Month: June 2024

Mode-Bending

A journey through audio technologies

While completing this task I found myself struggling to communicate- largely due to navigating technical issues. I opted to utilize twine to create a slightly interactive display of my “What’s in your bag” items. My initial thought was to utilize the 5HP software to create a dictation that the viewer would be able to listen to, type a response, and receive feedback on the response. However, my computer refused to record any audio and 5HP refused an audio file from my phone. The end result is still a twine and still manages to communicate my objects through audio, I’ve linked the Zip file above.

Reflecting on these difficulties, I noticed that my struggles weren’t linked to the mode of communication (audio), but rather with the use of digital technologies itself. Since I am reasonably proficient with using a variety of technologies, I was able to fluently switch between programs and navigate the various mediums, file types, and software that I was utilizing. Dobson & Willinsky (2009) note that “hypermedia extends in significant ways our notions of textuality and literacy” (p.289).  Participating in digital culture requires the development broader set of literacy skills that go beyond the scope of reading and writing.

Affordances of the medium

From the audience/viewer/consumer point of view, I think that it is relatively easy to engage with my final product. Of the objects I still had available (some were eaten) each item has a distinctive sound that people strongly associate with the object. I chose not to add any words or descriptors for the object, but I did rely on the use of the original image file to assist the audience. Consuming media using audio clips is a highly accessible communication tactic for many people, particularly when compared to written texts that are exclusionary for different groups of people. The new London group (1996) write:  “As soon as our sights are set on the objective of creating the learning conditions for full social participation, the issue of differences of culture, language, and gender are not barriers to educational success ” (p.61), highlighting how multimodal communication significantly reduces barriers to effective communication.

References:

Dobson, T. M., & Willinsky, J. (2009). Digital literacy. Cambridge University Press.

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

emojistory

Task Reflection:

This task was much more difficult that I initially believed it would be. [Edit: none of my emojis came through in the post- did other people struggle in this way?] The plot of my movie relies heavily on relationships, trust, and involves several twists and turns that were beyond what I would be able to communicate using emojis. I found that during this task I relied heavily on nouns, with a few symbols (arrows) mixed in, and utilized repetition to help convey meaning. To convey an idea (bank transfer) I utilized a series of related emojis, but I found it difficult to rely on simply one or two emojis. When I have my students writing notes, I often rely on the website https://thenounproject.com/  to help them come up with symbols to represent their ideas using a visual notetaking / sketch noting format. We run into the same challenges I found completing this task, which is that we rely heavily on nouns and that it is sometimes difficult to communicate bigger meanings such as ideas or relationships. However, I do find that utilizing symbols for communicating to have great benefits, especially when working with students who are learning English or who have learning disorders/communication disorders etc. It is also often much faster than writing out entire pages of notes, and I find that it is more meaningful and easier for students to understand. This is the entire premise of the Kress article, that all communication is inherently multi-modal, and that distinctive modes carry with them both potentials and limitations (Kress, 2005).

I started with the title because I felt that it was a natural starting point, and if someone had seen the movie they might be able to guess the title and have a better understanding of the plot. In order to further assist the ‘reader’ I opted to use additional spatial cues such as extra lines between scenes and gaps between chunks of ideas or events within scenes.  I put effort into organizing ideas and details for the reader, because I was hyper aware of the fact that “two readers could explain the same message in different words” (Bolter, 2001, p.54). The use of emojis or symbols to convey a movie title is a common ‘game’ or challenge seen on TV shows or internet media sites, the entire premise being that humans associate the same emojis with so many different words.

Unfortunately, I am not an avid consumer of TV or movies so I struggled a little bit coming up with a plot for this task. I felt that the title would be easy to communicate, but failed to anticipate how difficult it would be to relay the complexities of the dynamics within the movie. If I were to re-do the task, I might pick a more popular/famous movie that people would easily recognize and relate to. Genre also played an important role here, and I’m not sure that a spy/action movie was the best choice for this activity. Harry Potter, Star wars, lord of the rings would have been much more ideal.

References: 

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

Kress, G. (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 2(1), 5-22.

My story:

I thought that for today’s story we had talk about the field trip. That I went on today with my students. So I found out that our city was hosting a Mayor’s Expo for environmental education and I was really excited for. The opportunity to take my students there and of course it was a free field trip and. That was very enticing for us. No, the Mayors Expo was organizing busing. So they contacted me and let me know that they were going to send a city bus to pick us up. So it is the morning of the field trip. And we go to get on the bus and there is just a very loud beeping noise. We load all the children on and I’m letting the driver know that we can go. And we already a little bit late at this point, of course. Amber still just sitting there. So I go up to the vibe stripper again and I might get we can actually leave. It’s OK. And he was like, I’m not actually sure if I’m able to drive the bus because it’s making this beeping sound, giving me warning signals. So I’m waiting for my supervisor to let me know if we can go. After a little bit. Bus driver starts driving the bus and I’m like, oh great, we’re on our way. We’re about 15 minutes late at this point. An then he pulls over about 5 minutes away from the school. And tells me that he is not able to drive the bus, the bus can’t go over 30 kilometres an hour and that he is calling for another bus to come pick us up. So now we’re only 5 minutes from the school. We were pulled over on the side of a busy Rd. And it is boiling hot with the sun shining into the windows. And we are just waiting on this bus. Obviously this starts turning into chaos as my grade eight students are all over the place, excited, things like that Kids are trying to get off the bus and go walk around on the streets and I’m. Attempting to keep everybody under control. Eventually another bus does show up to come pick us up and takes us. Down to our field trip and we show up about. An hour late at this point. So we have missed the scheduled. Sessions that we were supposed to attend to and then we spent about 15 minutes waiting at the check in desk just trying to figure out what sessions I can take my students through. And how we’re going to manage the schedules, which I spent of course hours making for everyone signing him up for different sessions, but. In the end, we ended up having a wonderful field trip. Despite showing up an hour and a half late.

Story Analysis:

To complete this task, I utilized the speech to text feature (Office dictate) on Microsoft word. The most notable deviations from written conventions of English is the amount of times that I started a sentence with “so”, something I’m now hyper aware of. I can’t fault the program for that, but it is interesting to note the differences in the way that I would speak and how I would type out a story.

There are a significant amount of errors throughout the text. I found that every time I paused when speaking, the program finished the sentence and started a new one. The result is a rather choppy read with numerous sentence fragments. There are quite a few word substitutions, my personal favorite being the rebranding of the “bus driver” to a “vibe stripper” which actually still fit with the narrative. In several places the sentences start with the word “And” which deeply irks my teacher heart, but a common mistake found in students writing. Stylistically, if I was typing out a story I would likely add some spaces between paragraphs to group ideas together and help the reader digest the information. As a SPED teacher, this assignment really resonated with me. We are constantly being inundated with the directive to have the students use speech to text for their writing. While it does have some benefits for students, the written work comes out disjointed, full of errors, word substitutions and poor punctuation. I wonder about the effect this has on my students understanding of the English language.  Often when we read back through their writing, they are unsure of what it says / is supposed to say/ or mistakenly believe a word to be another substituted word.

Aside from the disastrous punctuation and a few word substitutions, the text manages to convey the story well. There is only one area where I got a little lost reading it, but the key information is articulated well. The program I used functioned better than Google Read and Write (often used by my students) and I was quite impressed with the result. There are no spelling mistakes and the program rarely missed any of the words that I was speaking. The story I chose wasn’t particularly exciting and I found that towards the end I wasn’t entirely sure what point I was making. Had I chosen to script or write the story out, I likely would’ve edited it and made sure that there was a strong ending rather than a loose trail of thoughts.

A key difference in oral storytelling and written story telling is the relaxation of grammar rules and enhanced stylistic choices that the speaker might make. In my story, this came to fruition in the form of me saying “so” about every 3 seconds. The most obvious difference between print and oral texts is the absence of any tone or tempo that add meaning to a message. On paper, my story is incredibly boring, but if articulated verbally, the addition of dramatic pauses, tone and sound effects add another dimension to the message.  When stories are told in person, there is an added bonus of facial expressions, body language and hand gestures that add a depth to the information being communicated.  I think that my take away from this exercise is a strong preference for oral storytelling, and the hindrances of speech to text software.