Author: Jocelyn Chan

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Linking task 1: What’s in my bag? — Erin

Links: My post for Task 1  ·  Erin’s post for Task 1

I chose to link to Erin’s post because our items and themes are similar, but Erin also reflected on how “[her] tendency to travel light is very much the same when it comes to other aspects of [her] life” (Duchesne, 2022), which really resonated with me. I found this point fascinating and wanted to dive deeper into Erin’s post.

Themes we both explored:

    1. Essentials only
    2. Item: Keys
    3. Digital, paper-free
    4. Item: Extra mask
    5. Social connection
    6. Items are representative of own image
    7. Technological literacy
    8. Similar to items from 10-15 years ago
    9. Reference to location

Click here to view image in full size  ·  The approach to this image was inspired by Xanadu (Nelson, 1999)

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

Through her post I learned that Erin and I have many similarities, as highlighted in the image above. As for differences:

    • Location: She’s in Edmonton; I’m in Vancouver
    • Undergrad: She went to University of Alberta; I went to UBC
    • Work environment: She works in-person (I gathered this from her references to her lunch bag and school keys); I work remotely
    • Job: She’s a grade 1 teacher; I work in organizational learning

From these, I imagine Erin has more experience than I do with cold weather, meal prep, and interacting with children. On the other hand, I may have more experience with rain, making instant noodles (probably! haha), and interacting with experienced professionals.

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

    • For our blogs: We’re both using WordPress on UBC Blogs.
    • For our posts for Task 1: Erin primarily used text and a photo, whereas I used text and an interactive image. I find Erin’s post very clear, and I’m now thinking that text and a photo would’ve been sufficient for my post as well. I think my decision to create an interactive image may have been influenced by my background in visual art and design.

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

I imagine the content-authoring capabilities for our sites are similar since we’re both using WordPress on UBC Blogs. However, we’re using different themes, which results in differences in interface:

    • Displaying number of comments: The theme that Erin chose displays the number of comments for each post under its title, which makes it easy to see the level of engagement with the post. This is not displayed in the theme I chose.
    • Nested comments: The nested comments in Erin’s theme makes it easy to see responses to comments. My theme has nested comments as well, but with significantly less indentation, which makes it more difficult to see how the comments relate to one another.
    • Text size: The text size for my theme is larger than Erin’s. On desktop, this results in an average of 11 words per line in my posts, and 17 words per line in Erin’s. This means it would take longer to read one line on Erin’s site, but my posts would appear to be longer.

I also appreciate that Erin has set up links to her assignments in the top navigation of her site. This makes it easy to locate her posts.

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

I will leverage two key themes of The New London Group’s (1996) article A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social future — cultural & linguistic diversity and modes — in exploring the literacies of our sites and posts.

Cultural & linguistic diversity

    • Language (similarity): Erin and I both use the English language for our posts.
    • Being environmentally conscious (privilege in Erin’s site): In her post Erin mentioned she “cares about sustainability” (Duchesne, 2022), which is reflected through some of her reusable items, as well as her mention of not having paper in her classroom. I absolutely do care about the environment, but admittedly there’s always more that I can do, and it sounds like Erin is more literate than I am in this regard. I wonder if her literacy on sustainability would be reflected in her upcoming posts, and from a quick look I see that the word she chose for her potato print was ‘world’!

Modes

    • Visual design (similarity): For my site, I try to use headings, dividers, and images to help increase the clarity and readability of my posts. I see that Erin makes good use of headings as well.
    • Gestural design (privilege in my site): For my post I created an interactive image to describe my items, which unintentionally speaks to my passion for interactive multimedia. This is also reflected in my post for Task 5. In realizing this now, I will identify more opportunities to create interactive multimedia for my upcoming tasks.

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

Site

I think someone experiencing my work would find it clear what points I am making, whereas someone experiencing Erin’s work would find it easy to understand the connections across her points.

    • Me: Further to my reflection earlier on the people Erin and I interact with respectively, I’m thinking my work environment may have influenced the way I communicate. I work in the business sector, where most people I interact with are constantly multitasking, so I have to ensure my points are crystal clear. In both verbal (on-the-spot or otherwise) and written communication, I typically start by stating the point I would like to make, following with an overview of the supporting arguments, and then expanding on the arguments. In written communication, I also leverage headings and bolding to help make my text scannable so people can easily focus in on what matters to them. I’m seeing now that this may have carried over to the way I write these posts!
    • Erin: I find Erin’s writing to flow very nicely — it feels to me like I am following a cohesive train of thought. Her transitions across points are thoughtful, and her writing flows very smoothly as a result.

Post – Task 1

    • Me: One of the themes I explored in my post was the idea of ‘backups’, made possible with technology. With work, I’m also a huge believer of having multiple points of entry and flexibility in learning and development, made possible with intentional use of technology, in order to help make the learning as valuable and effective to the individual as possible. I’m realizing now that there is a parallel here!
    • Erin: It seems to me that Erin’s post takes a more guided approach and uses storytelling, which I imagine would be very effective considering the age of her learners.

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?

The one constraint I can think of is the inability to easily see all the links created through all linking assignments, although that is a limitation of the World Wide Web now, as Nelson warned in 1999 (Nelson, 1999).

To help take a step towards closing this gap, I identified all the posts created for the linking assignment so far and visually connected them through this mind map. However, please note that this approach is closer to the Memex (see Bolter, 2010, p. 35; Trevor Flowers, 2016) and not Xanadu (see Nelson, 1999):

Click here to view mind map in full size

References

Bolter, J. D. (2010). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410600110

Duchesne, E. (2022, May 16). Task 1: What’s in your bag? Erin Duchesne ETEC 540. https://blogs.ubc.ca/erinduchesneetec540/2022/05/16/task-1-whats-in-your-bag/

Trevor Flowers. (2016, June 19). Memex #001 demo [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4SS_9nXyo

Nelson, T. H. (1999). Xanalogical structure, needed now more than ever: Parallel documents, deep link to content, deep versioning, and deep re-use. ACM Computing Survey, 31(4). https://doi.org/10.1145/345966.346033

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92. http://newarcproject.pbworks.com/f/Pedagogy%2Bof%2BMultiliteracies_New%2BLondon%2BGroup.pdf

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Task 6: An emoji story

Reflection

In completing this task, I was reminded of Kress’ (2005) description of the affordances of words versus images, and wondered what — to use Kress’ term — “gains and losses” have come about with the remediation of emojis. Specifically:

    • In 2005, Kress noted that “there is a finite stock of words—vague, general, nearly empty of meaning; on the other hand there is an infinitely large potential of depictions—precise, specific, and full of meaning” (p. 15). And now, in 2022, we have emojis, which I might consider a cross between words and image depictions. Interestingly, there is a finite number of emojis, a fact that was particularly clear to me as I was completing the activity above, and they have the potential to convey specific meanings of which the writer may not even be aware.
    • Expanding on my last point, Bolter (2010) argued that “speakers of different languages could share the same system of picture writing” (Bolter, 2010, p. 59). However, as McCulloch (2019) warned in regards to emojis, “what [a person] interpret[s] a symbol as depends on [their] cultural context … [their] linguistic context … [and] the rest of [their] experience” (Zaltzman & McCulloch, 2019). In other words, the “additional meanings” conveyed by the emojis “can’t be universal” (Zaltzman & McCulloch, 2019).
    • In addition, as the understanding of the connotations of emojis evolve over generations (Abdullahi, 2021; Sanjay, 2020), I wonder to what extent emojis could be interpreted as the writer intended, especially over time. How would a millennial today interpret my emoji story? How would a Gen Z or Gen X today interpret my emoji story? How would an audience 10 years from now interpret my emoji story?

Did you rely more on syllables, words, ideas, or a combination of all of them?

I relied mostly on ideas. In addition to my thoughts above on the connotations and interpretations of emojis, I also realize now that I conveyed my ideas in consideration of the subject, order, and time:

    • Subject: I started numerous lines with the emoji of the male character, where, aligning with Kress’ (2005) point, “[b]eing first … mean[s] being first in the speaker’s attention (the theme of a sentence) … or being cause of an action” (Kress, 2005, p. 12).
    • Order: I used left-to-right sequencing, just like Boroditsky’s example of the Nestlé nutritional supplement (SAR School for Advanced Research, 2017). I then followed this with top-to-bottom sequencing. I believe I subconsciously made this decision because my emoji story was created by an English-speaking writer (me) and intended for an English-speaking audience.
    • Time: The passage of time, while not explicitly stated, was implied through this sequencing.

Did you start with the title? Why? Why not?

I did start with the title, but this was not an intentional decision. I would say I started with the title simply because I’m used to starting written pieces with the title, just like how this blog post starts with “Task 6: An emoji story”. I wonder if there are languages where it is not the norm to start written pieces with the title, and how that might influence their approach if they were asked to complete this task.

Did you choose the work based on how easy it would be to visualize?

Admittedly, I did! I originally wanted to do Stranger Things since I just finished volume 1 of season 4, but I couldn’t figure out a clear way to depict “Stranger” or “Things” or most of the plot in the show. This goes back to my earlier point about the finite number of emojis — my ability to tell stories was limited by the emojis currently available. Similarly, I imagine my use of text for this post may be limited by the words available, where these words influence my thinking and in turn limit my thoughts.

References

Abdullahi, T. (2021, March 15). What do emojis mean? How millennials and Gen-Z use them very differently. The National. https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/what-do-emojis-mean-how-millennials-and-gen-z-use-them-very-differently-1.1183746

Bolter, J. D. (2010). The breakout of the visual. In Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (pp. 47-76). Routledge.

Kress, G. (2005). Gains and losses: New forms of text, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 22(1), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2004.12.004

Sanjay, S. (2020, October 1). Why does Gen Z use emojis to weirdly? Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kpngb/gen-z-young-people-use-emojis-differently-than-millennials

SAR School for Advanced Research. (2017, June 7). Lera Boroditsky, How the languages we speak shape the ways we think [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGuuHwbuQOg

Zaltzman, H., & McCulloch, G. (2019). 102. New rules [Audio podcast episode]. In The Allusionist. https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/new-rules

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Task 5: Twine task

Mystery of the potato stamps

The potatoes that Bob bought to make fries have been mysteriously carved into potato stamps. Which of the three new neighbours is the culprit? You, a super awesome detective, along with your equally awesome partner Detective Jocelyn, are on the case!

Click here to open Mystery of the potato stamps in a new tab for the full experience (recommended), or play a tiny version of it below.

Reflection

Strategy

The concept of creating branching scenarios is not new to me, but this was my first time making a text-based game and using Twine! I used to love the text-based Stickman murder mystery games, so I was very excited to create my own for this task.

In branching scenarios, the player is “give[n] the illusion of control” but the paths are determined by the creator (Bolter, 2010, p. 43), and I’m mindful that this makes for a certain “relationship between the [player] and the text” (p. 35). Considering this, to help minimize feelings of being forced to say certain things or take certain paths, I set out to write opposing choices for the player to ‘say’ or do whenever possible, such as:

    • “I’m all ready!” / “I need my coffee first.”
    • “I’m not sure if that sounds right.” / “That makes a lot of sense!”

Creation process

1. Prewriting: I started with what Bolter (2010) referred to as “prewriting” (p. 33). I decided on the theme, clues, and characters, and mapped out the major branches.

2. Design: I knew I would be jumping between descriptions, dialogue, and choices, and I wanted to ensure that these are presented clearly to the player. I tackled this using light CSS and HTML.

3. Build: I simultaneously created the branches, decided on details, and wrote the text directly in Twine. I especially appreciated Twine in this step of the process – I was reminded of Bolter’s (2010) description of an “electronic writing space” (p. 35), in that I found Twine effective in “tak[ing] care of the mechanics of maintaining and presenting both networks and trees” (Bolter, 2010, p. 35), which allowed me to focus on writing whatever came to mind!

 

 

 

 

 

4. Add images: I created quick sketches for key elements and added them in.

References

Bolter, J. D. (2010). Hypertext and the remediation of print. In Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (pp. 27-46). Routledge.

Normandcompany. (n.d.). Stickman murder mystery games. Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20060807005748/http://www.normandcompany.com/STICKMAN/index.html

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