Category: Links

Duncan,

I enjoyed reading your speculative futures post, and liked that you wrote it in the narrative style and included some visual elements text/imagery of a receipt to add some detail to your post and helps the reader understand your vision. My post had a similar addition, and took up about as much time as the writing of the post. Anyway, I enjoyed the way the drone surcharges and delivery fees drove up the price on the bill- a concept I am all too familiar with. Although I wonder about some of the initial price points for food items- given the way that inflation impacts prices, perhaps you could have done more here to gouge the future consumer.

Your prompt was a little challenging- blending the impacts of drones while eliciting feelings of embarrassment? You navigated this well by painting a picture of a desolate future and some unfortunate living circumstances. I’m currently travelling around Europe and I am always cognizant of the use of space in living accommodations here. In North America, we typically have big houses with yards, but this is not the norm for much of the world. I think your narrative is very accurate here in depicting a future of apartment living and cramped conditions.

Well done on the post,

Katy

Seb,

I enjoyed reading your take on the possibilities for the year 2074. you did a fantastic job of answering the points of the prompt and eliciting a feeling of decadence. It certainly sounds like a festival I would like to attend.

Your post touched a lot on increased surveillance and issues relating to climate change and resource conflict. Although my prompt was different, I opted to include these elements as well. With the advances in technology, I think as a society we are all concerned about the level of control and surveillance now possible as so much of our lives relies on technology.

Your prompt was a little tricky in that it asked you to touched on ‘issues related to drones’ but to convey a feeling of ‘decadence’… you did a great job of navigating these juxtaposing ideas. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on other ways that drones may impact our lives in the future, both positively and negatively. I live in a downtown apartment and I saw a drone flying back and forth between all the buildings recently. I felt that this was a huge invasion of privacy, but also thought about how helpless I was to do anything about it. There’s no chasing down a drone and reporting it seemed pointless. In some parts of the world drone food deliveries are becoming common, but the thought of drones flying around en masse feels invasive.

Great job on the narrative.
– Katy

Carol,

Great job on the completion of this task. You have such beautiful handwriting, which makes sense given that you have opted to keep utilizing it. Like the saying, ”if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it’. When I worked through this task, I struggled to write by hand as I have been typing everything for decades now. You mentioned that you often jot notes down by hand- do you print them or handwrite? I find that my students are always begging me to teach them handwriting, but I tend to go over it briefly towards the end of the year and opt to spend our precious literacy time on academic content. I also think that it’s important for them to learn how to type quickly, as this is a skill that they will be utilizing more frequently, and it makes operating the chromebooks a much less painful task. You spoke about the connection between writing by hand and memory in your post. I’m curious about how your experience has been now that you are typing more notes for school vs. handwriting. Do you feel that this has an impact with the way that you engage with the material?

• Katy

Jennie,

I really like the way you overlayed the icons onto your image– great use of the genially program. You were very thoughtful in your approach to this task in choosing to systematically represent a variety of modalities. Your project is really enriched by the addition of images, video, audio, and text features, without seeming overwhelming. Your decision to add a little interactive survey at the end is great- it allows people to engage back with you and your task, rather than passively viewing it. I personally really struggled with this task because I couldn’t think of creative ways to represent each one of my items, and opted to try and gamify it and create a ‘guessing game’ type of situation with H5P and twine. My computer microphone however, had other plans. -_- As you talked about in your reflection, this is one of the challenges of multi-modal communication, we are now relying on a variety of technologies to cooperate and integrate together seamlessly. Your task achieves this flawlessly, well done.
– Katy