This page gathers six links to my classmates’ webspaces that resonated with me throughout ETEC 540. Each post reflects how our different perspectives, tools, and experiences intertwine through the shared exploration of text, technology, and literacy. I’ve included a short summary of each linked post, along with a reflection on how it connects, or contrasts,with my own work.
1. Emoji Story – by Adrienne
https://blogs.ubc.ca/akraft/2025/10/12/an-emoji-story/
Summary: When I first looked at their emoji sequence, I couldn’t resist trying to solve it myself . The title was quite simple and because I had seen the show, the plot was fun to decode. Squid Game is quite the show! I realized how effectively they’d conveyed the storyline using only symbols: the recruitment game, the island, the mass of players, and the final survivor. It reminded me how much decoding and inference are involved in visual literacy. We are interpreting meaning from limited cues, just as we do when reading or analyzing texts.
In this post, my colleague reflects on their experience recreating a TV show plot entirely through emojis. They describe the challenge of compressing a complex, visual narrative into simplified digital symbols while still trying to convey emotion, tone, and recognizable details. Drawing from Bolter’s (2001) ideas about visual representation, they compare the act of emoji storytelling to the imaginative process of reading where audiences mentally fill in gaps to construct meaning.
Reflection: I connected strongly with this post because I had a similar struggle in my own emoji assignment. Like my colleague, I found that the exercise exposed both the limitations and the potential of visual literacy. Their insight about “filling in the gaps” resonated with how I thought about audience interpretation, that is, how readers or viewers bring their own cultural understanding to decode meaning.
Reference:
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
2. What’s in Your Bag? – Dennis Steller
https://blogs.ubc.ca/dsteller/etec-540-task-1-whats-in-your-bag/
Summary:
In this post, Dennis Steller reflects on the everyday artifacts that fill his work bag as a nursing faculty member and emergency practitioner. His description moves beyond a simple inventory and becomes a layered reflection on how technology, institutional literacy, and personal life intersect. From the laptop and stethoscope to his BCIT ID and gym card, each item represents a distinct “text” that connects to different facets of his professional and personal identity. His commentary on how communication technologies like laptops and smartphones shape his interactions, making them “less spontaneous and more predetermined”, was particularly insightful.
Reflection:
I was drawn to Dennis’s post because it bridges professional, digital, and human literacies in a very tangible way. As a teacher myself, I related to how everyday tools such as laptops, markers, and IDs become extensions of our professional identity and communication practices. His idea that these objects “manifest the current flow of my life” resonated deeply; it reminded me how the tools we carry are not just functional but reflective of our priorities, pressures, and roles.
I also appreciated his reflection on the change over time…how ten to fifteen years ago, the contents of his bag (and the technologies we rely on) would have been drastically different. It made me think about how my own teaching tools have evolved, from physical books and binders to cloud drives, styluses, and digital gradebooks. Like Dennis, I sometimes feel nostalgic for the slower, more tactile forms of literacy, even while I depend on the convenience of digital ones.
3. Voice-to-Text Task – by Jonathon Dueck
https://blogs.ubc.ca/jduecketec540/task-3/
Summary:
In this post, Jonathon shared an unscripted voice-to-text story recounting a softball game and analyzed how the transcription deviated from written English conventions. They noted issues like missing punctuation, misheard words, and dropped grammar, which made the text difficult to read but also revealed the natural rhythm and tone of spoken storytelling. Their reflection clearly showed the contrast between oral and written language where the first being spontaneous and performance-based, and the second more structured and precise.
Reflection:
I related to this post because I also noticed how voice-to-text tools can reveal just how fluid and imperfect spoken language really is. In my own reflection, I mentioned how mumbling, pauses, and tone can throw off the transcription entirely, and how punctuation makes a huge difference in readability. My colleague’s analysis captured that same realization but from a more technical angle, focusing on the structure and “errors” that actually highlight how humans speak naturally.
I appreciated how their example showed that these so-called mistakes are not failures of communication but reminders that context and tone carry meaning in ways text can’t always replicate. Their approach reminded me how oral storytelling has its own authenticity which is sometimes messy, but genuine and expressive in a way typing rarely is.
4. Golden Record and Palladio by Kyle Hunter
https://blogs.ubc.ca/contrabot/2025/11/02/my-golden-record-community/
Summary:
In this post, Kyle reflects on the process of exploring our class’s Golden Record selections using Palladio, a network visualization tool that maps connections based on shared musical choices. They describe their experience navigating the dataset, noting that their actual song selections differed slightly from what appeared in the data. This is a small but meaningful error that raised larger questions about accuracy, representation, and control in digital systems. They provide thoughtful commentary on the aesthetics and limitations of data visualization, recognizing how easily one can become captivated by the “bells and whistles” of interactive graphs while losing sight of what the data actually represents.
Reflection:
I connected with this post because I had a very similar experience while using Palladio. Like my colleague, I was fascinated by how the visualization made our class’s musical preferences visible, yet I couldn’t help but question how much meaning those digital groupings really carried. Their point about being grouped into a “community” without understanding why resonated with me. I also noticed how little context the visual data provided about the human choices behind the connections.
His reflection reminded me of Cathy O’Neil’s (2017) argument in Weapons of Math Destruction about the hidden biases and power structures embedded in algorithmic systems. Even when the data seems harmless, like our musical preferences, it still raises questions about representation and agency. I appreciated how this post grounded those abstract ideas in a very human response: curiosity, skepticism, and the desire to be seen accurately.
Reference:
O’Neil, C. (2017, April 6). Justice in the age of big data. TED Ideas. https://ideas.ted.com/justice-in-the-age-of-big-data/
5. Speculative Futures by Julia MacIsaac
https://blogs.ubc.ca/macisaacj10/2025/11/18/task-12-speculative-futures/
Summary
I chose to link to this colleague’s “Box in the Future” scenario because it resonated with my own speculative narrative about a cheerful curriculum in a post-collapse world. While both of our futures imagine society after a major breakdown, the tone and focus of our stories differ in meaningful ways.
Their piece presents a world where progress has continued but at a cost. Nature is gone, replaced by artificial environments and synthetic luxury. The discovery of the box filled with relics from the natural world becomes a symbol of nostalgia and loss. The reflection emphasizes how efficiency and optimization have hollowed out meaning, leaving behind a culture that consumes even its memories.
Reflection and Connection
In contrast, my own scenario explores what happens when society rebuilds through collaboration, curiosity, and joy. In my world, AI becomes a humble partner, helping people rediscover creativity and connection rather than replacing them. Reading my colleague’s reflection helped me see the other side of that coin. It reminded me that technological progress without empathy or purpose can easily lead to decay instead of renewal.
I also connected their story to moments in my own classroom where technology sometimes overshadows human interaction. Their version of decadence reflects the same imbalance I try to avoid in my teaching practice. My narrative offered an optimistic response, imagining how AI could support community learning rather than isolate people.
Both stories ask the same essential question: what kind of progress do we actually want? While The Box in the Future warns about losing authenticity in the pursuit of innovation, my “Cheerful Curriculum” imagines how education could nurture resilience and joy instead. Together, they create a conversation about how we can shape technology and learning to serve humanity rather than consume it.
6. Attention Economy by Kelly
https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540kbrett/2025/11/04/attention-economy/
Summary:
In this post, the Kelly reflects on the intentionally frustrating website User Inyerface and how it exposes the manipulative design choices embedded in many digital platforms. They describe the overwhelming cognitive load, deceptive interface patterns, and psychological tricks that force users into reacting instead of thinking. Their reflection connects these design tactics to the broader concepts of the “attention economy,” referencing Harris (2017) and Tufekci (2017) to argue that our time and attention have become targeted commodities.
Why I’m linking this:
I connected strongly with this post because it mirrors something I’ve been struggling with throughout this course: how easily digital tools can fragment our focus—especially when juggling teaching, grad school, and parenting. When I did the User Inyerface activity, I had the exact same panic-clicking reaction. I wasn’t reading anymore…I was just trying to escape the screen.
This ties directly into my own work on the attention-tracking assignment, where I recorded moments of distraction and how quickly technology can push me into “mindless mode.” Their observation about needing to “ignore the noise” parallels what I noticed during that 12-hour attention log…my brain gravitates toward whatever is loudest or most immediate…not necessarily what matters.
I also appreciated their point about how persuasive design creates a feedback loop that limits reflection. In my teaching practice, I see this with kids constantly tapping, sliding, and clicking before reading instructions. It reminds me that part of digital literacy now, especially for young learners, is teaching how to slow down, not just teaching the tool.
This colleague’s post reframed the issue for me: it’s not just distraction, but deliberate architecture shaping our behaviour. That’s an important connection to the course themes, and it made me rethink how I design digital tasks for my own students.
Reference
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: Design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT Press.
AI Statement:
Some sections of this page were developed with the assistance of AI tools (ChatGPT, 2025) for writing support, editing, and formatting. All reflections and interpretations are my own.