Linking Assignment

1. Allison J – Mode-bending

Some questions to consider when you summarize and reflect upon your links:

1. How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

The contents of the bag are the first and best clue to how close a colleague’s life experiences are to one’s own. How they describe their relationship to these items complements this first impression. There was almost no overlap between the contents of Allison’s bag and my own. I don’t have vehicle keys, Tylenol, glasses, money, post-its, Dentyne.  It was interesting that Allison added “Clues to a puzzle …” and “What do they tell us about the Owner?” to the captions for her video suggesting that without an explanatory context the meaning of these items would remain mysterious.

2. What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

Allison made a short video with the Quick Time File format and then linked it to Google Drive.

3. How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authouring and end-user interface?

I used the same format but stored the file on my WordPress blog. I had a problem with getting my file size to within the maximum limit allowed by WordPress whereas Allison would not have faced any similar limitation.

4. What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

By using an external site, Allison was able to circumvent the limits of WordPress, giving herself more room for the development of her concept. In addition, the recording tool she used allowed for greater creativity in the interaction of audio/visual elements. This allowed her to contrast the dramatic tension building music typical of adventure/thriller movies with the mundane contents of her bag in an entertaining but intriguing way.

5. What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

As mentioned above in Question 4, Allison hoped to draw attention to various modes of representation including sound, text, visuals and draw our attention to the ways these illuminate the personal meaning of the items. Unlike Marwa who took us on an exploration of interior space and her emotional world, Allison’s work tried to create mystery and suspense.

2. Chris Spanis – Potato type

Some questions to consider when you summarize and reflect upon your links:

1. How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

Chris and I chose different options from the two offered for this assignment. Chris decided to try the potato type and completed it with his family whereas I did the hand-written assignment solo. Consequently, we had completely different experiences. Chris felt the experience highlighted the technical challenges that Gutenberg had to face and overcome when building the first moveable print. The two insights I gained were that i) handwriting is demanding and bears the imprint of the physiological and psychological characteristics of the author in the way that mechanized writing does not.

2. What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

Chris used the word processing and media features of Word Press to display his work.

3. How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authouring and end-user interface?

I’ll discuss Chris’ potato type versus my experiment with handwriting. Chris found himself reinventing an old techology and although moveable type obviously revolutionized mass communication, this is never going to happen with potatos. In that sense, his experience was similar to mine in that the end  product was highly individual, with no two letters or words ever quite the same and no possibility of mass communication.

4. What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

Referring back to the potato type and the handwriting, reading type and reading handwriting are different skills. The ease with which handwriting can be understood is of course notoriously variable and this along with benefits of speed and automation account for the major benefits of moveable print. This unique and individual character of handwriting is so marked that a hand-copied book was a work of art in itself and valued as such whatever the information value of its content.

3. Manize Nayani – Attention Economy

Some questions to consider when you summarize and reflect upon your links:

1. How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

Manize’s experience was similar to my own and I think to all of us. Compared to some of our peers we seemed actually to have had a calmer time.  He did notice some details that I didn’t for example, he figured out how to enter the game whereas, I got in mostly by accident. I tried the Help box, which he didn’t. The dominant note for everyone was frustration, even anger,  and I think this is significant since its the power of emotion to shut down our reason that made the game insidious.

2. What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

A technique that Manize used that I wished I had done was taking screen shots of the game as he went through so that he document his experience and illustrate his ideas more clearly afterward. This idea was actually at the back of my mind as well, but the frustration and irritation of navigating the obstacles prevented me from stopping to do it. Another example of how the game short-circuits cognitive clarity by activating emotions that override it.

3. How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authouring and end-user interface?

We both relied on Word Press and both posted a screenshot of the finished game. I feel in many cases, my peers and I really focused on the ideas rather than experimenting with different types of content-authoring tools.

4. What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

In this case, Manize and I used the same content-authoring tools.

5. What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

Manize used a font, called Libre Franklin, that I’d never seen before and that I really felt it suited the theme of text technology we’ve been exploring. It has a very modern clean style, was sans-serif but more rounded and with more shape that Arial or Courier. I intend to use this in the future as I think Times New Roman has become a bit old-fashioned.

4. Marwa K – What’s in my Bag?

Some questions to consider when you summarize and reflect upon your links:

1. How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

As an amateur poet and mother living and working in the U.A.E., whose first language is Arabic, Marwa’s gender, ethnic background, profession, personality and life experience all differ quite markedly from my own. Her relationship to the objects in her bag was different also. These were embedded in a delicate web of meanings and emotional cues, in two languages, that reflect her personal and professional commitments and joys; whereas, in contrast, the contents of my bag related largely to my work. Marwa shared this part of her life in her poem and in the explanation that followed.

2. What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

Two authoring tools were employed to remarkable effect, the rhyming app, RhymeZone which she used to help her create a narrated poem and the animation app Vyond with which she sketched the items referred to. Marwa says that Vyond was a new technology for her and that she chose it to enlarge her digital literacy. I can say without hesitation that she succeeded. I was frankly amazed and suspect I wasn’t alone.

3. How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authouring and end-user interface?

I made a video with my phone so both products are visual. Vyond encourages a high degree of creativity in the user since you basically start with a blank canvas that you fill in. A video can be modified as well of course, but it’s photographic in nature; that of course is what “movies are”, moving pictures. Unless otherwise stated or unless your intention is to distort reality or deliberately mislead, as in a deep fake, edits are assumed to enhance or fine tune an essentially realistic depiction.

4. What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

In both cases, there was an audiovisual presentation followed by a textual exposition. Neither was primarily didactic in purpose although we both wanted to communicate a truth. For Marwa this was some of the hard to express realities of her world, staying in touch with distant friends and family.  I focussed on the deconstruction of a professional persona, quite a different undertaking.

5. What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

It’s clear that the theoretical work of the New London Group informed Marwa’s creative decision. These emphasis the value of interweaving a variety of semiotic resources, multimodal sign systems. A key concept raised by the New London Group relates to meaning-making that is multimodal: written-linguistic modes of meaning interact with oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile, and spatial patterns of meaning. I felt Marwa made exceptional use of these possibilities.

5. Olga K – Emoji Story

Some questions to consider when you summarize and reflect upon your links:

1. How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

I notice that Olga considered using individual emojis to represent phonemes, for example, using an image of a bee to represent the sound of the letter “B”. I never thought of that as an option because it seemed to be evading the purpose of the exercise. Later I realized that was just an assumption I’d made but still, I notice that Olga herself did not take that route.

2. What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

In this case, the web-authoring tool was recommended to us, and so almost everyone used the emoji collection made available on the assignment page. Having said this, several versions of the emojis were available so you could choose the flavour that suited our taste and personality.

3. How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authouring and end-user interface?

Olga decided to organize the pictographs vertically with the story being read top to bottom, whereas I chose to present mine the way one would read regular Indo-European text, that is, in horizontal rows from left to right. Her decision intrigued me as this is the way Chinese would be presented. Looking at the rows I realized that arranging pictographs in fixed sets to form specific meanings for each set meant that there were numerous repetitions of the same set, as often in fact, as a word itself would be repeated. Comparing the two, I saw how much easier it is to spot these iterations when the rows are vertical and how much clearer the beginnings of words and sentences are. I note that Anne had the same observation. This is in contrast with ancient Egyptian which can be read from right to left or from top to bottom depending on which direction the hieroglyphs are facing. Erin Marranca took this to a whole new level by dividing sets of pictographs into chunks and then organizing them in a sort of indented order from top to bottom thereby making their arrangement on the page an important part of their interpretation.

4. What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

Olga’s site offers more access to her personality than mine. For example, she has a photo of herself and she is willing to discuss the meaning and significance of her assignment with reference to her family. This adds depth and interest to the site and encourages visitors. It also lays out more of meta-function of the website, that is, what its purpose is with respect to the course, the MET program, assignments and tasks completed and so on. I tended not to present anything that wasn’t directly related to an assignment, so no audio/visuals unless needed.

5. What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

The unique affordances and limitations of a particular semiotic resource, pictographic text, were explored in this exercise. Making meaning through a written form that combined visual and textual modalities is a process that would have been very new to users of alphanumeric systems, like Olga and I.

6. How do the constraints of the course design manifest in your architectural choices? How have you responded to the pedagogical underpinnings of this course design in your own web space?

I felt the primary technical constraint was the limited palette of pictographs we had to exploit and the technical difficulties I had incorporating these into my blog. From a more theoretical perspective, expressing information in this form, confronts us with the challenge how to remediate the textual and visual elements, a combination that will constitute networked multimodal online environments.

6. Scott R. – Golden Record Curation

Some questions to consider when you summarize and reflect upon your links:

1. How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

Scott confronted questions here that were common to us all. How will we determine what value is in terms of sound? If we do not wish to assign value on the basis of cultural or historical factors then which sonic values will we privilege – pitch, harmony, melody, – or something else entirely? Without evaluative criteria how can we choose at all? What are our assumptions about about whoever finds this music and are they going to be confirmed? Scott felt freer to pose these questions without answering them and so his final list seemed more a question of personal choice. I was more explicit in choosing criteria, although even with this, had to admit that I sometimes just picked something I liked.

2. What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

This was not an assignment that required much other than to simply make a list so Word Press in this case.

3. How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authoring and end-user interface?

I notice that most of my peers provided links to other assignments that they’d done which frankly seems like a pretty straightforward step. It’s only in retrospect, looking at peer’s websites, that I realize this.

4. What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

The site offered little beyond the assignment itself other than a photo of what I presume is Scott and his dog. As noted previously, I tended to stick to text unless it was needed for the task and any visual elements are supplementary. I ‘m 59 and neither a technie nor a so-called digital native. Paper-based print culture was the dominant mode when I took my first degree in 1979-1983 and, in fact, my first essays were written on a manual typewriter, so although I’m familiar enough with multimodal environments now of course, they are not my natural environment. I think my decision to streamline my site was based on personality rather than

5. What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

It is interesting to note that, although Scott describes himself as a techie in his What’s in my Bag?, he’s chosen quite conservative design features for his site architecture rather than something buzzier. Examples of this are the symmetrical almost hierarchic organization, the use of Times New Roman font, text-heavy content with minimal use of visual elements, and little interactivity except for a list of links to other assignments. He might have thought that a more media-rich format would seem inappropriate, by distracting from the “serious” academic nature of the site, but in any case the result tends to focus user’s attention on the content. I accomplished a similar result in a slightly different way by stripping away all extraneous features and presenting only the assignment.