Hi everyone, my name is Eric Wilson, and I am a grade 4 teacher in Grande Prairie, Alberta. My wife and I have three kids: 2 teenage girls and a 10-year-old boy. I enjoy being outdoors and look forward to a couple of different travel adventures we have planned with our family over the next year. This is my 9th MET course, and the bag I chose for this activity is one that I use daily, going to and from school.
It was interesting to discover exactly what was in the bag. I knew there wasn’t much, but digging into the vast array of pockets led me to some intriguing discoveries. The only things in the bag that get touched on a semi-regular basis are my computer and the student work. I rarely use the pens because I have a collection of colourful markers at home and at work that I always use. The rest of the contents were hidden in pockets, and I had forgotten that any of it was there. The external hard drive is left over from the summer institute I attended this summer, and I have no idea what the loose USB cord actually belongs to.
The two most interesting finds were the receipts hidden at the bottom. One is for a volunteer criminal record check from seven years ago, and the other is from Menchies in 2015. Menchies has actually been closed for several years in Grande Prairie, but while it was open, it was one of our family’s favourite treats. The fact that the receipt has been riding around in this bag for over a decade is more interesting to me. I am a creature of habit and since I don’t put much in the bag, I obviously don’t go through it very often either. The things that are probably most telling about my life are not kept in a bag, but rather stored more permanently at home or at work, or kept in my pockets (cell phone, wallet and keys).
The laptop computer is probably the most representative item in my bag because I do a lot of work and leisure activities on it. Additionally, it is an example of the most common type of text technology that I interact with. I do the vast majority of both my reading and writing in digital forms, and if my pocket contents were included in the photo, my cell phone would have been added as another highly used piece of text technology. It is also why there are so few items in the bag; most of what I carry with me now takes a digital form. When I signed up for this course, the most intriguing part for me was investigating this shift from physical to digital. I have plenty of friends who are fighting this shift, especially when it comes to reading and writing, because they love the physical tactile feel of an “actual” book. I have embraced the digital world for many reasons, but the ability to carry numerous items digitally without occupying more physical space is among the primary ones. I am excited to delve into this course and have already been fascinated by the evolution in meaning and usage of the words ‘text’ and ‘technology’ over time. It was particularly interesting to me that the origin of the word ‘text’ had its roots in a physical, tactile nature, as seen in words such as ‘texture’ or ‘textile’. Perhaps this is why so many people prefer a physical copy of a book over the digital versions.