Month: August 2022

The challenge

Redesign Task 1 by changing the mode in which it is presented and adding an audio component.

My inspiration

Reflecting on Task 1, there was a question that I neglected to address: what would this same bag have looked like, say, 15 or 25 years ago? Or how about 40 years ago?! I wanted to explore this question while exploring ways in which my childhood shaped how I communicate today.

My rationale

Being a 1980s baby, I can confirm that a lot has changed since then. Technology and media have particularly made massive shifts over the last 4 decades. Technology has also allowed us to look backwards, as YouTube and the internet are now full of 1980s content that was not accessible ‘on demand’ at that time.

The New London Group (1996) acknowledges that our social environments, including media, shape our realities and design our futures. In an attempt to completely redesign the meaning of this assignment, I have put together a collection of videos and links, prompted by the items in my bag, to provide a view into the 1980s and my experiences as a child. This juxtaposition also reminds me that my childhood experiences and media exposure have stayed with me well into adulthood, for better or for worse. As a result, these ‘snapshots’ looking backward not only contribute to my current reality and the design of my own future but also shape my understanding of them.

Click, listen, watch, read, and enjoy travelling back in time!

(Tip: make the Genially full screen by clicking the two opposing arrows in the bottom right corner. There will be a button in the same spot to shrink it back down when you’re done.)

 

This work is one of my favourite movies and holds a special place in my heart, as my partner and I bonded over this film and its lead character during our ‘courting’ stage. And yes, it was also selected because I could imagine how to represent it in emojis more easily than many other options I had swirling in my mind. In creating this task, I started with the title; to me, it was the most logical order of things and confirmed in my mind that my selected work could be translated. ‘Translation’ best describes my process as I relied on a combination of words and ideas to dictate which emojis to use. I found https://emojikeyboard.io and https://emojipedia.org/ to be rather limiting compared to what I was used to using, so I ended up writing it as a WhatsApp message on my phone, opening WhatsApp up on my desktop and taking a screenshot of the message which I then saved as an image.

I initially found this task particularly challenging because I consider my emoji use as low. I use emojis, but I prefer text-based messages with icons used to guide emotion, context, or intention (Bolter, 2001). However, I am starting to use certain icons as substitutes for text:  for “I agree with you” and for “OK,” “good,” or “glad to hear.” Perhaps this gravitation toward multimodal communication is an effort to make my messages more appealing or to provide a more immediate response to my reader (Bolter). I also agree with Kress (2005) that this multimodal approach of interspersing icons within text – or moving entirely to icon-based messages – is indeed beyond the mere “ability to read and write” (as cited in the course notes) and transcends language to some degree. I still feel I need to make a conscious effort to learn how to ‘speak’ with emojis, and likely by the time I feel ‘fluent’ in emoji language the meanings of some icons will have changed. This made me relate to Bolter’s (2001) comment about older technologies remediating newer ones; perhaps the continued intertwining of images and text will eventually remediate my own communication style, through my own apprehension and enthusiasm .

All that said, can you guess which movie this is?

References

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Chapter 4: The breakout of the visual. In Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410600110

Kress, G. (2005). Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 22 (1), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2004.12.004

This was my first experience creating something in Twine, and it was fun! My biggest challenges were deciding on a topic (I landed on adult learning concepts) and then trying to differentiate between creating a ‘story’ versus a ‘game.’ I’m still not sure I created anything that sits strongly in one category or the other. I do know that, much like the potato print exercise, I had an inner desire to apply this learning to create something that I felt could have multiple use cases, given the time and energy investment. (If that connection doesn’t make sense now, have a click through the Twine game below and it should become clear.)

I like how Twine creates a visual path to show how passages are connected, but then “flattens and obscures the structure” (Bolter, 2001, p.31) to create an interactive web-based experience. I took a very straightforward path; it doesn’t involve fancy ‘hooks,’ if-statements, or macros. However, these options also demonstrate the malleability of electronic spaces that Bolter (2001) refers to. Certainly, I took advantage of this with several rapid additions/deletions, copy-paste functions, quick revisions, and testing.

Twine also made sense to me, the way my mind seems to work. When I’m speaking, both professionally and casually, I try to draw connections between concepts, guiding the listener through the story with (hopefully) the right amount of detail. In writing, I often refer to ideas being connected by ‘threads.’ Twine shows these connections (or associations, as Bolter (2001) might say) between passages with literal lines that ultimately define the thought network and show the overarching story path. It felt very similar to creating a concept map, just in story/game format and with a hypertext result. It does warrant pause, though, if my ‘natural’ way of thinking has been heavily influenced by having access to computers for the majority of my life. Growing up during a time when computers (those ‘idea processors’) went from high-tech wonders that few families had to living in (almost) everyone’s pocket, certainly makes me wonder how much technology contributes to my own “manipulation of thought” (Heim, 1987).

Ultimately, my ‘approach’ to this assignment was just to jump in and try it. I did notice, though, that my thoughts kept referring back to two experiences during this formation. The first was leveraging my past (albeit limited) experiences with web design and web editing. The second hailed from my childhood, where I used to relish in choose-your-own-adventure books, and appreciated how, no matter what option you chose, it still took you to the end. To me, this experience of combining ‘analog’ and ‘digital’ experiences aligns with Bolter’s (2001) view that technology may not ‘end’ things but rather iterate, reconceptualize, and remediate much of what we know and appreciate about various forms of communication.

ETEC540-Task5-SantoMelissa – Twine – zipped

References

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Chapter 3: Hypertext and the remediation of print. In Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (pp. 27-46). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410600110

Butcher, L. (2021, March 1). The 4 principles of adult learning and how to apply them to your employee training. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-principles-adult-learning-how-apply-them-your-employee-butcher/

Heim (1987), as cited by the course website in module 5.3.

General Observations

I found it very interesting that my default approach to this assignment was with a creative lens – similar to cardmaking that I’ve done in the past – rather than an academic one. When deciding which word to produce, chose something that could be reused; I anticipated time investment and artistic quality and wanted to leverage the effort. As a result, I selected the word ‘Thanks.’

Was there something particularly challenging in the process?

I wouldn’t say that anything was particularly challenging about this experience, but there were a few hiccups along the way. Despite Cooke’s (2012) video that showed the stamps backwards and upside-down, I ended up making the first three potato stamps with the letters facing forward. The capital ‘T’ was forgiving but the ‘h’ and the ‘a’ stamps had to be redone. Also, the stamps – and the letters they produced – were not perfect; it took me a bit to get over this.

I also considered aspects like potato selection to font style, tried to have all the stamps match in terms of line thickness, and ultimately accepted that hand-carved stamps had more irregularities than anything produced through machine manufacturing.

How much time did it take for you to create the stamps?

I lose track of time while making the potato stamps; my mind wandered while creating them, which I suspect is similar to what Paul Collier described of his own experiences in Cooke’s (2012) video. I estimate that it took me about 45 minutes to an hour to make all six stamps, but I really wasn’t tracking the time as I found it relaxing and enjoyable to be working on something creative and tangible.

Have you noticed anything particular about the letters that you have chosen to reproduce?

Instead of using new potatoes to resolve my initial mistake of carving the letters the wrong way, I cut off the first attempt and carved the second attempt on the same potato half. This meant that the second attempt still included some deeper cuts from the first attempt and, as a result, some of the letters did not print clearly or printed the ink with texture rather than a solid print. Also, most stamps had a natural curve to them and required a second (or third) stamping attempt to fully stamp the letter as anticipated. Even still, the ‘a’ was missing a chunk, however, since it was still clearly an ‘a’ I used it anyway. I also misjudged the length of the word with the first attempt and found that the way the ‘k’ and ‘s’ landed on the page looked awkward, thus prompting the second stamping attempt.

Considering the time and effort that it took you to create a 5-letter word, how do you feel about the mechanization of writing?

The mechanization of writing has allowed for mass production and incredible flexibility. The amount of text I could have typed in 45 minutes far surpasses what I could have printed with potatoes or even a letterpress. The efficiency of fixing errors and reproducing copies of text using technology far exceeds that of hand writing or printing with stamps. Since text is primarily produced mechanically nowadays, handwritten or hand-stamped items can be seen as more valuable or personal, with increased emotion. For many, a handwritten card is of higher value than a typed email, and a handmade card is often considered more beautiful than a store-bought one. The idea that someone would purposely choose the less-efficient path to create text or a piece of writing brings about a sentimental feeling, akin to homemade cookies versus store-bought ones.

Attempt 1 (left) and attempt 2 (right). 

Reference

Cooke, D. (2012, January 26). Upside down, left to right: A letterpress film [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6RqWe1bFpM