In the next 30 years it’s hard to speculate as to how much our lives may or may not change due to technology. Although hopeful that there will be many positive outcomes, I am also not naïve to the fact that the technology industry is in the business of making money. Let’s look at utopian and dystopian speculation for the not-so-distant future!

From an education standpoint, technology could in fact help in many areas that our teachers are struggling to find time to address fully. With schools using one to one devices, artificial intelligence could be used to tailor student learning putting the students truly at the center. Students will complete their work fully online where algorithms will be used to check student work and provide next steps including extra instruction or challenges. Programs will update teachers and parents on a student’s progress. Learning will be at the appropriate level and will use topics the student is directly interested in. These programs will provide students with choices for how they will complete the work as well as choices in topics. This will provide much needed autonomy over student learning.  A teacher’s role will move into facilitator. They will be responsible for ensuring students are physically using the device to do their work, whether that is at school or from a remote location. Teachers will focus on social-emotional learning situations, monitoring online group work as well as in-person interactions. Students will no longer be able to “fall under the radar” and fall behind in their studies. All students will be able to read and write thanks to access to the assistive technologies they require to be successful. Students will be well versed in sharing their ideas to the global community through the publishing of their work on public platforms. Because the learning will be tailored to individual preferences, students will be presented with opportunities to become involved in projects that affect our global health in line with their own passions (environmental concerns, climate change, children’s rights etc.). A classroom teacher in our present day must choose which topics will be presented to the whole class, there is often little room for individual choices as there is not enough time to fuel the passions of 30 students for every subject taught! Students would benefit from this use of artificial intelligence as they would be motivated to keep learning and there would be an excitement about what is next.

On the other hand, artificial technology developments could actually hinder our education system. The use of artificial intelligence to track student progress would inevitably create a focus on achievement only. We would lose our holistic approach to education. Students would have to login to a program to complete their school work. This same login information could be used to access other services as well such as community centers. The programs could flag students as to whether or not they should be granted access based on their study progress. Students not achieving the success indicators AI lays out for them could suffer consequences such as not participating in extra-curricular activities until success indicators are met. It would force compliance on students and take away much of their autonomy. Student participation on global platforms will also be monitored. Students who are writing about their passions or their activist views will have their posts read by algorithms looking for aggressive patterns in writing or key words. This will be in the name of safety of the students but it will take away freedom of speech. The programs will inhibit students from “getting themselves into trouble” by only allowing certain content or speech patterns to be posted. Students will learn how to beat the system and create new language that will go undetected. Students are not happy with or focused on their learning, they are merely programmed to play along.

During this simulation, I find myself giving weight to the risk of violence when making my decision. I am a bit surprised at some of the assault charges that state there is a low risk of violence. It makes me wonder how the risk is determined. I also find I am not very concerned with what the defendant’s statements are. It seems likely they will say whatever they feel will help them stay out of jail whether the statement is true or not. I found the stories that popped up interesting, they relayed information that people were not showing up for court. I would assume this happens more than the public is even aware of. I did notice though that it was not common to see a story that someone released committed another crime.

This simulation was difficult because I didn’t really feel I had enough information to make an informed decision. I was left deciding what I felt was important in regard to the limited information I had. I would like to know how the program chose the category for violence, appearing in court or committing a crime. What was this based on? Personal history? Demographics? Or something else entirely? I would have liked to know if this was a first offence or if the person was a repeat offender as that would have altered some of my decisions. Before using a program such as this to make important decisions, I would hope that the judges have an in-depth understanding of how the program works and what information it is using. The outcome of these decisions has implications on both the defendant as well as the general public.

From the first screen I am concerned about my speed and accuracy. I am aware there will be distractions and am telling myself to stay focused on the questions. I need to look closely beyond the large green no button to find where to click to move on. I begin to realize how tough this will be for me!

Filling in information is frustrating, my letters do not type on top of theirs, I must delete first. I can’t use tab to move from block to block. The timer popping up every minute is annoying as I feel like I’m not moving fast enough. I must pay so much attention to get through every screen and realize I must look at for the details that are smaller or in the background versus those that jump out at me right away. It took me two attempts to realize that number, age, and birthdate all had to match. The manner in which everything was worded made me really think about what I was wanting or what I was being asked to do. There were a lot of double negatives used throughout the site. This creates confusion for users and entangles users in multiple ways (Brignull, 2010). There were so many buttons to click on the last screen to verify I was a human! This program goes against everything I have been programmed to do using the web!

This task has made me more aware of critically thinking about what I see and interact with on the web. I must be more intentional about the information I am sharing and what I notice is explicitly stated and what is not. Knowing about practices such as the inverted pyramid where important information is found further into reading versus upfront (Brignull, 2010) will help users to critically examine the information they are agreeing to on websites. We must be aware of how user interface is designed in order to think about how it is trying to manipulate our responses!

References

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

Using the Golden Record song choice data to analyze connections was overwhelming at first. One of the first things I noticed was that track 4 seemed to be an outlier with only one edge. I immediately wonder why this song was only chosen by one person. Looking at my community I was grouped into I notice that there are several tracks with only one edge. Out of six people in the community there was only one person that had every song fully connected to another person.

This shows that although we think similarly regarding our track choices, we are not in total agreement with everyone else. This does represent the largest community out of the four groups. This tells me that these connections were the strongest and perhaps the tracks were also the most chosen. Systems Innovation (2015) identify that how connected a node is in the network determines its significance. We need to dig much deeper in order to determine what this significance is. Each person’s justifications must be explored in order to have an understanding of what the significance might be of these connections. It would be interesting to explore if our backgrounds are similar thus influencing our selection process.

When I compare my community to a smaller community, I notice that only 3 tracks were common among the three people in the community. This makes me wonder about the criteria people used for song selection and their justifications for how the tracks represented earth. The graphs do not provide the necessary information to answer these inquiries. The graph does provide a provocation for an inquiry.

This process made me reflect on how the algorithms on the web work and how they are ranking connections to create significance. There are many assumptions made in the process. To understand the ranking systems, one would need to have a certain amount of understanding of the company running the search engine (ex. Google, Bing, etc). By understanding the purpose of the company, one can begin to understand the significance of the connections and the search results. This is important as what is ranked high on the search results may be of little significance to the person doing the searching. This task has made me realize the importance of understanding how networks work as well as critically thinking about the information that is presented and asking questions about what is missing.

References

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 19). Network Connections. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/2iViaEAytxw

Choosing 27 songs to include on a record that would be sent to space to hopefully one day be found by another species is no small task. Pairing that list down to a selection of only 10 with no expertise in the area of music, math, space, or history is even more difficult! My choices reflect my biases; what sounds pleasing, what represents different aspects of our world, and representations of different cultures. I did try to reflect how the music might communicate the evolution of our society and technologies on earth. If I listened to a recording of noises from another planet that was completely foreign to anything I had ever experienced, I believe I would have a difficult time understanding the messages they were trying to convey to me as it would not have any context. This record could be viewed as what Rumsey describes as a community collection of archiving (Brown University, 2017). Although the project was led by one individual, many experts and perspectives were considered before making final selections for the record. Although not music, I would choose to include the sounds of the Earth track as it is incredibly interesting to listen to and I think provides a large amount of data about the Earth. My 10 musical choices are in no order of importance.

References:

Brown University. (2017). Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital Memory: What Can We Afford to Lose?”

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/music/

Redesigning this task allowed me to think about the original purpose of the task in a new way. When writing about what was in my bag I approached the task very literally. When speaking to what was in my bag I told more of a story, or tried to! The New London Group (1996) explore the idea of being simultaneous members of multiple lifeworlds and that this shows how our identities have multiple layers that are complex in relation to each other (p.71). This is very reflective of my identity and that to know me well you would need to understand the complexity of my layers. By talking about what was in my bag, without a script, I was much more willing to share more information about the items and the story behind them. I did refer back to my original post and picture for what was in my bag to create a transformation that was a new use of old materials and a re-articulation and recombination of the given resources of available designs (NLG, 1996, p. 76). As a teacher, I am constantly re-designing materials and resources to best fit the needs of my students and hoping that they will create new meaning. When a task is not meeting the desired outcome it should be re-defined. Teachers need to be open to developing new ways in which students can demonstrate how they design and carry out new practices that include their own goals and values (NLG, 1996, p.87). This will motivate students to continue their learning and design new meaning. The challenge with mode-bending is to ensure that you are not just redesigning for the sake of redesigning. Goals should be intentional. Creating new ways to complete tasks and think about our learning allows us to create new meaning and in the process continually re-make ourselves.

References:

The New London Group.  (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. (Links to an external site.)  Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.

Communicating information using only emojis was an interesting task! I use emojis regularly when texting or at the end of the occasional e-mail but usually only to convey emotion (a happy face, mind blown, or thumbs up). I have never tried to use emojis for anything more than that. I changed my movie choice several times as things I thought would be easy quickly became quite difficult.

I began with the title as it is how I both learned to read and write; from the beginning. I relied on using the emojis to represent ideas more than the words themselves but there was some combination at the beginning. I quickly found, as Bolter (2001) points out, that picture writing lacks narrative power. The picture elements have a broad range of verbal meanings where each element means too much instead of too little (p. 59). The pictures have too many meanings and I struggled to find a way to point my audience in only one direction. I told the story with one idea per line from top to bottom, building on Kress’s (2005) discussion that knowledge through writing is set out in a specific manner; chapters are numbered and not to be read out of order because they build on each other (p. 7). My story needs to be interpreted from top to bottom to make sense. Kress (2005) continued to claim that meaning in language is clear and reliable while meaning in images is not solid or clear (p.8). I found this to be the case in my story. Using only images, the story I told is not clear and left open to a lot of interpretation. I found I did not have enough emojis to choose from. It would be interesting to write the same story using a hybrid of words and emojis. This would be a fun exercise to do with students and have them discuss what they notice the similarities and differences are in the storytelling experience!

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Kress (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learningLinks to an external site.. Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.

I love to read! I have never educated myself in the history of how books came to be mainstream in our societies. Thinking about the time and effort it took to create a codex while listening to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast gave me a new appreciation for our ancestors and their effort in spreading information through the use of books.

I set out to complete a potato printing thinking it would be both quick and easy. After creating my letters and cutting them out, I quickly realized I forgot to make them in reverse! The word I chose, faith, only needed one letter re-done as I wrote in capitals and the other letters looked the same either way. If I had needed to re-do all the letters, I would have been very frustrated! I found it challenging to space the letters properly and the potatoes were awkward to hold. The amount of pressure I applied affected the look of the letter. I had to practice on a sheet of paper multiple times for each letter to ensure I could make the print look similar. After my first attempt, I decided to try and improve my letters by making edges sharper and the face of the letter as flat as possible to create a better print. The entire process took about one hour. I did find the process during my second attempt to begin to be therapeutic and enjoyable the same way Collier describes using a letter press (Cooke, 2012).

I can appreciate the mechanization of writing as writing technologies have greatly increased our ability to share information in a timely manner. If our culture had not experienced the mechanization of writing, our world would currently look very different. Bolter’s (2001) observation that as new technologies emerge they replace or supplement the established one holds true in my experience (p.26). From writing essays in high school, to typing and then printing them in my undergrad, and finally typing and posting them online in my master’s degree. Each change in technology has supplemented the technology I used before it and eventually replaced it fully. Each one has also increased the speed at which I can share information with others. I am very thankful for the mechanization of writing.

References:

Bolter, Jay David. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print [2^nd edition]. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Cooke, Danny (2012). Upside down, left to right: a letterpress film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6RqWe1bFpM

The following text is my story using Speechnotes.co in its unedited version.

It’s May long weekend and we are headed to the cabin for a fun weekend with family. The weekend is beautiful! It is the first sunny and warm weekend we have had all spring we spend the first day opening up the cabin and getting it ready for the summer we pull that chairs out we spray things. We pull out the kayaks ankle for a paddle we paddle across the lake oribe really to visit some family at another cabin we spend the day in the sunshine on the beach and on the water it is too cold to go for a swim. That night we enjoy a campfire and make a special dessert we called toasty the next day we decide since it is windy and not good to be on the lake we will instead go for a quad ride we open up the garages and attempt to start the quads one of them starts no problem the next a little help so we give it a boost the third will not start we can’t figure it out aftermath after much frustration we give up and use a fourth quad instead we decide we will take a nice short ride on a dry Trail we put our helmets on some of us put rain boots on i’m headed out on the trail the quads are working great we are bumping along a very familiar trail that we all enjoy our kids are taking turns Drive we decide on the way back to take another route so off we go through the trail taking much longer than we originally planned it is a great Trail only a tree or two in our way that we had to stop and removed from the trail as we came to the end of the trail we come across a large puddle probably about 100 ft long the first quad goes through some mud and water they make it about 2:30 of the way into the puddle when they got stuck my dad and my nephew wear on the quad they did not have rain gear or boots on the water was up to the seat on the quad hit the quad hung in a precarious position angled downwards handlebars lower than the backside of the quad my son was riding with me and we got off the quad took a look around at what we thought maybe we’d be able to do or how we could help we ourselves weren’t sure if we should forage forward or turn around but the first quad. Pebble they couldn’t start it they had to get into the water up to their knees to try to winch out but the quad wouldn’t start making the winch unusable my son got off the quad and decided to walk his way around part of the puddle best I chose a different path than the first quad I went through the mud almost getting stuck put the quad in 4 by 4 and made my way out the second part of the longer puddle where the first quad was stuck proved to be more challenging I crossed on the opposite side of the puddle where the ground seemed to be a bit higher we made it to the other side of the puddle my daughter was driving side-by-side she made her way through both pedals with plenty of power and no issues at all now we still have a quad stuck. Motor won’t start in the middle of a puddle where the water is well past the knees of my father I take the side by side drive into the puddle on the same side of him as him and when the side-by-side started down-low I stopped my dad slashed his way through this mud hole over to the side by side win where we hooked him up and slowly and carefully I use the side by side hold that quad the mud hole once out of the mud hole we had to figure out how to get this party started we would be doing it. I learned how to find battery on the quad and how did jump start it so did the three kids who were with us we got the second quad started no problem as we’re putting all our tools away. Do it again we were not able to get it started so once again we had to get the tools out and jump start the quad we left it running this time now that the quad was running we thought we were good to go unfortunately my quad while going through that mud hole must have hit something sharp because I now had a very flat tire so I also learned how to use the air compressor compressor on the side by side and I was able to fill my tire and Limp my quad home where we plugged the hole properly it was quite the adventure we washed off all the quads how do you well deserve to dinner and headed out to visit cousins for a night of campfire fun it was a rather normal weekend at the lake as there is always one Adventure or another to be had. The next day we cleaned everything up put all the toys away and headed home for another week of school and work we still have to get our quad figured out and fixed as we never could get it started one more thing on a long to-do list

Speechnotes 🙂 https://speechnotes.co

Reflection:

I found this task, of using voice to text technology, quite difficult! I do not ever use speech to text technology and I am not always a storyteller. Using the Speechnotes website, I told a story from a weekend at the lake. I like to be able to change what I am writing and reword/reread my thoughts to ensure I am communicating them properly. I found myself speaking slowly and pausing my speech more than I normally would. The text from my story is void of proper conventions of the English written language. The first two sentences I was saying the punctuation but that was awkward, so I stopped. The text has very few periods and no commas. There are no indents for new paragraphs showing a new section of the story. There is the odd capital letter in the middle of a sentence. I find it difficult to follow the text without grammar rules being followed. There are also multiple substitutions for words I said such as “ankle” and “oribe” and re-reading it I am unsure of what was actually said. There are certain parts of the story, such a pulling my dad out of the mud hole, that if the reader did not have experience riding trails on a quad, they would not be able to understand because of all the substituted words and the lack of extra description on my part. The two most common mistakes in this text are the lack of periods and the substitution of similar sounding words (ankle = and go). When I read the text in my head, I couldn’t figure out some of the word substitutions but when I read it out loud, slowly, some of them started to make sense to me.

I would have had much more success with a scripted story using speech to text technology. I was recalling a story and found it difficult to think about what I was saying while watching the Speechnotes program dictate. A scripted story would have allowed me to reconcile and order my thoughts before trying to share them. I would have added more details to make the story easier for the recipient to understand. Written storytelling allows the author to edit their story ensuring they are communicating certain messages to their audience. Oral storytelling can be more difficult to piece the parts together. Oral storytelling allows room for interaction with the author while written works could be read without the author present. Writing is usually more deliberate than speaking, making finished written pieces more carefully crafted than spoken word (Gnanadesikan, 2011, p. 5).  In written form, the story is static, unchanging from one reader to the next. Oral storytelling allows for change from teller to teller as one remembers or emphasizes different parts each time. Gnanadesikan (2011) explains that with writing we lose intonation and emotional content (p.9). With written word, we rely on punctuation and descriptions to convey emotion or create intonation in our minds. This exercise made me aware of the differences in my communication of a story when it is told orally vs written. The two are very different!

References:

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internetLinks to an external site. (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).

My name is Jenny and I’m an elementary school principal by day. The above picture shows a variety of items I carry regularly with me in my bag. Each serves a specific purpose. The items include:

• My bag made from my grandfather’s old suits
• Wallet including identification, some cash, gift cards and a transit card
• School keys
• A reusable bag
• Cough lozenges
• A bandaid
• A jump drive
• A peppermint tea bag
• Hand sanitizer
• Contact solution
• Snacks, both a granola bar and a candy bar
• My iphone
• A pen from school with a stylus tip
• Chapstick
• A hair tie
• A business card
• Sanitary wipes from a restaurant
• Cabin keys
• An old shopping list

At first glance, I don’t think looking through my bag would tell a person a lot about me. Digging deeper into the texts of these items in my bag tells a story. The bag itself is made of my grandfather’s old suits and a leather jacket. It speaks to my love of family and holding onto memories of the past. My wallet holds identification with personal information telling who I am, how old, and my driver’s license would show I need to wear corrective lenses. I usually have an array of gift cards in my wallet. Sometimes writing of thanks can be found on the cards themselves. The gift cards are from students and families showing their appreciation. The transit card is interesting as I never use public transit in the town I live in. I keep the card in my wallet for my frequent trips to Vancouver where I almost exclusively use public transit.

The snacks, tea, contact solution, Band-Aid, cough lozenges, and hair tie are all personal care items. I am always hungry and looking for a snack. Not pictured is my tea mug which is also a regular item I carry. I have long hair that I usually wear down for work but pull up immediately after, so a hair tie is never far away. The pen, business card, and school keys are used regularly and all show the school name. The business card has more details about location and contact information. I give these cards out when people ask about our school but I also use them to enter into contests run by local businesses. School is a big part of my life.

The cabin keys represent an even bigger part of my life. We have a cabin about 2 hours away that we frequent regularly, the keys are always in my bag. The jump drive shows my reliance on digital files. I don’t use it as much as I once did now that I can save and access files online. The old shopping list should have been thrown away but was buried at the bottom of the bag. I still like to write my lists out on paper and have them handy to look at without having to turn my phone on. The phone represents a major form of my communication. I regularly text or speak to staff on the phone as well as texting my children or husband throughout the day. I use my phone to search for information on the internet, check and answer e-mails, and sometimes to even complete work for my courses. I rely on my phone as a major part of my communication system. English is the main language seen on all the items in my bag with French as the secondary language on the packaging. This tells of my reliance on the English language.

Text technologies have changed over the years. My bag would have looked different 15 or 20 years ago. I did not yet have a steady teaching contract so would not have had school keys, business cards or the pen! I may have had a jump drive as I was just finishing my education degree. I was busy with three young children and would have had different snacks, wipes, and diapers in my bag! My cell phone was used much differently 15 years ago as well being only for phone calls. I never carried hand sanitizer or reusable bags with me either. My wallet and the use of contact solution would be the only similar products. The most notable change from years ago would be the advancement of technology. My bag from prior years would have contained notebooks or other paper-based items.

An archaeologist looking through my bag in the future would recognize I have some environmentally friendly tendencies and possibly someone who leads a busy life (all those snacks). If able to access the contents of my phone they would piece together an individual who wears many hats and tends to many different relationships. They would also see the many ways text technologies are seen through the apps used to text (both sending words and pictures), document life (photographs and videos), entertain (Netflix, games, etc), connecting with others (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, e-mails), navigation (maps and All Trails), and even banking and health insurance. This task made me so much more aware of the text technologies that I interact with daily and what they say about my life!