Monthly Archives: June 2024

Task 7: Mode Bending

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Reflect on the potential benefits and challenges of engaging in mode-changing and describe your own redesign process.

The New London Group showed all the many ways that meaning can be represented. Through this task we are representing the first task of the course where we introduced ourselves to the rest of ETEC 540. What is in our bag shows a lot about us and what we place meaning on in our lives. Instead of reading out the items in my bag, I chose to represent them with a noise for each object. I wish I was a musician who knew how to mash up sounds however I had to resort to recording Youtube clips. Therefore this task took me longer than I would like to admit.

I think the benefits of mode-changing are engagement for students or people who gravitate to different representations of information. This could also be more accessible for certain people with varying backgrounds or difficulties with written texts. However, where I can see a challenge is in how it is interpreted. Especially after my recording, I am not sure people would necessarily be able to interpret exactly what is meant by each sound. Another challenge I see is knowledge of required equipment. I struggled for a few minutes just trying to determine what method of recording I could use. Changing modes is interesting ang engaging but more so if it does not require even more time to prepare.

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

Task 6: Emoji Story

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In today’s digital age, screens have become the primary medium through which information is presented and consumed. As a result, I thought this task would be easier than it was. I found I had to leave out huge amounts of detail so my description is just key words. In order to understand this story someone would have to be able to interpret both the literal meaning of some emojis and the symbolic meaning. “Words are (relatively) empty entities…This is the task we call interpretation, namely interpreting what sign the writer may have intended to make with this signifier” (Kress, 2005, pg 7). This became clear after trying to identify the meaning of my classmates emoji stories. I as the reader interpret the symbols by assigning them meaning based on the context, trying to decipher what the writer is intending. However, as Kress (2005) mentions, it is harder to interpret images which have so many more meanings than specific words. I found myself able to pick up on some phrases or have a decent idea what the show may be, however I could not decipher some plots. I relied on a combination of syllables, words, and ideas because there were not enough emojis to stick to only one of these strategies. I started with the title because I knew I would need to repeat these emojis often throughout the story and I quickly realized that I might have chosen a difficult show. Hopefully someone can identify it! The first and very important emoji is a bit blurry which also does not help…

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

Task 5: Twine Task

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Survival of the Secondary Teacher (9).html

This task involved creativity which is something I find a bit daunting. I was going to opt out of this one however I decided to challenge myself and complete it. I chose a topic that was relevant to me, my occupation, and I wanted to try and add some humour to it. I should note that I love teaching and I actually find my days super enjoyable so this Twine is not an accurate depiction of every day…only some of them. I started by watching the ‘how to’ video and then played around with the tool. Once I got the idea of it I began my story. I think if I was to do it again I would have more of a plan written out. By the time I had come up with a concept I liked I was almost done a first draft. I think my idea would have been stronger if I was to do it again. 

After the reading on hypertexts I was immediately remembering a game I played in middle school. We would start on the same Wikipedia page and then someone would tell us the code word we had to get to. Using hyperlinks we would click through “a network of interconnected writings” (Bolter, 2001), in order to land on the code word first. I am used to navigating the web like this. I utilize hyperlinks for researching and understanding, I also use it in my lesson plans and daily calendars. Although I use them often, I noticed I still followed a linear form of writing. “A common goal of writing for printed publication has been to create a perfect hierarchy”(Bolter, 2001). Although I tried to branch off into different story lines I found it hard to focus on a web of connections rather than the linear. Overall, I am happy I learned how to use Twine. I appreciate that it is not the same discussion post or essay assignment but rather something different. I also think the tool would work well in my classroom for a creative assignment. 

Chapter 3Links to an external site. of Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Task 4: Potato Stamp

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Overall this task was very humbling. I thought it would be an easy process however as evident through my potato (yam) printing it did not go well. First of all I did not have any potatoes so I was off to a tough start. I then didn’t have one large enough to write 5 letters…so I ended up with 3 which was challenging enough for me. It was challenging to create a precise line or outline the stamp. It actually took me over 30 minutes just to create the stamp. I am not a very patient person so it took a lot of will power to not switch to the other optional task and scrap the stamp altogether. The letters I chose had both straight lines and curves. Originally I thought the curves would be harder but the straight lines were no easier. The lowest point of the potato stamp creation was realizing I had not mirrored the image so it was legible once stamped, ultimately making my stamp useless.

It took me a lot of time and effort to create my 3 letter word it. This was upfront work that once I was printing paid off in efficiency. Now that I created that word I would not have to do it again therefore speeding up the mechanization of writing. It also standardized the print. As long as I had the same amount of paint on the stamp it always turned out essentially the same. This is beneficial in many ways however it also removes the creativity or personalization that handwriting has. This made me think about typing and its benefits to cursive writing. Easier to read regardless of who wrote it and more efficient. However, there is something so human and personal about receiving a cursive written note. I always feel this nostalgia when I read my grandmas old recipes. If these were typed they would not be the same. Overall, this assignment demonstrated the benefits of the mechanization of writing through a very simple task while highlighting some downfalls. A potato stamp or cursive writing not cannot be easily adjusted or changed. Does this mean that through mechanization and speed we are losing careful consideration and thoughtfulness of our words? I know if I had to create stamps to communicate through text, I would show extremely purposeful consideration for each and every word used. 

Task 3: Voice to Text

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Oral Story

On Thursday I had a women’s league basketball game I was on my way from coaching and so I was running out of gas I didn’t notice until about halfway to my basketball game and I looked down at my gas tank and realized that I was on one bar and of course I was not very close to getting to the gym I started to panic and coasting try not to use my AC I put my windows up even though I have no idea if that actually affects my gas use and then I took a wrong turn because I was thinking about my gas and instead of getting to the gym quickly and ensuring that I didn’t run out of gas I actually prolonged my travel time luckily I made it to the gym and I chatted with all my teammates about the situation and how far I may be able to get on my gas tank our basketball game went well we played a current UBC basketball player and she was playing against all of us old ladies and it was really fun to see someone that is currently in University playing where I was quite a while ago we ended up winning the game by 15 points and it’s just a really nice social fun atmosphere where I get to see all of my friends and get a good workout in after the game I had to map where the nearest gas station was and a teammate followed me while I got to it I felt like I was about to fully run out and it was the closest I’ve ever been but luckily I made it to the station paid an astronomical amount for gas and filled up my tank and then drove home and called my sister to decide what was for dinner and we made omelets with lots of cheese I had a nice delicious bubbly water and then we watched our favorite reality TV show after that I went to bed for much-needed I woke up the next day I’m super sore because I’m now not as young as I used to be and my knees always get a bit sore after playing overall not a bad Thursday night

The story above has not been altered in any way after the speech-to-text process (using https://speechnotes.co/). Grammatical and spelling mistakes are all included as originally seen.

Reflection

For this exercise I found myself speaking differently than I normally would if I was telling this to a friend. I found it difficult to just come up with a story on the spot which is why my story is so boring and seemingly about nothing. If I had time to script the story, it would make more sense and flow much better. What is “wrong” with the text is the punctuation. I spoke with pauses however the written text does not account for this making it an entire run on sentence. I consider these mistakes because without the punctuation it impacts the story and how I intended to share it with the listener. This could change the meaning or message that I was conveying. I also notice with other voice to text applications that often words are autocorrected to choose words that are proper English words but which make little sense in the sentence. If I had scripted the story it would have been much more logical with less repetition and more polished because I could revise it as I went. This made it clear how much oral storytelling differs from written storytelling. Oral first of all does not require the listener to be literate. The story can also be adjusted to suit the specific audience so there is the ability to make it more personal or interesting based on who is listening. This is not the case for written stories however the benefit to written is that they include more description and detail to make it more interesting to read. “Writing is generally done more deliberately than speaking, so finished written pieces are much more carefully crafted than a typical spoken sentence” (Gnanadesikan, 2011). Reading what I was saying I really noticed I almost gave no description like I would through writing. The largest difference to written and oral storytelling is that written can be read verbatim rather than from memory. As Walter Ong (2002) discusses, reciting something of great length verbatim is impossible for the human brain. So, although it could be memorized and recited verbatim, by writing it down it ensures each reader would get the exact same information no matter how many times my uninteresting and monotonous story was read.

References:

Gnanadesikan, A.E. (2011). The first IT revolution. In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet (pp. 1-12). John Wiley & Sons. 

Ong, W.J. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the wordLinks to an external site.. Routledge. (Original work published 1982).