This has been yet another interesting and challenging task.  I realized at some point that I was taking it a little too seriously as I pored over the music and felt quite guilty for leaving out Louis Armstrong and the Japanese cranes, among other tracks that I felt were important.  I probably also spent too much time lamenting that there was no Beatles song, not that I’m a huge Beatles fan, but really, how do you not include them as another example of pop culture in the 20th century?  Chuck Berry was a given, for the same reason.

It did make me consider our access to information and data and why we are familiar with the music, art and literature that we are.  We can only know such a tiny fraction of what is produced.

I tried to balance a mix of sounds and instruments, including the strings of Beethoven’s 5th, the mariachi band, Chuck Berry, the flowing streams of the Chinese classic and the Indian sitar, along with the different sounds of wind instruments from Australia, Senegal and Bulgaria, and the full symphonic sound, including brass, in Bach’s Brandenburg concerto.  I also wanted to include at least one example of just the human voice, and opted for the Georgian choir, although it was a tough choice between that and the Navajo chant.  

Along with the instrument sounds, there is an attempt at representing different regions of the world.  I also wanted to ensure that there were female voices included, and selected the Bulgarian bagpipe piece with the female voices over the Azerbaijani bagpipes, which also created a very interesting sound.  

Overall, this feels like a comprehensive cross-section of the available songs, although I’m certain that we will all come up with different and equally justified lists.

My 10 selections from the Golden Record:

Please take a few minutes to listen to my story.

Sound effects from freesound.org

Airplane sound:  Airplane, Seat Belt Beep, A.wav” by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk) of Freesound.org

This was both a fun and challenging exercise (the best kind of exercise).  I began the process by summarizing the plot using text and simple bullet points.  These bullet points served as the “chapters” or lines of emojis that I would put into the story.  As I considered the task, I wondered if it would be more useful to use phonetic representation of words or if symbols would be more helpful.  As I actually started to conceptualize the translation, I relied almost entirely on symbolic uses of the emojis to represent ideas and people. 

I was fortunate that my daughter just finished reading a classic book and had been waiting to watch the movie adaptation of the well-known story.  Some of the symbols, for example, one used to represent the nickname of one of the characters, were used more to help identify the story for the reader rather than for their importance to the summary.  This was based on an assumption that most of the readers would be familiar with the story and its symbols, and therefore was a conventional approach to telling the story based on assumed knowledge of the audience and their experience (Kress 2005).  

One thing I learned through this process was that there is not an emoji for everything.  I had not given emojis much thought or considered that a task like this would be limited by a finite availability of emojis, but that turned out to be the case; the title was not as easy to translate as anticipated.  There were a few emojis that I assumed existed that I was not able to find.

I tried to rely on the repetition of some symbols to describe characters or groups in the story.  The intention was that the repetition would help codify some of the elements so that the story might make sense.  As Bolter (2005) describes, this allows the reader to move back and forth between the codified “glyphs” and the visual interpretation of the other emojis.  However, this is still dependent upon the reader interpreting the symbols in the way that I intended and could easily lead to confusion or misinterpretation.  With a finite alphabet of emojis, the ideas to be represented have to be quite simple.

References:

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

Kress (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning.  Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.

It’s hard not to get lost while creating a Twine.  Try out A Day at Home.

It has been a long time since I wrote this many paragraphs manually, I am definitely more accustomed to typing.  The writing itself wasn’t too difficult, although there was some concern that my hand might get tired.  Since I picked a topic that I have been thinking about recently, it was easy to come up with enough thoughts to fill the pages.

The more challenging aspect of the task for me was the editing.  When I write on a computer, I tend to edit and adjust as I go along.  I’ve already reworded the previous sentence a few times, and it may be reworked again by the time I submit this.  During the task, when I made a mistake or wanted to adjust a word, my only option was to cross out words and write in the new ones.  This limited the amount of editing that I did.  I had considered double-spacing, but realized that would produce 6 notebook pages of writing and felt that would be too much.  Double-spacing in the notebook would have provided more space for editing and may have enabled me to move words around a bit more, but the appearance of the finished story would have been less easy to read.  

To me the most significant difference between writing by hand and using a computer is the forethought that is required.  When writing on a computer, it is simple to move ideas around, adjust paragraphs, and then move them back again.  With handwriting, there is more time and effort required to move around and play with the wording and style.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that one method is superior.  It could be said that the simplicity of editing computer documents makes me more complacent about the planning and outline.  Perhaps the preparation that goes into a quality handwritten text can produce a more thoughtful piece of work.

Below is a direct transcript of a story about my family’s trip to Athens, Greece.  This story was unscripted and dictated using the Text Edit on my MacBook Air laptop.

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Hello this is a story about my family trip to Athens Greece in November 2018 in the spring of 2018 my husband and I realised that barbie was going to coincide with the Athens marathon in November. So we figured out how to register for the marathon and signed out and then booked our trip to Greece we stayed at an in error B&B in Athens and it was so beautiful it was so nice to explore the city and just spend a few days we spent a week there and meeting up to the marathon and were able to explore our friends and enemies

We love their restaurants and the easy-going attitude in Athens and enjoyed exploring on the Internet history states my husband is our history teacher and has type into history as well so was really excited about going to the personal learning and seeing other historical sites we took a road trip Wendy 255 and it that was another amazing experience. Underweighted off I would discover that there is a ski town just outside of Athens which we didn’t realise there is skiing in Athens that was just another interesting discovery and I

At the end of the week we were had to prepare for a air sign we went and picked up a risk it and then a few days before the mirror fine we drove from Athens to have fun along the roots of the run and spent some time in the town of marathon and I’m now on the ocean. During the visit and drive to and from mirror finally realised just how silly this route was going to be we had both run multiple Netherlands before but this was definitely going to be the biggest climb every and also the biggest coward I think the had about 20,000 pieces p so it was very exciting and huge but is really very difficult we realised. On the day of the mirror sign we need to combust out to the town of Maryland where the start line is very early in the morning and waiting with thousands of other people for the stack to begin the very exciting energy end there and very interesting place to be there instead of advancing the only people warming up and I’m just regular people getting ready to go in their throwaway sweaters to stay worm and some people were in garbage bags is just a fun interesting atmosphere.

The run itself proved to be quite tricky as expected the hills were extremely challenging and by the time I shuts the last 10 km my legs were just warrant out and it was a very slow finish for me to get to the end of the race. But the finish coming into the Olympics stadium and is seeing all those people in running with with so many people to the whole race was so exciting and invigorating and such an amazing experience so although it was difficult and painful and made for a very uncomfortable drive to the airport and flight back to Delhi it was such an amazing experience and when there we will never forget. It was well worth the pain and the trouble.

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Analysis of the text:

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

The first obvious deviation from conventional written English is the lack of punctuation and paragraphs.  Written English typically provides us with visual cues to help us know when to pause and separate thoughts.  At a few points in the story, when I was waiting for the text to catch up, I said “period” or “new line”, but for the most part, I let the dictation continue without trying to punctuate.  Another deviation from written English is the movement and progression of the story.  With written English, we can consider the flow and adjust it into paragraphs that have one theme or idea.  With an unscripted story, we sometimes move back and forth through ideas as they are remembered and therefore don’t always have a clear flow of ideas.

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

There are a number of things that could be considered wrong with the text.  As already discussed, there are no paragraphs or punctuation, which can make it challenging to follow.  There are also several words that were missed and a few sentences that were not captured by the software.  Most of the mistakes are simply due to the dictation selecting a word or words that differ from what was spoken.  Some of the errors are somewhat decipherable from my memory of what I said:  “Fall break” became “barbie”, “taught ancient”  became “type into”, “race kit” was spelled out as “risk it.”   For some reason, the word “marathon” was mistaken several times for different words, including “Netherlands”, “mirror fine”, “mirror finally”, and “Maryland.”  I suspect it must take some practice to speak clearly and slowly enough to have the software pick up on all of the words.  For some of the errors, I can’t even remember what was said, for example it says “explore our friends and enemies”; I’m not sure what I said, but it wasn’t “friends” or “enemies”.

The general idea of the story is there, and one could likely follow the story and generally know what was being shared.  The majority of the words are correct, and the dictation likely provides enough information to be understood, particularly if the reader was aware that the story had been dictated.  This knowledge might lead a reader to try to “hear” the story in their mind as if it was being spoken.

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

If the story had been scripted, the dictated text would likely be more accurate and easier to read.  The dictation could have included punctuation and paragraphs, and this would have facilitated pauses in speech that would enable the typing to keep up with the speech, there were a few times during the dictation that the typing seemed to get behind and ended up cutting off part of a sentence.  Having a script would also help with the flow of ideas.

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling?

Oral storytelling can allow for a more dramatic and fluid re-telling of a story, with some changes each time it is told.  The tone and vocabulary can adjust depending upon the audience, are they young? Do they have any special knowledge of the context? Have they already heard the story? Descriptions can be added or removed depending upon these and other factors.  An oral story can be a living entity, while the written word is static.  Oral storytelling has the risk of leaving details out, but also affords the opportunity to re-iterate ideas or provide information later that had been left out.  A written story can be carefully crafted and edited to ensure clear ideas and smooth transitions.  Although an oral story can be rehearsed and crafted, it will still always be a living story and take on a new life depending upon the person who is telling it.  The written story, especially if read to oneself, is dependent upon the reader for interpretation and provides no opportunity for clarification or re-iteration unless it is anticipated and worked into the text.

ETEC 540 Task 1

My name is Janice Roper, I’m now in my 7th MET course and along with the rest of the world, my family and I have experienced some significant, and hopefully temporary, changes to our daily lives recently.  We usually live in New Delhi, India, where my husband and I have worked at an international school for the last three years.  Our daughters are in grades 6 and 9.  For the “What’s in Your Bag” assignment I’ve included the contents of the backpack that I take to work daily and also use as a carry-on bag when I travel.

My backpack still has many of the items that would typically be there, since it hasn’t been used since we arrived in Canada in April.  I travel quite frequently, and some of the items in the bag reflect this.  Boarding passes and a hotel receipt are remnants of previous trips.  Gravol, sinus spray, backup earphones, tissues and Claritin are all items that I keep in my bag for flying.  Three different types of hand sanitizer are signs of the current Covid-19 era, the sanitizer and travel toilet paper in the Ziploc have always been in my bag when heading out in India.

The everyday items represented here are my laptop and sunglasses (which I have still been using daily).  Daily items that are missing from the bag (because they’re still in my apartment in Delhi) are my school ID and my travel mug.  Since I live on campus at school, I don’t have any daily commute, which is represented in the simplicity of my daily items.  I don’t need any keys, there is nothing that indicates running, tennis, volleyball, ultimate frisbee, or other pleasures that fill my time, since I can always just run home to change and pick up needed items.

Thinking of text technologies, my laptop is the obvious item that stands out.  I do a few different jobs at the school and work out of two different offices.  That is one of the reasons that I have made a conscious effort to go paperless and maintain almost all of my files and notes electronically.  The one crumpled yellow sticky note is the lone example of work notes that I might make manually, otherwise it’s all online.  This has been a big shift, since we were using paper files in Admissions when I started in my job, and it continues to be a challenge.  However, we were very happy that we had our new system in place with the closure of our school campus in March, since we shifted quite easily to remote Admissions work.

The business cards are also worth noting when considering text technologies.  I believe these are examples of traditions that sometimes persist even though they may no longer have a practical purpose.  Business cards were once useful for people to exchange information about each other and then to file on a physical desktop as a way to find names and phone numbers of contacts.  Although we may still go through the motions of exchanging cards at an event, any actual connections with the colleagues met at conferences are usually via email and through contacts that were added on my mobile phone.  Those cards are still in my bag because I have not had a reason to refer to them since I put them in there, even though I have interacted with some of those people since we met.  I wonder when we will stop producing and exchanging physical business cards?  What does it take to stop going through the motions of an outdated tradition?

My name is Janice Roper and this is my 7th MET class.  I live and work at an international school in New Delhi, India, but I’m temporarily back in Canada for a few months enjoying the BC spring and navigating the complications of working remotely in a time zone 12 hours away.

This class looks very interesting and I look forward to the exploration of the history of texts and their impact on our communication and understanding of the world.