My name is Joseph Villella and I am from Burnaby, BC. I currently teach Grade 4 at an independent elementary school and am excited to continue learning more about digital technologies in the classroom setting. For this assignment, I will be going through my backpack that I use for work to see what it says about me and see how I can relate the items to text technologies.
To start, the largest (and most obvious) item in my backpack is my laptop. My laptop is an item that I use daily, and it allows me to communicate and create text communication. I actively use it to create and find worksheets that contain text to then produce for my students. I also create digital text items that require my student to interact with and answer using their own digital device – a Chromebook.
The next item would be my iPad which I use frequently during my day. My iPad with Apple Pencil allows me to digitally write text and project it to my class through my projector. It is incredibly important as it makes it incredibly easy to mark-up worksheets and is a lot more convenient than a document camera or the old-school overhead projectors.
I haven’t gone through my backpack in a while as there are a few cheques that I have forgotten to deposit! These cheques would obviously contain text as they were digitally created and printed. This is a good example of how cheques have changed over the years as they all used to be handwritten and instead now most have changed to being digitally filled.
I have a collection of student assignments in my backpack that I am in the process of marking for final report cards. Although these specific assignments are not usually in my bag, a set of assignments could normally be found in my bag. Compared to education in the past, I do mark a lot less physical and handwritten assignments due to the increased usage of digital assignments. I would probably need a larger backpack (or possibly a whole other bag) to keep up with my marking if digital assignments were not used!
A new Starbucks gift card was at the bottom of my backpack and was a nice surprise! I must have received this gift card from a student for an occasion in the past few months. Although it technically isn’t a piece of text technology, it would have replaced how previous gift cards were created in the past. A digital gift card is a lot simpler to use and create compared to the handwritten or digitally printed gift cards of the past.
I have various papers crumpled at the bottom of my bag from previous staff meetings (sorry!). These were items that were important to keep as they refer to various important topics discussed… it just seems like they never actually made it out of my bag. Looking at them, one paper is from a field trip to Victoria that I took part of earlier this month. This sheet contained a lot of important information including the students I would have been responsible for during the field trip. Reflecting in this, we really do rely on text for the transfer of important information as if it were all through vocal discussions, a lot of us would forget important pieces of information!
My wallet is also in my backpack at the moment as I usually just leave it there throughout the work week. My wallet includes my physical identification (such as my driver’s license) and access to my digital funds through my debit card.
Finally, the last item in my backpack was my water bottle (not pictured). Again, not something that directly relates to text but it does have printed text to relay important information which includes washing instructions.
Thinking of the items in my backpack now compared to what could have possibly been found in an educator’s backpack in the past. Not would an iPad not have existed 15 years ago, but a laptop would have been quite a lot larger than they currently are! Going back even further in time, there’s a good chance I would not be caring any computing device and would have been using a shared desktop at work and an overhead projector to conduct lessons. If someone saw my bag, I think the student assignments would give away that I am an educator. Overall, I recognize as an educator the importance of text and literacy and I think my backpack shows how important language and text technologies are to me!
