Category Archives: Weekly Tasks

For my speculative futures, I imagined that each student was assigned an artificial intelligence (AI) personal digital assistant (PDA) on the day they started school. To be honest, I found this task quite difficult. I have never been much of a creative writer, and often find myself getting worried about whether my stories are believable. So I challenged myself to take a leap outside of my comfort zone and write a little narrative about the worst-case scenario and the best-case scenario of introducing AI companions to children.

In the dystopian future, the PDA is fully integrated into the students’ everyday lives as a constant companion. The AI has access to their physiological information and learns to anticipate what each person wants or needs. The students learn to rely on the PDA and lose motivation to learn things themselves. They exist in a state of social isolation because they are unable to make friends that understand them on the same level that their AI assistant does. An adult is present in the school for supervision, but does not actively participate in lesson planning or teaching.

In the utopian future, the PDA is designed to act as a tool to facilitate learning. In classrooms that emphasize collaboration, creation, problem solving, synthesis and understanding, the AI acts as a teaching assistant. Although the PDAs can provide tailored lessons for students, the school board has noticed students respond much better to comfort or encouragement from a living entity, so continues to hire teachers as classroom facilitators. Using the physiological data and knowledge of the student’s thought patterns, AI can predict situations where the student would learn best through group activities and communicate with the other PDAs and teacher to form ideal learning groups. The PDAs are programmed not to simply answer questions that students have, but rather to give the students a series of prompts to help them recall prior knowledge and make their own connections.

Dystopian Scenario

It is the year 2052 and George sits alone in the high-speed shuttle that will take him to school. He doesn’t understand why he has to go to school, and says as much to his PDA and best friend, Ben.

George: Fifth grade is stupid. Why do I have to go?

Ben: Because it is required by law.

George: Well, still. What’s the point of studying? You can just look up the answer if I want to know anything.

Ben: Perhaps the adults wish for you to have social experiences.

George: But why? None of the other students understand me the way you do. I don’t want to be friends with them.

Ben: Understandable. I do have superior intelligence and insight into your emotional state. Do you want to hear a joke?

Ben has calculated that George is in a bad mood, but knows exactly what joke to tell to cheer him up. George smiles as he leaves the shuttle and shuffles into the classroom to sit at his desk. He brings up the morning assignment on his tablet without greeting any of his fellow students.

George: Okay Ben, let’s get this math assignment done. What is four squared?

Ben: 16.

George: Nice. How about six squared?

Ben: 36.

George: Two cubed?

Ben: 8.

They continue on like this until the assignment is complete. George gets 100%. Then George asks Ben to play him a video. Ben selects the video with the ideal amount of action to keep George engaged. They watch the video together and talk about how cool the fight scenes are until an alarm rings, alerting the students to open their tablets to the next assignment. George rolls his eyes as he scans the science assignment. He can’t wait until it is time to go home and play video games with Ben. 

Utopian Scenario

It is 2052 and Amelia is excited for her school day. She skips into the classroom and sits on one of the cushions in the middle of the room, next to her friend Dave. The teacher greets the class and tells them it’s time to start on math. Amelia starts up her tablet and the day’s assignment is displayed on the screen before her. Her PDA, who she has named Barb, indicates that she thinks Amelia will do best working on this assignment independently.

Amelia: What is four squared? Hmmm. Barb, can you help?

Barb: Of course. Do you remember what is special about a square?

Amelia: Um, all the sides are the same length?

Barb: That’s right. So if one side is four…

Amelia: All the other ones are too!

Barb: Exactly. Can you draw that?

Amelia sketches out a square on her tablet and marks 4 on each side.

Amelia: So, four squared is a square that has 4 on every side?

Barb: Yes, in a sense, but how will you write that as an equation?

Amelia looks again at her drawing, and adds a grid pattern to the square. She is lost in thought for a moment.

Amelia: If I make it a grid like this, there are 4 squares on the top, 4 on the side, and… 16 total! And 4 X 4 = 16! Does this mean four squared is 4 X 4?

Barb: You’re correct! Well done.

Amelia: I like math. It’s like a puzzle!

The teacher comes around and checks on the students periodically. Her instructor’s tablet has an app that the AIs can use to notify her if a student is particularly frustrated or having an emotional reaction to the work.

Amelia continues working on her assignment until the teacher announces outside time. The students all follow the teacher out into the schoolyard for some fresh air, chatting back and forth about what they did on the weekend.

While revisiting Task 1: What’s in my Bag?, I thought about the purpose of the assignment. My favourite thing about the task was getting to know a little bit more about my classmates, their interests, and their everyday lives by seeing the different items they carry on a regular basis. My goal with the redesign was to stay true to the original task and use a personal object to convey information about myself, but to use a different medium. I decided to change up the assignment by focusing on a single item in my bag and using it to inspire a short audiovisual story about something that is important to me, why it is important, and how it influences my actions. I made the video using the In Shot video editing app on my iPhone, then uploaded it to Tik Tok as a way to share it. I had intended to spend some time learning how to use Tik Tok this summer so I could incorporate it as a teaching tool in my lab this fall, and this task gave me the push I needed to figure it out.

Something I enjoyed about this redesign is how specific I could get. I was able to target a single item in my bag, then a specific feature of that item, and use that feature to tell a story. This could be done for any item in any person’s bag, and I think each of us could come up with dozens of different stories that somehow relate to the physical items we carry with us. I spent quite a long time deciding which item to use and which story I wanted to tell. Perhaps a fun future project would be to make a series of short videos; possibly one video for each item in the bag. One of the best parts of redesigning the task to an audiovisual medium was how easy it was to insert my personal humorous touches. I feel like using my voice instead of text to convey my story made it more personal.

Some of the challenges I encountered with the redesign included learning how to voice-over a video with multiple short clips and making sure that I had the right video clips to fit my narrative. It was very time-consuming and had specific hardware and software requirements (e.g. camera, microphone, editing software, internet access) that would need to be taken into consideration if I were to incorporate this type of activity into my classroom.

Overall, I thought that mode-bending was a very useful exercise. The products of both Task 1 and Task 7 fulfilled the same purpose, but the process of creating them used different skill sets.

@that.biology.teacher

What can the itwms in my bag tell you about my interests? This video is part of ETEC 540 Task 7.

♬ original sound – that.biology.teacher

My responses to the Golden Record Curation Quiz in Task 8 were similar enough to those of Jessica, Jocelyn, Katie, Kayli, and Sage, that the six of us were placed in a community.

On our websites, each of us provided an explanation of how we selected 10 of the 27 original Golden Record tracks, detailed below.

• Jacey (me): representation of human diversity including geography, gender, race, social status, and language of musicians
• Jessica: representation of different cultures and musical styles, sound quality was a factor
• Jocelyn: representation of different cultures, inclusion of both instrumental and vocal tracks
• Katie: representation of each inhabited continent, priority given to human voice, tracks with the most global influence
• Kayli: representation of all humanity, each continent, and songs old and new
• Sage: pertinence to the human experience, wealth of information, and decipherability of tracks

Once I loaded the class data into the palladio app, I spent quite a bit of time playing around the visualization. Perhaps because of my training as a scientist, I really enjoy creating images that summarize data points. One of the first things I did was move around the names of the community members to minimize overlap of text and better see the connections, pictured below:

I then removed the names and connections and selected the option to weight the points. The following image shows the 19 tracks that were selected by at least one of us in the community. The different sizes of the circles associated with each track corresponds to the number of times the track was chosen. The largest circles represent tracks that were selected by all six of us and the smallest circles indicate tracks that were a unique choice.

And finally, because I couldn’t help myself, I made a little spreadsheet that summarizes which songs were chosen by whom. I noticed that in our rationales for our choices, we all mentioned trying to represent different countries, cultures, and human experiences, so I added a column that indicates on which continent the track was created.

It appears that we did quite a good job of representing all of the continents on Earth, with the exception of Oceania in a couple of cases. This, however, is understandable. There were not many tracks on the original Golden Record that originated in Oceania. The track listings did not show the location of origin in the visualization, but a viewer could likely assume our motive of cultural diversity just by seeing the titles of the tracks in various languages. Without listening to each track, however, a person analyzing the data would not be able to infer motives such as effort made to include both vocal and instrumental music, both male and female vocalists, both songs old and new, or the emphasis on sound quality and/or decipherability of the tracks. Even after listening to all of the chosen tracks, the analyst would still be just speculation about our motives. As for the tracks we didn’t choose, I don’t think that the data visualization could ever show why a specific track was not included. Personally, I focused so much on picking the tracks that fit into my set of requirements, that I didn’t spend much time thinking about why I excluded certain tracks. Upon reflection, I had a difficult time deciding to exclude some of the tracks and what it really came down to was personal preference. If two tracks checked all the same boxes of my requirements, I would select the one that I thought “sounded better”. I’m sure there are some subconscious reasons based on my own human experience that led to the decision, but if I can’t even put it into words, I doubt that data could ever show the reason.

One Important Takeaway From This Exercise

Within our community of six people, a total of sixty choices were made regarding which tracks should be included. The number of choices made was more than double the number of tracks that were available to choose from, so I would  have expected to see all 27 of them in our spreadsheet. However, a total of only 19 songs were chosen, 11 of them by at least half of us. This made me think about social media and how we mostly end up interacting with people in our online communities. These communities are often formed by people with similar interests or points of view, much like our community here was based on track choices. This exercise showed me how confirmation biases and misinformation spread so easily on social media. If the tracks were articles that we shared with one another, some of the articles would be shared over and over, while others would not be mentioned at all. Imagine that the articles (tracks) not being shared held opposing viewpoints to the ones we chose multiple times. The people within our community could internalize the information in those articles without ever being exposed to an opposing idea. This analogy really helped me understand the importance of consuming news from multiple sources outside of social media.

While reading through the instructions, my first impression of Task 10 was that it sounded fun! As I navigated to User Inyerface and began the activity, my attitude quickly changed. I became incredibly frustrated within the first couple of minutes. After trial, error, and nearly twelve long minutes, I completed the process of creating my “account”. A small gif of a dancing Carleton helped me celebrate my achievement of navigating a nearly unnavigable user interface, and after a few calming breaths I was able to reflect on the design choices that made my experience so aggravating.

In Brignull’s 2011 article about dark patterns on the web, he discusses some ways that companies apply psychological insights deceptively (e.g. our tendency to scan a page for the important information). User Inyerface used this insight on the first page – I wanted so badly to click on the big green “no” button! I realized that no matter what the big green button said on it, I would probably want to click on it, which makes it a powerful design choice that could be used to manipulate responses. But of course, I went into the activity expecting to be fooled so I thought twice about clicking it. The link to the next page was hidden in an oddly-formatted sentence near the bottom of the page. It was unclear which of the words contained the link, so I ended up navigating to the next page by clicking indiscriminately on all of the words until something happened.

On the next page, I became irritated by the “hurry up” message that kept popping up. It took some time to figure out that the small copyright symbol at the bottom was intended to be the “c” at the beginning of the word “close”. There was no indication that the word was something I could interact with. There was also a certain amount of stress I felt while seeing the numbers ticking away and keeping track of how long I had been struggling with the interface. The stress of trying to do it quickly undoubtedly made me less effective at navigating the site. I can see how this would be useful for companies who will make more money if their customers are worried about navigating the site quickly as opposed to looking for small details that could save them money.

The inconsistent wording regarding the password requirements and suggestions made it difficult to figure out what kind of password was acceptable, which only increased my frustration. The requirement to include a letter in common with the email address would have been very suspicious if this were a real account registration. If someone wanted to hack an account, they would be one letter closer to guessing the password.

There were several other designs to the UI that bothered me, but I think the very worst was the last page where I had to click on images to prove I was not a robot. The first set of images asked me to click on all pictures with a bow. However, the images consisted of bows and arrows, ribbon tied in bows, and people bowing to one another. I arbitrarily picked one of the three types of bows and selected them all. When I submitted my answer, there was no feedback at all about whether I had chosen correctly and I was immediately asked to do the same exercise with a new set of equally ambiguous directions. After several iterations of this, I selected all the images and finally made it through. I feel that there are many ways that designers could use the ambiguity of the English language in a malicious way to confuse customers.

Overall, the designers of User Inyerface did an excellent job of keeping me on the site for much longer than it would normally take me to create an account. Just by trying to navigate an aggravating interface, I became aware of many subtle design choices that can help or hinder a user. It seems much easier to influence responses and capture the attention of a website user than I had previous realized.

Brignull, H. (2011). Dark Patterns: Deception vs. Honesty in UI Design. Interaction Design, Usability, 338.

During the Detain/Release simulation (Pocaro, 2019), I acted as a county judge who was tasked with deciding whether defendants should be detained or released at their bail hearing while awaiting trial. I attempted the simulation twice because the first time I realized I had entered the incorrect name, so I restarted with the correct name. I should mention that the first time, I was unable to complete the simulation because I released too many people who subsequently committed another crime and lost my position as a judge due to public opinion. I made it through the second time, but had nearly filled both my “jail capacity” and “fear” meters.

I found the simulation quite difficult and struggled with the choices. At first, I really wanted to release each person because of their statements about losing jobs, housing, or families. I kept thinking that if they were allowed to await trial at home with family or other supports, they might be less likely to reoffend. For example, if someone awaiting trial for robbery lost a lot of potential income while they were detained and awaiting trial, they would be more likely to commit another robbery once released due to their financial situation. However, the the simulation did not extend to what the defendant did or did not do post-trial. Therefore, in several of the cases where I released the defendant, they either committed another crime prior to their trial or were absent from their trial. This caused public fear.

The strongest influences in my decisions were the nature of the alleged crime (charges of rape, murder, and assault automatically made me more inclined to detain the person, even though they may have been innocent) and the projected risk of violence. Additionally, if the defendant had at least a medium risk in all of the three categories (flight, crime, violence) I was likely to detain them as well.

Considering the strong influence that the risk assessment algorithms had on my decision making, I think it is extremely important to understand how the risks are calculated. I am not certain how bail hearings normally progress or what information is made available to the judge, but based on my experience with the simulation, I think that I would want to have access to all the data that went into the risk assessment to be able to make a decision more confidently. Can we be certain that the algorithm is not discriminating against certain groups of people? Dr. Cathy O’Neil (2017) described several algorithms that reflected cultural biases, in some cases unfairly targeting black people, and I can’t help but wonder if this risk assessment algorithm is prone to the same mistakes.

Additionally, humans have motive for their actions, and this is not something that an algorithm could necessarily capture. For example, if someone commits a theft of food because their child is hungry, and is likely to commit the same crime again before their trial because their child needs to eat, should they be detained and lose custody of their child, get fired from their job, and miss out on time they could spend working on a defense? What another person is stealing wallets because they want money to support a gambling habit? Both people just show up as a “high” risk to commit a crime while awaiting trial. Do they deserve equal consideration for release? This brings about a whole bunch of ethical considerations, which I will not discuss here. My main concern is that algorithms may only account for the “what” but not the “why” of human actions, which only tells a part of the story.

O’Neil, C. (2017, July 16). How can we stop algorithms telling lies? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/16/how-can-we-stop-algorithms-telling-lies

Pocaro, K. (2019, January 8). Detain/Release: simulating algorithmic risk assessments at pretrial. Berkman Klein Center Collection. https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/detain-release-simulating-algorithmic-risk-assessments-at-pretrial-375270657819

For the Golden Record Curation assignment, I attempted to represent as much human diversity as possible. I took into account the geographical location, gender, race, social status, and language of the musician. I also tried to include a sample of different instruments, music with and without lyrics, and music from different time periods where possible.

These are my selections:

• “Dark Was the Night,” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. 3:15
• Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
• Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
• Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26
• Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38
• India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
• Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51
• Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
• Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
• Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30

Task 6: An Emoji Story

I chose to describe the plot of one of my favourite feel-good movies. I had several reasons for choosing this particular film: I know the plot well, so it should have been easy to decide on which parts of the story were important to include; it has a cute cast of characters that can be represented by specific emojis; and it is well known enough that at least some of my classmates should be able to figure it out.

I started with the title, since it was straightforward and easy to represent with a single emoji. I then worked my way through story from beginning to end. My strategy was to assign each character a specific emoji, and then try to convey their actions and feelings using combinations of other emojis to give a general feeling or mental image of the story overall.

Potato printing and the supplies I used to create the print.

I chose to print the word PLANT in green acrylic paint on textured drawing paper. Initially, I wasn’t sure if I should capitalize the word as though it was at the beginning of a sentence or print it in upper- or lowercase letters. I settled on uppercase letters because straight lines are much easier to cut into the potato. After imagining how the letters should look, I realized that they needed to be cut facing backwards, which took more concentration than I thought it would. Because of this, I feel that the letters are less neat and tidy than they would be if I had been able to draw them facing forward.

The total time spent creating my stamps was about fifteen or twenty minutes. If I were to do the activity again, I would spend some more time on this step. Only after applying the paint and stamping the letters on the page did I notice that the cut surface of the potato was uneven. This led to the letters looking patchy because the paint was in crevices of the potato tissue and did not touch the paper initially. I attempted to remedy this by adding some more paint and pressing the potato down more firmly to the paper, which resulted in excess paint around the edges of the letters.

Having completed this exercise, I am very grateful for the mechanization of writing. It gave me some perspective on the immense amount of work it must have taken many people over many years to write and reproduce texts. When trying to reproduce the word for a second time, I became aware of how challenging it was to maintain spacing between the letters. The creation of technologies such as the printing press and typewriter eliminated this problem and allowed for pages of tiny, uniformly-spaced words that allowed for easier reading.

I’ve included a photograph of my potato garden from this summer. I liked the connection between using potatoes to print the word PLANT and showing an image of my plants that will grow new potatoes.

My Five-Minute Voice to Text Story

I used the online program Speechnotes (https://speechnotes.co/) to record the following story describing how I incorporated my love of plants into my everyday life and career.

When I was a child I used to go for walks with my mom and she always joked that it would take 2 hours to go around the block because I needed to stop and look at everything i’ve always been interested in plants and really anything in the natural world but plants really held a special place in my heart when I was about I don’t know 6 or 7 I asked for a pumpkin patch for my birthday so my parents spent hours digging background of the yard so I could grow pumpkins for the summer as I got older I wanted to be a naturalist or maybe an environmental scientist and in my second year of my biology degree I couldn’t get into the ology so I ended up taking some very intensive plant courses and just absolutely fell in love with the internal workings of plants the taxonomy of plans morphology and adamy anything I can learn about plants I was happy to do so after graduation of the first biology related job I got it was working as a botanist for an environmental consulting company I got to know hundreds and hundreds of different plant species within Saskatchewan travel from the far south to the far north of the province and see all kinds of different ecosystems and the different plant species that made up those habitats and the work was hard but I found a lot of joy and exploring the natural world after that I worked on a Market Garden for a couple of Summers long days out in the field growing things and there is a real satisfaction in in watching the seeds turn into the produce he sell at the Farmers Market my current job is teaching biology Labs at the University of Saskatchewan and i coordinate the plant physiology lab this is really rewarding for me because I get to see other students who are similar to how I was when I was in school they just have a spark and a passion for learning about the way these amazing life-forms work throughout all of course I’ve maintained Garden I have a native m Garden in my front yard and a big vegetable garden out back and I call gardening my free therapy

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

This text is one long run-on sentence. It contains no punctuation aside from the apostrophes in the conjunctions such as “I’ve” and “haven’t”. Depending on the type of written English, conjunctions may be considered a mistake. For example, when writing formally, one would be expected to write “I have” and not “I’ve”. Due to the lack of punctuation, it is difficult to tell where one idea ends, and another begins. The change from one idea to the next is conventionally denoted by a line break to indicate a new paragraph.

What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

Some of the most obvious errors in the text are incorrect words, including:

Background = back corner

The ology = zoology

Plans = plants

Adamy = anatomy

He = we

M = pollinator

I was surprised to see that without ever having a chance to “learn” the way I speak, the program was able to interpret and correctly spell most of the words I said.

What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?

The most common mistake (aside from the lack of punctuation) is inconsistent capitalization (for example: the word “Garden” is capitalized several times for no apparent reason, while “i’ve” is not). In written text, the capitalization of the first letter of a word generally indicates a proper noun, a name if you will. It looks almost like the word “garden” is referring to a specific, well-known place, while it has actually been used to describe different locations that provide a similar function.

What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

If I had scripted the story, I think it would be more logically organized and use more formal language. I would have memorized it or read from the script, and would probably have spoken more clearly and meticulously, leading to fewer errors in the words that were recorded. I may have left some parts out and emphasized others in more detail as I analyzed their importance to the story. As the story is now, it is more like a stream of consciousness; I jump from one thing to another as I think of them to explain how I came to love plants today.

The text would likely be longer, as well. Since I was just talking as I would to a friend for the five minutes, I found myself taking longer pauses as I thought and maybe speaking more slowly than I would have if I knew exactly what I planned to say next.

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling?

I believe that written storytelling follows a more linear path while oral storytelling has the ability to be more fluid. For example, if I read a novel more than once, each sentence, paragraph, and plot point will occur in exactly the same order as the last time I read the story. When stories are shared orally, the speaker can deviate from the path of the story and integrate new meaningful words that help make connections for the listeners or help to contextualize an old story within the current time period. The ability to engage with listeners is an important part of oral storytelling. The storyteller can gauge the interest and understanding of the listeners and impart clarifications and change the tone of their voice to bring more meaning to the words.

To me, parts of teaching feel like storytelling. I can give my students written exercises and readings to help them understand the movement of water in plants, but at the end of the day, can they tell the story of how and why water moved from the soil, through the plant, and into the atmosphere?

The bag:

For this project, I chose the tokidoki backpack that I carry with me to work every day. It was a gift from my husband about a week before our wedding in 2019 and I have used it almost daily since then. Tokidoki is a Japanese word that translates to “sometimes.” I find it interesting that the brand is named with a Japanese word even though the bag was designed in Italy by an Italian-speaking person. The design of the bag itself shows my love of vibrant colours and cute characters.

My bag is decorated with a yellow ribbon from the Endometriosis Association that reads, “Ask Me About Endo.” Endometriosis is an inflammatory condition that has affected my day-to-day life for the past 20 years. I like to show my support for others who are dealing with similar conditions, and I am always happy to answer any questions people have on the subject.

The contents of the bag and their daily uses:

• iPhone 11 (not pictured because it was used to take the photograph)
  • I always carry my phone because I use it for texting, calling, emails, calendars, and as my main camera
• iPad pro with apple pencil
  • Tayasui sketches: I use this app for illustrating lab manuals and creating diagrams for quizzes, exams, and demonstration material
  • Goodnotes: this app is a pdf editor that allows highlighting, annotation, and the addition of note pages and images, used for reading and studying documents for work and the MET program
• Inventory list of lab supplies
  • One of my duties as an undergraduate laboratory coordinator is ensuring that we have enough supplies to teach the courses. I have a Microsoft excel spreadsheet listing chemicals and consumable lab supplies that I mark up with pen and update on the computer later. I do not use this daily but have been updating it frequently in the past week as I prepare for ordering.
• Writing implements
  • Pen, pencil, and highlighter for making notes
• Toiletries
  • Advil, which I frequently use for headaches and muscle cramps
  • Lip balm because the air is very dry in Saskatchewan, regardless of the season
  • Eye drops (for the same reason as above!)
• Wallet
  • This Mat & Nat wallet was one of my best thrift store finds because it is sturdy and relatively compact while still having enough room to hold my chequebook, bank cards, health card, driver’s license, staff card, a few gift cards and business cards, receipts from work-related purchases, and occasionally some cash
• Seed packets of watermelons and Chinese long cucumbers
  • Admittedly, these do not have a daily use. I plant them once or twice per year in the greenhouse at work for use in the laboratory. They should be in my desk drawer but have been carried around for the past while since I forgot to remove them from my bag after the last planting.
• Hair ties & clips
  • I have very fine hair (and a lot of it) and if I wear it down, it is usually wild enough by midday that I need to tie it back to keep it out of my face
• KN95 mask
  • Medical grade masks are still required in any shared spaces at my workplace, and although no longer required in other places in the city, I continue to wear one in public places.
• Water bottle
  • The main purpose of my bottle is hydration, but it also shows some of my interests. It is almost completely covered with stickers that I have acquired from conferences, scientific supply companies, local businesses, and friends. I previously worked as a botanist and I am passionate about native prairie conservation, so I even have a sticker picturing a person performing a controlled burn to mimic wildfire in a conservation area.
• Work keys
  • The biology building on campus is undergoing a several-year process of asbestos abatement and renovation, so our teaching spaces have been redistributed to several other buildings, which requires me to carry many different keys.
  • The little key fob on the ring allows me access to some research areas but not others.
• Car, house, shed, bike lock keys with library card, K Market loyalty card, and tick-removing tool on the keychain
  • I love hiking and photographing plants, insects, and fungi. Much of south and central Saskatchewan has a very large population of ticks in grassy areas, so the tick removal tool comes in handy in the spring and summer months.
  • I shop frequently at the K Market, which stocks Korean and Japanese grocery items that are otherwise difficult to find in Saskatoon.
  • I love reading, but do not use the library card very often anymore to check out physical books. I find it very convenient to read digitally using apps such as Libby on the iPad that allow me to borrow ebooks from the local library consortium.
• Naloxone kit
  • The one item in my bag that I have never used is the naloxone kit, and I hope the need does not arise. However, Saskatoon has seen an ever-increasing number of opioid overdose fatalities in recent years and naloxone is not a standard first aid kit item at my workplace. I know that students in the campus community use drugs, including some of my own students, and I want to be prepared in case of emergency.

In addition to what is pictured, the bag often also contains various other toiletries, lunch/snacks, draft assignments, and likely some garbage in the form of crumpled up receipts, bandage wrappers, or other small papers I plan to discard later in the day or week. There is also usually a lot more dog hair in and on the bag; I just happened to take a photograph on a day that it had recently been cleaned!

The iPhone and iPad are two of the more obvious text technologies that I carry with me. They allow for me to create and read text in multiple formats. I would also consider the spreadsheet printout to be a text technology, as well as the writing implements that I use to annotate the spreadsheet. Of particular interest is the names of chemicals on the inventory. The notation for each of the compounds I use to make hydroponic fertilizers are almost another language (e.g. unless someone has knowledge of the periodic table of elements, KH₂PO₄ would not likely be interpreted as the equivalent of monopotassium phosphate). The cards in my wallet and on my keychain are also text technologies, as well as the barcode that can be seen on the lip balm. Each has a string of numerical text represented by differently sized bars that can be scanned and used to look up more text associated with the numerical code.

If I had this same bag 20 years ago (during high school), it would not have contained an iPad or a phone. It would have had electronics in the form of a solar-powered calculator and a discman with a cd. The bag would likely have been stuffed full of notebooks, pencils, textbooks, and art supplies. I may not have had ibuprofen with me either, as I find that I require it more frequently the older I get. The only keys I would have carried would have been for my bicycle lock and house.

If an archaeologist studied the contents of this bag in the future, they might conclude that it belonged to someone who was interested in art and science, which is accurate. However, the presence of seeds in the bag and a chequebook that has the phrase, “Support local farmers” printed on each cheque might give the impression of a person who works in food production. This is not entirely incorrect since I did spend a few years working in a market garden and have an interest in plant breeding. However, gardening has become more of a hobby than a means of survival these days. The bright colours and patterns on the bag and the water bottle might lead them to conclusions about the fashion of the time, although they may not be accurate. I don’t think exceptionally busy patterns are representative of current fashion. The multiple languages (English, French, and Japanese) may indicate that the owner of the bag lived in a time of global economy, or that they were a polyglot. Truthfully, I am only fluent in English, my French is very rusty, and I speak no Japanese. The mask and naloxone kit would correctly indicate that I was alive during a time of a global pandemic and opioid crisis. I think this bag would be an interesting find for a future archaeologist!