Month: June 2022

I am very curious to know if anyone is able to guess what show I am referring to!

Wow! I thought this was going to be easier to execute than it was, considering my frequent use of emoji’s when messaging with friends and colleagues!

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

Interestingly, I ended up using emoji’s to reflect ideas and themes versus syllables or words. I believe this was because the emoji’s I had to choose from didn’t quite reflect the message I was hoping to convey. So instead of attempting to squeeze meaning out of a single emoji, I looked to grouping multiple emoji’s to convey a theme or idea. I also took this grouping and sequenced it to give more meaning and to provide a storyline. Struggling to make sure the emoji reflected what I was trying to say provided great insights into how these symbols, while carrying so much meaning, could lead to others misinterpreting, or not guessing correctly the story I am attempting to tell (Bolter, 2010). When you see an emoji symbol for a bag of money, this can have endless interpretations, leaving it up to the reader to make their best guess as to what the author is trying to say. Perhaps the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is misleading, as we don’t know which thousand words that picture could be referring to.

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

I did in fact start with the title. I think that is the best way to identify a topic and to provide structure around the message being portrayed. However, beginning with the title and structuring the sequence from left to right, top to bottom, reflects how language shapes the way I think. While I share culture and language with many others, this has not afforded me the ease to interpreting my classmates emoji stories. As I read through my peers emoji stories, I struggled to decipher both the title and plot of a show, sometimes I could guess the title while not be able to interpret the plot, and so on. This goes to show that despite being from the same culture, we all have our own unique way of attaching meaning to the images we are seeing. reinforcing the notion that “picture elements extend over a broad range of meanings” (Bolter, 2010, p.59).

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

I would say no, I didn’t. I wanted to attempt to depict a show that others might find funny or be as into as I am. I thought I would do better at this since I generally use emoji’s to provide an emotional context to my prose/written text. Trying to depict relationships between people alongside big emotions, with only emoji’s, was incredibly difficult. That aspect of the activity really drove home the argument Bolter (2010) makes regarding “narrative power” being lost entirely from “picture writing” (p. 59).

• Breakout of the Visual

As I made my way through the readings this week (especially Bolter’s) I couldn’t help but wonder how Bolter’s perspective of what the breakout of the visual is would change if TikTok was thriving when this book was written. His book was published in 2010 and in 2016 TikTok made its debut. I cannot help but associate his idea of the visual breaking out to TikTok in all of its hypermediated glory. TikTok epitomizes the “hectic photomontage” (p. 51) that Bolter describes in hypermediated styles of prose. It does this by utilizing green screen features, allowing content creators to share multiple different images while speaking to what exists within those images, it also combines verbal and picture reading all the while listening to spoken words (Bolter, 2010). TikTok embodies the joining of “interactivity with the immediacy of a global hypertext” (Bolter, 2010, p. 70). Does TikTok improve the authenticity of content while providing immediacy for consumption of it? Can we determine if TikTok has remediated previous forms of social media and web pages?

References

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

For this assignment, I am wearing my BCIT hat and submitting a game where the nurse has to manage four different cardiac arrest scenarios. I used Twine 2.3.16 to create this game, which has proved to be a labor of love as I navigated the world of HTML coding. Had I come into this activity with prerequisite knowledge of this ‘machine language’, the process would have been a lot smoother and the learning curve less steep.

My initial concern with using this platform for creating a game was that the media is very text heavy. When learners are faced with a wall of text that lacks visual points of interest, attention can be lost. With searching chat forums and the internet, I was able to find codes that would allow better integration of multimedia. Through this, I was able to create a game environment that closer reflects a hospital setting and is more engaging through sounds and images. This first iteration of the game is basic at best and I will be taking this back to my colleagues for further revisions.

I find the language of computers as it compares to the language of humans fascinating. Both forms of language are structured with semantics and syntax, with machine language diverging from human language in its logic, precision and lack of intonation and emotion. The HTML coding in Twine needs to be exact for the computer to understand the directions and execute the command. There is no room for error. Whereas human language is flexible enough to still be understood if a mistake is made while conversing.

The linking text within this game services as a form of circular links which allow the individual playing the game to return to previous scenarios if they incorrectly answer the question (Bolter, 2001). This way, they are given unlimited attempts to examine the information on the page and test their knowledge. Additionally, these “hot” (Bolter, 2001, p. 27) texts show the player relationships between the content and the answers they have to choose from. They also act as a guide for progressing through the game, highlighting a pathway through virtual content (Bolter, 2001). From a design perspective, the onus was on me to ensure this virtual pathway through my game space was well planned out. This was more challenging of a task than I anticipated. When creating links between story passages that were bidirectional, I had to ensure that the “arrival” and “departure” (Landow, 1989 as cited by Bolter, 2001, P. 37) information of each passage represented logical relationships depending on how the player arrived at that destination. One of the limitations of this platform is the inability to link to content outside of the game for purposes of individual study or expanding on the concepts encountered in the game.

Below is my hyperlinked text to take you to the game! Enjoy!

https://wheebee.itch.io/cardiac-arrest-management-scenarios

References

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

ADDENDUM: Here are some screen shots of the game’s story line and some of the coding for the effects. The videos were created with our SIM software.

 

For this assignment, I wanted to take a deeper dive into the mechanization of writing with an application of the material to the context of my work. In order to do this, I opted to omit the content from the handwritten task to prevent this post from being lengthy. Instead, I will share my insights from the task.

For the medium, I chose to use a pen and paper. If a mistake is made during manual writing, I have to cross out the word and then rewrite it, or attempt to change the appearance of a misplaced letter. Using a pen prevents me from removing this error from my work. In lieu of this, to prevent an excerpt from having many errors, it should be well thought out and planned. Multiple errors will make the text difficult to follow thus challenging to read. It also poses challenges to eloquently portraying thoughts and ideas, as writing is typically a process that requires many revisions until you get it just right. Had I used a pencil instead of a pen, I could have erased errors ensuring an aesthetically pleasing final product. The other noticeable divergence from using a computer to manually creating text was the inability to use spell check. This latter issue would add to Plato’s argument that writing, in the context of the evolution of text technologies, can foster forgetfulness (Haas, 2013).

Haas (2013) and Bolter (2001) bring forth meaningful debate regarding the mechanization of writing which fostered a deep reflection surrounding the work I am currently involved with. As new technologies emerge, healthcare systems shift to adopt newer, more mechanized forms of writing in the hopes to remediate manual forms of writing for the purposes of saving money and providing safer patient care (Bolter, 2001). The work I am doing is involved with the development of electronic medical and health records so that hospitals can move away from being paper based.  Specifically, I am involved with developing and designing documentation templates that will be used by providers at acute care sites. This requires meeting with providers who have been appointed as subject matter experts (SMEs) for their departments to assess their documentation needs. Their feedback is then used to edit standard content provided by the vendor to suite the needs of these specialty areas.

Moving to a fully electronic system for documentation is going to cause significant shifts in the workflow for and the culture of providers at acute care sites. Currently, providers either document using a pen (that they likely stole from a nurse) and paper or via a dictation service they call into which generates a recording that is later transcribed by a human. If using the paper and pen method, they first need to locate the physical patient chart, tab to the section for doctor’s notes, and using a lined, 3-hole punched, piece of paper with patient specific identifiers in the heading, chart their assessment, findings and plan. Here is an example of their pen and paper documentation:

In future states, paper based documentation and transcription services will no longer be offered. Instead, they will be required to electronically chart, using a computer. That process requires them to locate a computer, log into their account, enter into the EMR system, select the patient’s electronic chart, then launch the documentation routine with the most appropriate document. Here is an example of what the electronic version of their charting will look like:

As you can hopefully see, electronic documentation separates out each section grouping information. Each of these sections then expands to reveal subsections with documentation fields.

All of these forms of text have a material essence to them both physically and psychologically (Haas, 2013). The process of providers documenting with either a pen and paper, or electronically, results in the production of material artifacts (health/medical records) which occupy space (Haas, 2013). Paper documentation is a space occupying material in the obvious sense that a piece of paper is physical, you can touch it, and add it to a patient’s chart. As more paper is added, the bigger the patient’s chart becomes. Electronic versions of documentation equally take up space via the computers they are created on and the servers information is stored on. From a psychological perspective, provider documentation has the ability to influence others. For example, medical records are utilized by other practitioners for the planning of patient care, for making in the moment healthcare decisions, and as an educational aide for students learning in the clinical setting.

The semiotic and material domain of provider documentation has the power to transform the future of health care (Haas, 2013). One of the ways this is accomplished is through the generation of health records (via provider documentation) producing vast amounts of healthcare related data. In fact, the generation of ‘Big Data’ from health records has given rise to the discipline of Health Informatics. The digitization of healthcare will have major implications both intellectually and economically. Large data sets extracted from health records can be used to train AI to perform computational tasks such as predictive modelling (searching for the next threat to public health) or to quickly and more accurately diagnose patients. This push to digitize and remediate the healthcare system shows the cultural importance these tools have in North American society. Haas (2013) would argue that this is a prime example of technological determinism.

Additionally, electronic health records are more readily and easily mined for data by computers than are paper charts a human needs to page through. The information that can be extracted from these electronic records can also be utilized for research purposes. Lastly, it provides ease of access to patient health care records so that the care patients receive is individualized and safe, reducing errors and improving patient outcomes. While this is not an exhaustive list of the benefits afforded by the mechanization of physician documentation, it highlights the motivational factors pushing for this change.

References

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

Haas, C. (2013). “The Technology Question.” In Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy. Routledge. (pp. 3-23).