Dennis’s Post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/dsteller/etec-540-task-1-whats-in-your-bag/

In my Task 1 post, I reflected on the everyday objects I carry and how they represent the different roles I move between being a teacher, student, parent, and organizer of daily life. Dennis’s Task 1 post similarly unpacks the items in his work bag, but his collection centres around the professional demands of emergency nursing and education, from his stethoscope to his hospital ID badge. Both posts use personal artifacts to reveal how our work, routines, and identities are mediated through the tools we keep close at hand.

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Why I Chose This Link

I was drawn to Dennis’s post because, although we approached the same task, our bags reveal entirely different literacies and environments. My items reflect a life lived across multiple contexts; where Dennis’s bag highlights the intense and highly specialized professional literacies of the medical field. His stethoscope, medications, and ID badge speak to institutional structures and responsibilities, while my own objects speak to flexibility, multitasking, and personal management. Linking our posts allowed me to consider how differently “everyday texts” function depending on the worlds we move through.

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Tool & Interface Differences

Although we both used WordPress, Dennis’s post has a more direct, utilitarian tone, reflecting the procedural and professional nature of his tools. My post leans more toward narrative reflection, showing how the same platform can support different styles of authorship. WordPress’s simple authoring environment makes these differences more visible, it doesn’t shape the writing for us, so our choices stand out.

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Literacies & Theoretical Connections

Both of our posts align with the course’s ideas around multiliteracies: the notion that everyday objects act as complex texts. For Dennis, those texts feel tied to systems (healthcare, safety protocols, institutional authority). For me, they’re linked with mobility and the constant shifting between roles. The comparison helped me see how “text technologies” can either stabilize a professional identity or support a more fluid one.

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Course Design Reflection

This connection gave a new look atTask 1. The assignment asks us to use our bags as an entry point into the broader conversation about text and identity. Seeing Dennis’s version reminded me that these reflections aren’t only personal; they also reveal how different kinds of work shape what we carry and how we read our own tools as meaningful. Linking to his post expands my own interpretation and places it in dialogue with a very different professional world.