was music that represent as much of our world as possible. This involved choosing songs from different geographic regions with different cultural backgrounds. Looking at the top 10 songs from the results, almost all of them are from different parts of the world, the exception being Beethoven and Bach both being from Germany, and Chuck Berry and Louis Armstrong both being Americans. All the other top 10 songs represent different parts of earth and uses different languages and instruments that are native to that region.

In conclusion, although visual linking of data can be helpful to see connections, it is difficult to draw conclusions and know the reasoning for the data by visuals alone. Information about the person and their criteria is needed to interpret the data fully.

1. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
2. Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56
3. Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26
4. Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51
5. Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30
6. “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
7. Bulgaria, “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin,” sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59
8. Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
9. Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38
10. India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30

Above are the 10 songs I would include on the golden record. I used a few criteria to narrow down the song choices. The first criteria was that there had to be at least one song from each of the continents on earth. There were multiple songs available to choose from for a number of continents. In those cases, I simply picked the song with the most impactful title and the one that sounded more unique or pleasant. I also decided to include one classical piece and one jazz piece on the record because they’re both important genres that shaped the music we listen to today and will probably continue to inspire new music for generations.

For this task I was stomped for awhile not knowing how I can redesign the “What’s in your bag” task into an audio form without simply reading what I wrote down for the first task. After browsing some of my peer’s work I decided to write a poem and record it into an audio format. Writing the poem had its challenges such as trying to convey all of the information through a different mode of writing. I overcame this by only focusing on a couple of the reflection questions from task one. I mainly focused on describing the need for the items in my bag and how these items relate to text technologies and how I use it to engage with language and communication.

Throughout making this poem, I engaged in the iterative process as described in The New London Group’s article (NLG, 1996). I tried to create the most meaning from the words that I use and to make the stanzas sound cohesive. I went through many drafts and changed many words in my poem throughout the process. The redesign process also enabled me to demonstrate multi-literacies that I posses such as linguistic design and audio design according to The New London Group (1996).

While looking at ways I can redesign the “What’s in your bag” task, I came across a few peers that had redesigned their task into a podcast. This made me think of the difference in consumption of information when it is conveyed in a different mode. Visually, reading text consumes most of our attention and multitasking is usually limited. However when redesigned into an audio format, it can be consumed with more ease and can allow multitasking such as listening to a podcast while driving or cooking.

References:

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

This task was much harder than I thought. Even though there are so many emojis available to us, it felt like the perfect emojis for the words I’m trying to represent are missing. I approached this task by thinking of movies or shows that have very unique or farcical characters. I thought these shows or movies would be easier to summarize using emojis compared to shows and movies whose characters are more “common”. I also considered the plot and looked for more action for the same reason as dialogue heavy plots are harder to represent using emojis. I steered away from books because characters often present themselves differently to different readers. After selecting the source material, I started with the title and luckily it was short and easy to convert into emojis. I then started with writing the plot in English and then representing the important pieces of information in those sentences using a string of emojis.

Throughout the task there were many challenges I encountered. The first challenge was how I could represent names. The only way to do this is breaking down a name by its syllables and using emojis that can represent each syllable. I attempted to form the protagonist’s name using emojis but I was not successful in finding the emojis that represented the sounds. Instead, I used an emoji that is a key article of clothing to represent the protagonist.

The second challenge was whether to use homophones or use words that had related meanings to the emojis when the perfect emoji didn’t exist. I decided to steer away from homophones as to not confuse the reader into thinking that I was trying to use the true meaning of a homophonic emoji. For my plot summary I mostly used the emojis’ direct meaning or their related meaning such as using an anchor to represent boat. Another method that I used in my plot summary was using the imagery formed by combining different emojis to represent meaning such as using a man running followed by a puff of smoke to represent running away or escaping.

Deciphering another person’s emoji plot was also very challenging. I found that I have to know the source material already in order to figure out the emoji story. It was close to impossible for me to get the complete story of movies or shows that I have not seen before using emojis. However, reading a plot using emojis felt like solving a puzzle. It took longer than reading the plot in English but there is a great sense of satisfaction when you realize the source material they are representing and deciphering the emoji story.

Story Spoiler Below!

One Piece (Netflix live action series season 1)

Luffy is a pirate who wants to find the one piece treasure. He forms his crew which has a thief/navigator, a swordsman, a chef, and a marksman. They fight other pirates including a clown, a fish-man, and a butler with sword hands. They also escaped many encounters with the Marines who are trying to capture the pirates. Season one ends with Luffy having a huge bounty and the crew continuing on to find the one piece.

I normally write by typing in my laptop. One peculiarity of this matter is that I prefer to lesson plan using pen and paper. Many colleagues of mine have digitized their teaching calendar and their daily plans into their laptops. However I still prefer to use a physical planning book with written notes and short lesson plans inside of them. I believe the reason why I choose to do this is the ease of access and the ability to change the text quickly. I also think that having it physically in front of me helps with visualizing what the week will look like in my classroom.

While completing this manual script task, I used an erasable pen that I recently purchased from Japan. One of the main challenges with using a pen especially as a teacher is that I find if I make a mistake while marking a student’s work, the solution of using white-out always turns out to look messy and unprofessional. After discovering erasable pens that doesn’t ruin the paper, I have been using them ever since in place of regular pens. For this task I simply erased my mistakes and written over them by using this innovative pen. Although erasing mistakes were easy enough, it still is more work compared to a simple backspace key press on a laptop.

I feel that the most significant differences between writing by hand and using my laptop are the speed and all the tools a word processing software provides on a laptop. Writing the manual script task by hand took about 20 minutes. I believe I could’ve written the same story on my laptop in about 10 minutes. I also think my writing got messier as time went on, mainly due to my forearm getting tired and me rushing to finish the story. If I wrote the same story on my laptop, I could’ve used tools for spell check and formatting such as formatting my lists by using bullet points. For those reasons I prefer to use my laptop for writing.

14:25

During this part of Dr. Borditsky’s speech, she mentioned how an aboriginal community in Australia would greet each other by asking which direction they’re going. In Western cultures, greetings are often questions about our well being such as “how are you?” or “how have you been?”. I was born and raised in China. Growing up, a common greeting we had was asking whether you’ve eaten. I found this part of Borditesky’s speech interesting as it shows how language and culture place different importance and emphasis when greeting other.

17:38

During this part of Dr. Borditsky’s speech, she talked about the many ways different cultures use directions to represent time. In North America, we are used to representing time from left to right on a horizontal linear line. However there are other cultures that represent time vertically and also based on cardinal directions. This was something new I learned from watching the speech and it made me think about how a concept can be greatly affected by culture and the intersectionality of language and experience.

18:31

During this part of Dr. Borditsky’s speech, she talked about when a person learns a new language and a new way to talk, it changes how they think. This was interesting as it relates to my experience learning English as my second language. Since I currently speak English the majority of time in my everyday life, when I do speak Mandarin, I sometimes use incorrect grammar that would be correct in English. This shows how learning a new language affects the way I now think.

33:55

During this part of Dr. Borditsky’s speech, she talked about how meaning of phrases can change if we change the grammar and how it affects the processing of information and what we pay attention to. I think this is loosely related to being a teacher. When I’m teaching I try to use different wording and emphasize more important content to help my students know what is more important and what they should spend more time learning.

36:17

During this part of Dr. Borditsky’s speech, she talked about how different cultures have different base systems for counting and how they represent numbers differently using their bodies. In North America we are taught to use our ten fingers to represent the first ten numbers. When I first came to Canada during grade school, I remember using a one hand counting method for representing the first ten numbers and my classmates and teachers were very confused. This shows that not only are languages different, but body language and how we interpret language using our bodies also have interesting distinctions across different cultures.

42:49

During this part of Dr. Borditsky’s speech, she talked about how words have different associations which attach different meanings. The example in the video was how changing the label from prunes to dried plums drove up sales significantly due to the prior “negative” association with the word prune to old age. This shows how language is ever changing especially when people of newer generations are using existing words to mean new things. Examples of this would be “fire” – to mean great or delicious, “bet” – to mean I promise, and “salty” – to mean upset or jealousy.

For this task, I used my daily work bag that I carry with me. I am a high school teacher and the items in my bag are used almost every day. I have my work laptop that I teach from and my work keys to the school and classroom. These are the items I use the most from my bag. I have a few electronic items such as chargers, headphones, and storage devices. I use the chargers to power my electronic devices, the headphones to use during my prep time, and storage devices for keeping copies of work files. I also have different coloured Sharpie pens in my bag. This allows for me to write things down wherever I am or do markings on the go. I have a few personal hygiene items such as tissues, disinfectant wipes, and hand sanitizer. When I don’t have access to a sink, I can use these items to keep germs away. Lastly, I found some papers that I forgot about from the last school year when I coached basketball at my school. These were plays and practice plans that I received during a basketball coach conference that I forgot about.

The item that relates mostly to “texts” is my laptop. I use it to not only consume texts from articles, websites, and blogs but I also use it to create my original texts such as lessons plans, presentations, and assignments for my students. Another item that relates to “texts” in my bag is my headphones. Texts are used to convey information, I often use my headphones to listen to podcasts and watch educational videos online. Lastly, the sharpies and pencils in my bag are used to edit text when I assess my students’ work.

I use technology heavily in my everyday life and I believe that is reflected from my bag. Over half of the items in my bag are related to technology such as charging wires, headphones, storage devices, and my laptop. These technology items display my technology literacies. Some people might also assume that I have great physical literacy based on the coaching documents. I also like to be prepared for messes and disinfecting high touch surfaces as apparent by the disinfectant wipes, tissues, and hand sanitizer I bring in my bag.

As a teacher who is still relatively young and early in their career. An issue I have had in the past was looking professional and being able to differentiate myself from my students. When I first started teaching, I made sure to wear semi-formal attire as to stand out from high school students. The image I want to outwardly project of myself is a well put together teacher. The contents of my bag doesn’t explicitly communicate that, but it does enable me to do my job as a teacher.

The bag of a teacher 15 or 25 years ago would contain a lot less technology. Although computers were around, they were not as portable as today. Computers and digital devices were also not accessible to average consumers due to high costs. A teacher 15 or 25 years ago would have more stationaries and textbooks that would help them teach everyday.