ETEC 540: Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing

Mixtape/Playlist by Anne E.

View Anne’s Original Task
View Anne’s Modebending Task

In her mixtape/playlist approach, Anne E. created a collection of songs and videos based on the mental associations she made between music and video and the contents of her bag. Each song includes an image from Spotify the artist’s album/song art and each video includes the embedded video link with static preview image. Both are accompanied by a brief explanation or quote from the piece being linked.

Production and Tools

Anne E. is a web designer, and her curation of songs and videos is neatly arranged in a visually appealing way on her blog. Although we both used audio, my audio is original content and hers is curated using hyperlinked visual images in the form of album/song art.

Literacies & Theories

Khan describes curation as the process in which a person “intrinsically links information to knowledge and meaning-making” and allows them to “add to a narrative around a topic” (Khan & Bhatt, 2019, p. 1).

In her own words, Anne explains how these playlists connect to who she is:

“Reflecting on this task, I would say the main affordances of this mode of communication are both experiential and cultural – you may not learn anything about the specific items I carry, how I use them, what my life is like, or what type of work I do, but you can learn something about where I sit culturally in our world from the songs I have chosen and how I like to connect emotionally with music.”

She also explains how it allowed her to demonstrate her own meaning-making:

I’ve been able to curate my own collection of information and link it together as I see fit, much how Bush (1945) envisioned with his Memex machine in 1945.

I connected immediately with the idea of curating a playlist and can remember the thrill of sitting by the boombox ready to record songs to make a mixtape in my youth. It’s something so many of us do in our non-academic lives yet translates immediately to several academic contexts. Many of us would not take the leap to use this format in our academic lives, but I’m glad Anne did.

References

Khan, S. & Bhatt, I. (2019). Curation. In R. Hobbs & P. Paul Mihailidis (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy. (pp. 1-9). John Wiley & Sons, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/9781118978238.ieml0047

Poetry by Manize N.

View Manize’s Original Task
View Manize’s Modebending Task

As an English major and literature lover, my affection and interest in poetry came late. As an angsty teenager, I railed against the genre because I had difficultly understanding the obscure meanings and messages in the words of long-gone poets, and let’s face it, I had no life experience to understand it. The difference came when I heard poetry – the rhythm and cadence – and it became lyrical. When spoken, poetry is lifted off the page and transformed into a transcendent and magical experience – like listening to the waves crashing at the seaside, birds chirping, or the symphony.

Hearing Manize’s poem, What’s in my bag, you ask? evoked that same kind of magic for me.

Production and Tools

As I was interested in everyone’s production tools and process, I reached out to Manize to ask for more details:

I recorded the video on my laptop using a program called Camtasia. I have version 9. It is a highly intuitive audio and video recording and editing tool. I used my regular iPhone earphones/microphone to record the audio. I was able to add the background music mp3 directly into Camtasia. I downloaded the .mp3 from a royalty-free platform called Purple Planet (https://www.purple-planet.com/).

Our process was similar in that we both recorded our own voices and incorporated other sounds while producing our audio files. I did change my voice with Adobe Audition to create a voice for my character, but Manize’s voice remains unchanged. We shared a short exchange about our reluctance to record our own voices – is there anyone who loves the sound of their own voice? – but it is Manize’s voice reading her poem that makes this production so evocative. Listening to her voice and words, my heart swelled with admiration and emotion, and I got goosebumps.

Literacies & Theories

Both Manize and I privileged more traditional literacies in our decisions to write poetry and narrative. But by making them multimodal, they become alive, which makes them more accessible and engaging for our audiences, as well as for ourselves.

Manize shared this reflection about her experience with this multimodal task:

This exercise was challenging, because it was difficult for me to grasp initially what was required exactly. However, as I progressed through the task, I was able to connect this to the example of “Transformed Practice” (NLG, 1996, pg. 83), in the sense that I was able to recreate the meaning or redesign this task of meaning in a different context. At the heart of learning is motivation. While doing this task, I realized that I was able to express myself better through a poem as opposed to taking a picture and writing about the items. Because I had the freedom to choose the way I wanted to learn, I was more motivated to learn. As an educator, I was able to connect this to the concept of “Situated Practice” (NLG, 1996, pg. 85), as it further reaffirmed my belief that a learner’s affective and sociocultural need must be accounted for and guided learning experiences must be created to enable the same.

I’m with her. When we were given the opportunity to produce multimodal texts, we had more agency and motivation than if our only option was to produce traditional texts. Multimodal production celebrates a range of literacies giving individuals the power to express their identities and share their experiences. This week, I encountered a Tweet by @GholdyM with a powerful message about honouring one’s literacies and subsequently, one’s identities:

As educators, we need to honour, respect, and champion all the different literacies our students possess – the traditional school literacies and the ones they have developed in their outside, daily lives – and the way that we can do that is by creating opportunities for students to use those literacies in the classroom. We need to bring meaning-making production and assessment into the 21st century by designing teacher and learning opportunities that inspire creativity, engagement, and new media (Kalantzis & Cope, 2010).

References

Kalantzis, M. & Cope, B. The Teacher as Designer: pedagogy in the new media age. E–Learning and Digital Media 7(3) https://doi.org/10.2304/elea.2010.7.3.200

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

Digital Games by Jennifer L.

View Jennifer’s Original Task
View Jennifer’s Modebending Task

Production and Tools

I was curious and unsure about how Jennifer approached producing this video because I’m not familiar with the Nintendo Switch and its capabilities. Did she record her screen with another device? Can you screenrecord on the Switch? So I asked her, and she responded:

I used the video capture option but the downside to that is it can be max 30 seconds long, so I took about 5 videos. You can transfer over images/videos via QR code on the switch so I sent it to my phone, then airdropped it to my computer (lmao seems so onerous in hindsight! but it was pretty easy and quick). I pieced it all together in iMovie, and then did the voice over using Voice Memo on iphone (no script, so I had to do a few takes), and airdropped that audio file, and imported it into iMovie. That’s about it! Oh, and the video ‘title card’ I whipped up using photopea.com

Jennifer created this demo by screenrecording within the Switch and bringing it into other content-authoring software to finish it off. Across everyone’s modebending task, I have been pleasantly surprised that everyone’s process and production tools have been different, and I let Jennifer know this:

In the Breakout of the Visual, Bolter discusses how technology  levels the playing field for novices who want to produce texts, and though he’s discussing digital publishing of print text, the ideas about the ease design and production are still valid across multimodal text productions:

  In the 20th century, digital technology in the form of desktop publishing and computer-controlled photocomposition refashioned the practice of printing, and in comparison with the earlier mechanical techniques, digital printing seems to foster heterogeneity in both form and content. One reason is that the computer opens the printing process to small groups and even individuals. Amateurs can create their own camera-ready copy and make selective use of or ignore altogether the stylistic practices of professional typographers. (2010, p. 49).

Jennifer says she “whipped up” the title card for her video using photopea.com, just as I used canva.com to create the images with text overlay on my linking assignment page as a workaround to not being able to figure out text hovering within WordPress.

Literacies & Theories

Jennifer’s experience playing Animal Crossing is valuable because the game is so popular it has become a social, cultural, and political phenomenan, and gives her a kind of gamer cred and capital I don’t possess because I’ve never played the game. Jennifer has access to another lifeworld and extension of her real-life identity through her Animal Crossing character. When she enters the virtual game world of Animal Crossing to curate her bag, Jennifer is limited by the objects in the game to some extent, as she cannot create her own objects from scratch. She overcomes this by assigning meaning to her chosen objects to represent other things. In the case of my selection of sound effects, I was also limited in what sounds were available to me in GarageBand however, theoretically I had the power and resources to create my own sounds from scratch, but found it easier to use existing sounds. Both Jennifer and I used a similar process of my assigning our own meaning to the sounds and objects we used. In doing so, we both overcame the material constraints of our content-authoring tools to make and disseminate meaning in our productions that convey our intended messages and meaning, as well as reveal our identities and life-worlds, which were the intended outcomes of the modebending task. (Kress, 2010, p. 185).

In her own words, Jennifer discusses how digital games are an important opportunity for students to experience multimodal texts and how the playing and production within them is valued literacy in her classroom:

“The increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity and the multiplicity of communications channels and media” require us to redefine what literacy means to us now (Group, 1996, p.63). Literacy then, is not just language but a social practice that encapsulates multimodal meaning-making. This can include involving the visual, audio, spatial, and behavioural. For students, creating videos or producing small pieces of media to represent understanding falls under this new definition of literacy. It makes sense. The way students have taken ownership over their media consumption and production necessitates that we as educators address this. Rather than asking students to just tell me about themselves in a letter, activities such as these also help with teaching students what literacy means and open up avenues for them to show understanding in future assignments.”

References

Bolter, J. D. (2010). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110

Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge.

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

Podcast by Deirdre D.

View Deirdre’s Original Task
View Deirdre’s Modebending Task

Though we approached our tasks using different genres, both of our productions are personal and telling of our identities, which Deirdre highlighted in her reflection, through commenting on her and my Task 1 posts, and in her own linking assignment back to my original and mode bending tasks.

My reaction to Deirdre’s Modebending:

Production and Tools

Deirdre created a podcast that was as engaging as it was authentic. A lot of digital productions are scripted and canned to some extent, but listening to Deirdre and her friend, I felt like I was there with them in the same room as an observer. 

Both of our productions involved recording audio and editing, but I assumed my work was more edited (inclusion of voice and sound effects, returning to re-record the date) than Deidre’s, and I was correct in my assumption. I contacted her via her blog for more info about her production tools and process:

I used Audacity on my microsoft surface pro to record my conversation (the conversation was facilitated with an iphone, placed near the computer, on speaker mode).

Deirdre didn’t need anything more than her devices and Audacity, which is a free program, to record a brilliant podcast, which speaks to the accessibility of the production format for folks who want to get into producing their own podcasts – fancy sound recording and equipment are not required.

Literacies & Theories

Deirdre’s podcast production about the items Moms carry in their Mom pocket emphasizes the collective culture and discourse of Moms, an important but undervalued subculture. Deirdre recognizes that the items in her Mom Pockets™ (if it’s not trademarked, get on it, Deirdre!) are “what The New London Group (1996) might describe as the representation of a shared cultural context” because are Dad Pockets even a thing? (One of our classmates did title his Task 1 post as, “What’s in the bag, dad?” – because he carries a photo of his 17-year-old son when he was 3 – awwww!!!)

I’m not a mother, but I think that motherhood is one of the most difficult, beautiful, and brave jobs on the planet, but unfortunately, also one of the least respected, as the value of women’s work is unpaid and otherwise undervalued – see Women’s Unpaid Labor is Worth $10,900,000,000,000. I am curious about the world of motherhood and was immediately pulled into Deirdre and her friend’s conversation about what it means to be a Mom. Mom Pockets™ may seem like a kind of silly and trivial topic, but it is worth the insightful and in-depth discussion Deirdre and her friend give it, as Mom Pockets™ represent the role of mothers and are a glowing example of their care and love for their children. Mom Pockets™ embrace children’s curiosity about the world and are an ultimate sign of love and affection.

If you are a podcast listener, you know there’s a podcast for everyone about everything. The New London Group highlights this about our new media environment:

For example, one of the paradoxes of less regulated, multi-channel media systems is that they undermine the concept of collective audience and common culture, instead promoting the opposite: an increasing range of accessible subcultural options and the growing divergence of specialist and subcultural discourses (1996, p. 14)

Deirdre’s voice as a Mom and authentic, engaging “conversational language and the personae and relationships of ordinary life” (New London Group, 1996, p. 16) would be embraced with open arms and celebrated by the podcast community.

References

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

ASMR by Judy T.

View Judy’s Original Task
View Judy’s Modebending Task*

*disclaimer – Judy’s redesigned task is no longer available for viewing at the link provided in her blog

Quite a few colleagues across both courses produced audio recordings of their What’s in your bag? items creating soundscapes for their lives and workplaces, but Judy T. took a particularly clever approach and recontextualized her original text by creating an ASMR video.

ASMR is a wildly popular trend and genre of videos you’ve either never heard of, watch/listen to avidly, or have explored using Incognito mode in your browser: seeking out the experience can be completely innocuous for the promise of it producing relaxing and euphoric sensations, or if you’re into it, a more erotic or arousing experience. You do you.

Full disclosure, I only listened to enough of Judy’s redesign to get an idea of what she produced, because hearing repetitive sounds triggers a fight-or-flight response within me as a person with (self-diagnosed) misophonia.

Production and Tools

Regarding Judy’s decision to remix two YouTube clips, I asked myself these questions from the New London Group (1996), “‘Why not that?’ as well as ‘Why this?’” After an unsuccessful attempt at recording her own sounds, Judy combined and remixed two YouTube videos to represent the items in her bag. Capturing clear and crisp audio requires not only the right sound recording equipment and silent space but knowledge and expertise in audio editing that goes beyond the novice. When putting together my own audio I didn’t even consider attempting to record my own sound effects because better ones were available to me within GarageBand.

I reached out to Judy to ask for some specifics about her editing and production process, and she shared this with me:

I downloaded YouTube videos from here: https://www.y2mate.com/en68

All you need to do is copy the YouTube link and plot it in.

Then I edit and compiled the videos together here: https://clideo.com/merge-video
You might need to play around with it to see how to merge. You will need to decide first what time frame of the videos you want to use.

Judy’s redesign work that remixes two YouTube videos is meta and a nod to how the trend was born and skyrocketed to popularity on YouTube.

In my own modebending of this task and reflection, I wrote about the concerns I share with the New London Group (1996), Dobson & Willinsky (2009), and many others, about the availability of more sophisticated and pricey content-authoring tools like Adobe Audition and Garageband to teachers and students, but Judy created her production with free web-based tools accessible to all.

Literacies & Theories

Though others took a similar approach using recorded sounds to represent the items in their bags, Judy’s unconventional choice to redesign the original task by recontextualizing her bag’s contents using ASMR was unique and intriguing because, in my novice understanding of the term, it hybridizes her original production, as defined in New London Group (1996) by Fairclough (1992), and sets it into a distinct and unique cultural phenomenon:

The term hybridity highlights the mechanisms of creativity and of culture-as-process as particularly salient in contemporary society. People create and innovate by hybridising, that is by articulating in new ways, established practices and conventions within and between different modes of meaning.

ASMR is an intriguing, if not somewhat strange cultural phenomenon, and one that continues to grow as more and more videos are produced. There is a massive incentive to produce ASMR videos because of YouTube monetization, and most producers of ASMR videos are women, and most would be considered classically beautiful. There’s a whole lot to unpack when discussing ASMR, nonetheless, I am impressed by Judy’s remediation of the task in this format. If you’d like to read more about it, Jamie Lauren Keiles’ fantastic piece in the New York Times introduces ASMR in a serious, intelligent manner and discusses ASMR’s rise in popularity and some of the issues it faces in widespread social acceptance. 

References

Dobson, T., & Willinsky, J. (2009). Digital Literacy. In D. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, 286-312. Cambridge University Press.

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

Video Letter by Jasmine P.

View Jasmine’s Original Task
View Jasmine’s Modebending Task

Affected by how the pandemic has reshaped our lives this past year, Jasmine completely reenvisions her original task by delivering a heartfelt video of a letter to COVID. By situating her production so heavily in the context of our global pandemic and anthromorphosizing the virus, she harnesses the power of our collective feelings and lived experiences to speak directly to the vicious, unsentient, and unempathetic parasite that has caused all of us so much stress, anxiety, and pain, creating an emotionally engaging, important piece of work.

I appreciate that Jasmine recognizes that even in a difficult time, lessons can be learned to embrace living in a more fulfilling way. She shares an inspiring message when she says,

You’ve definitely taught me that I need to live a little more in the moment and appreciate the simple joys in life, and I know I will use these lessons moving forward.

Production and Tools

Curious about how everyone’s content-authoring tools and process, I asked Jasmine for more details:

I used my laptop mic (I wish I had a Yeti mic, they’re great) and Audacity to record the audio. I then put it together in Camtasia. The visuals were all from Pixabay and the music was from Bensound (all royalty-free). I then uploaded it to YouTube as an unlisted video.

Jasmine’s video production includes soft background music that evokes sentimentality, and videos with imagery that represent the slow, painful passage of time in a waiting period, as well as the emptiness, loneliness, and isolation during the pandemic in contrast to what life was like before with crowds of people in outdoor and indoor public spaces.

In her own words, she says,

“The end product and incorporation of the letter I wrote, the narration, music and video clips turned what was a static image into something meaningful for me. It is probably the first time that I have actually reflected this deeply on the changes in our lives that we’ve experienced over the last year. Putting it together did stir some emotion”

You can hear the emotion in her voice, especially as she nears the end of her letter.

Jasmine’s production was multimodal and used visuals and audio to convey mood and meaning, and my production was 100% audio with no visuals. Like music and images, sound effects can create a mood and convey meaning, and though our productions were different, I think the impact of our end result is the same. In creating our video and audio files, similar techniques were used to edit and time our visuals and sound effects in order to affect mood or create meaning. One could choose to listen to a video much in the same way they listen to a pure audio file and create their own visuals and meaning-making, or choose to watch the video for more direct access to the author’s meaning-making.

Literacies & Theories

In the New London Group’s discussion of the role of design in multiliteracies and meaning-making, design and redesign processes are described as powerful tools for the transformation of meaning-making for both the designer and learner. Jasmine and I both privilege this pedagogical stance that champions modebending as a transformative learning process. Through producing her video letter, Jasmine reflects deeply on how much life has changed during the pandemic, and this process of reflection during this redesign creates a new layer of meaning for her that the first task did not create.

The following from the New London Group spoke to Jasmine and I:

Through these processes of Design, moreover, meaning-makers remake themselves. They reconstruct and renegotiate their identities (1996).

By recontextualizing her original design and situating it in the context of the pandemic, she has revealed much more about herself, how she sees the world, and importantly, what she’s learned to share a powerful message of hope that brightens this darkness.

References

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