Connection #1

Classmate: Claire Ji – What’s in my bag

Upon reading Claire’s description of her bag’s contents, I was immediately struck by how her items and mine were simultaneously completely different and incredibly similar.

While we have not a single overlapping item, clearly we move about our days in consideration of similar needs. Claire notes that her items “show how I move through everyday life and how I try to stay prepared and adaptable (Ji, 2026), which reflects my own intentions with many of my items, especially those related to maintenance of type 1 diabetes.

Interestingly, Claire only has a single electronic item in her bag (Airpods), while I have zero. This was the initial connection that made me think more deeply into the connections between our bags. Technology is ubiquitous in our modern day, and I noticed immediately Claire’s almost complete lack of electronics as matching mine.

I was especially interested in Claire’s reflections on her literacies and identity. She says “These literacies are not always visible from the outside,” (2026), and this is a sentiment that I (and likely most of us) absolutely relate to. With regards to my growing number of autoimmune diseases, I’ve developed a number of invisible literacies that literally keep me alive, and that only become evident when I need them to be. Claire holds many roles, but says she is still forming an identity (2026); once again, she has succinctly articulated a connection between us as humans as well as classmates, and it’s fascinating that some simple items such as makeup or apple juice can be the catalyst for such profound human connections.

Regarding Claire’s authoring decisions within her blog page, a few things are immediately apparent. The first thing I notice is the enormity of her title:

While this is likely the result of the WordPress template she chose, that choice itself provides some insight into her thought process. Claire’s title is large, bold, and centralized. It demands attention as soon as the page is opened, and therefore works well to support efficient information processing; there is no question what this page is about. She also chose to omit a question mark from the title. Textually, this mirrors the assignment well; after all, the point of the text is to inform, not to inquire. That said, it also reduces the narrative quality of the text: “What’s in my bag?” would induce a sense mystery and intrigue in the reader, whereas “What’s in my bag” evokes a feeling that what will follow will be nothing more than a mundane list.

Stylistically, her template also sets the margins incredibly wide, which creates empty space that covers the left third and  right third of the page. This increases the amount of scrolling a reader must perform to get to the end and increases the frequency with which a reader must reorient their eye-line. This thought led me to syllablecount to check the stats; Claire’s text has 2706 characters spaced over 62 lines, averaging 43.64 characters per line. In comparison, my assignment 1 has 5534 characters over 70 lines, for an average of 79.05 characters per line. According to Bringhurst (1992) in The Elements of Typographic Style, acceptable line length should fall between 45 and 75 characters per line. Apparently, Claire’s lines are, on average, just barely shorter than ideal, while mine are likewise just barely longer than ideal. I found this a fascinating similarity that mirrors the link between our bags – once again, we are connected via our differences.

Connection #2

Classmate: Ellie Klintworth – Voice to Text

Ellie’s task 3 post connected to mine in a variety of ways. First, she chose to dictate a pleasant anecdote about traveling in Europe, as did I. Additionally, I ‘ve been to several Christmas markets in Europe, and her story brought back memories of my time there.

Ellie used Google docs to transcribe her anecdote, while I used Speechnotes. Though we used different programs, we had very similar experiences regarding the outputs. We both noted the lack of punctuation as the primary deviation between our texts and conventional written English, and we both consciously chose not to use the punctuation affordances of our respective programs. One small difference here was that Ellie says she “felt it would disrupt the flow of what I was saying if I kept having to insert my own punctuation” (Klintworth, 2026), whereas I made this choice due more to the assignment guidelines of telling the anecdote as to a friend.

As we both told travel stories, we likewise both noted the correct capitalizations of place names, though hers were cities (Munich, Nuremberg) while mine were countries (Croatia, Slovenia). Interestingly, we both also had related minor issues; Ellie noted that Strasbourg and Gengenbach were transcribed incorrectly, while in mine, the island of Pag was fully capitalized as PAG. As well, we both noted that random words were capitalized, though the mistakes in hers were all nouns, while mine included one verb and one adjective. It seems that both Google docs and Speechnotes have a tendency to capitalize nouns, which makes me wonder if it is due to the programs interpreting pauses in our speech as the end of complete sentences. Finally, we both noted issues with incorrect words being transcribed that sound similar to the correct word – she mentions that awe was transcribed as all, while Speechnotes interpreted my sea as seat.

Another connection between my post and Ellie’s was that we seemed to have the same issue in the telling of the story – that of rambling and losing track of the narrative. This is unsurprising, given that spoken narratives are less deliberate than written (Gnanadesikan, 2011). This shared aspect of our stories reminded me of a passage from Ong when he says, “When an often-told oral story is not actually being told, all that exists of it is the potential in certain human beings to tell it” (2002, p. 11). Reciting my story for this assignment was the first time I’d told it (or thought of it) in years, and while I will not speculate on how often Ellie has told hers, this passage made me consider how the potential of the story has faded with time. Conversely, this assignment has put an oral story into writing, and a narrative that would have disappeared eventually is now recorded on the internet. Thus, a long-held memory now has the potential to outlive those who experienced it. This is relevant to another quote from Ong: “Fortunately, literacy, though it consumes its own oral antecedents and, unless it is carefully monitored, even destroys their memory, is also infinitely adaptable.” (2002, p. 14). In having now recorded this story, will I remember it differently?

Ellie also mentions aspects of oral storytelling that resonated with my own experience – how humour, emotion, and meaning can be more clearly conveyed through physicality – namely gesture, tone, and facial expressions. Our stories then, especially considering the relative incoherence manifested by a train-of-thought process and lack of punctuation, exemplify a lack of contextual richness that would normally be present in an oral story (Haas, 2013). With this in mind, the stories we produced have neither the precision one expects in written text, nor the human vibrancy that comes with oral texts. Using a transcription software as a middleman between storyteller and audience, therefore, seems to result in a narrative product that lacks the foundational aspects that give either form their magic.

Connection #3

Classmate: Megan Frederick – Twine

I chose Megan’s Twine task because her experience connected to mine in a variety of ways.

Before beginning my Twine, I watched a few videos to orient myself with the program, and was surprised to see that user creations are not saved to the platform, but must be downloaded as HTML files. This is an uncommon functionality in today’s digital environment that made me worry about inadvertently deleting my work, and caused me to download my work a dozen times. Megan notes the same issue, saying “This caused me a great level of anxiety! What if I accidentally closed my screen? All my work would be deleted!” (Frederick, 2026). This affective response was common between us, resulting from our similar expectations of modern digital tools.

Following this note, we had the same goal for our blog posts, which was to embed the Twine, rather than simply provide a link to download the file. Megan and I both found this process frustrating. We both went to Github, a platform which neither of us had used previously. I had to first learn Github to use it to host my Twine, while Megan moved away from it and ended up using itch.io; ultimately, we both successfully embedded our Twines.

Megan’s Twine includes a number of non-textual elements, including images, audio and gifs that required some coding to incorporate. She says that she initially struggled with adding these elements, but turned to ChatGPT for help (Frederick, 2026). This was another connection between our processes that took us in slightly different paths. We both were interested in the code-based affordances of Twine, but while Megan used AI to generate code that would allow different modalities into her Twine, my focus was more on creating code that would alter text – creating a colour-changing countdown, a self-destruct, and emulating words being typed in real time.

Regarding Megan’s architectural decisions within her UBC Blog space, she embedded a screenshot of her Twine map, an affordance that I also utilized. I personally feel this was an important aspect of this assignment for two reasons. First, one requirement was to include at least 15 Twine pages, so it was important to show that this was done. But more importantly, it gives a perspective on the creator’s thought process in making connections within the story. We can see that Megan’s Twine has two main branches that reconnect near the story’s end, whereas mine splits into three branches, but finishes in the same way.

Finally, she created two pages for this assignment: one for the Twine and one for the reflection, with an embedded image acting as the link from reflection to story. I greatly appreciated the meta-ness of this decision, as it emulates the Twine itself. Upon landing in the reflection page, a user is now faced with a choice:

Path 1: Stay here and read the author’s thoughts about their creation!

Path 2: Click a link to be transported to a new space (or have the space come to you! (Bolter, 2001)) and experience the creation first!

This was a clever use of a simple affordance of WordPress, and one that I wish I had thought of. This decision about her use of digital space could have been slightly more evocative of Twine if her landing page had been empty except for the two choices, which would then lead to each of the two content pages.

References

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

Bringhurst, R. (1992). The Elements of Typographic Style. Hartley & Marks.

Frederick, M. (February 8, 2026). Exploring Computer-based writing through Twine! UBC Blogs. https://blogs.ubc.ca/meganfrederick/2026/02/08/exploring-computer-based-writing-through-twine/

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

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

Ji, C. (January 5, 2026). What’s in my bag. UBC Blogs. https://blogs.ubc.ca/clairej/2026/01/05/task1/

Klintworth, E. (January 21, 2026). Task 3: Voice to text. UBC Blogs. https://blogs.ubc.ca/ellieklintworth/2026/01/21/task-3-voice-to-text/

Ong, W.J. (2002). Chapter 1: The orality of language.  In Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (pp. 5-16). Routledge.