My previous linking assignment, I chose to focus on a colleagues blog that had a completely different perspective and way of interpreting data than myself. For this link, I chose to focus on Amy Stiff’s Attention Economy Post because her perspective and interpretation of the website was similar to mine. We both seem to have experienced similar difficulties and annoyances when navigating the website and had similar reflections. Amy was able to navigate the website much faster than I was able to so I was curious about how she was able to figure it out more seamlessly.

I found it very intriguing that both Amy and I noted in our reflections regarding the ease in which scammers can take advantage of website user’s vulnerability as user’s expect a certain type of interface and can easily get confused when the algorithm is switched on them.

I like that Amy noted Brignull (2011) and how susceptible us adults are when it comes to the internet and to also think about student vulnerability. This was not something that I thought about in that way so I like that Amy pointed it out. Especially, when I think about the fact that I am a millennial and have grown up with the internet and these tools and resources and still find some features frustrating which means that students who are still learning these tools can also be challenged as well.

Amy also mentioned that teachers can use these types of interfaces to direct student attention which I thought about as well and I do wonder if students could complete the game Use Inyerface and this is something I am thinking about possibly trying with my grade 6/7 students.

References

Brignull, H. (2011). Dark patterns: Deception vs. honesty in UI design. A List Apart, 338.

I chose to reflect on Seime Adhémar’s Mode Bending Assignment mainly because Seime used a tool called Voyant Tools which I had never heard of before. The tool and the graph’s that were created were fascinating to me but also at times a bit confusing because this is a whole new world for me.

Seime did not have items similar to me in his bag and that was also intriguing to me because I take a lot of items to and from work but Sieme is focused on carrying his teaching tools.

As an English major and History minor, I rarely use graph’s to interpret or understand data. I am used to reading and absorbing information by taking notes. I will say that when I was looking at Seime’s mode bending task, I had to go to the original “What’s in My Bag” post in order to interpret what was being shown to me with the data. Seime teaches French so there were a lot of French related teaching tools in the bag.

In my mode bending post, I reflected on how The New London Group (1996) has emphasized that learning has become multi-modal and that “the process of shaping emergent meaning involves representation and recontextualization”(p. 75). With Seime’s interpretation of the mode bending assignment, I see how others and their ways of interpreting and looking at data can be very different from mine. I also have reflected on how I, as an educator, can try to create learning opportunities for my students that would allow them to showcase their interests even if it way be a realm that I am unfamiliar with.

References

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review 66 (1), 60-92.

Kristine’s emoji story featured a show that I watch weekly as a distraction and a guilty pleasure so I immediately knew what she was talking about when I saw her emoji title. Kristine chose an episode of the popular HGTV show, House Hunters International. The family in the show are tired of the cold winters in Canada and decide to embark on a move to the much warmer climate Mexico has to offer. For myself, I am very familiar with the plot of House Hunters. Families provide the audience with their wants and desires in a home, including budget, they are then shown three different homes and then make a decision that is right for them. The show then comes in a few weeks or months later for a quick update to see how the family has settled in. Due to being familiar with the plot, it was easier for me to understand what was going to happen in the story. Because Kristine used the specific country flag emoji’s I was also able to tell where the couple was from and which country they wanted to move to.

In Kristine’s reflection, she pointed out that there were extra details in the show; the family taking a trip to the zoo and going go carting but she left that out as to not take away from the main plot of the show and confuse her blog visitors. This reminded me of when Kress pointed out that, “in this new semiotic world, it is the readers who fashion their own knowledge, from information supplied by the makers of the site” (2005, p. 10). Those who are consuming the media, in this case, Kristine’s emoji story, are interpreting the story based on the literacies and prior knowledge they have. For myself, a watcher of House Hunters, I may have been able to still follow along if Kristine had chosen to add the trip to the zoo or the go carting pieces but other consumers may have become quite confused.

References

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

I was first intrigued by Nicole’s post for our text-to-speech task because she used the notes app on her phone to dictate her speech and I truthfully was unaware of this capability on my phone. I also found Nicole’s analysis of her phone’s inability to dictate very well gripping and comical.

Nicole remarks that as a perfectionist, she has mastered the use of punctuation and she was shocked to see that her phone’s voice-to-text technology did not pick up on this. As an English major myself, I too feel frustrated when I see lack of punctuation and grammar rules in Nicole’s voice-to-text piece. When reading about the Origins and Forms of Writing  by Schmandt-Besserat and Erard, I was shocked to learn that it wasn’t until the late 20th century that there was even an interest in perfecting writing systems and, “this interest led to the publication of encyclopedic works on writing systems. These were novel because they collected language, writing, and cultural experts and combined these with state-of-the-art advances in computer printing that allowed all the characters in numerous writing systems to be printed (2007, p.20).

Today, as scholarly students, and those who work in various areas of the education system, we are so used to seeing heavily edited, curated pieces of literature that sometimes we forget, or may be entirely unaware, that this has not been the case. The origins of communication was simply to do that, communicate. As society evolved and transformed, communication began to have a more complex set of rules and guidelines.

References

Schmandt-Besserat, D., & Erard, M. (2007). Origins and forms of writing. In C. Bazerman (Ed.), Handbook of research on writing: History, society, school, individual, text (pp. 7-26). Routledge.

I was drawn to Lubna’s interpretation of this assignment because she said some things in her post that resonated with how I also interpret writing manually, or by hand. On a side note, I also liked Lubna’s handwriting and find myself drawn to nice handwriting.

Things Lubna said that resonated with me:

• She uses only black ink to write (I do as well)
• She usually does two drafts of her writing (I find I do this as well, due to perfectionist tendencies)
• She finds writing to be a creative process (one of the reasons I resonated to her post is because I liked her printing)
• Digital writing is more convenient for mobility, access, and storage
• Writing with her physical hand helps her to connect to her thoughts better

The last statement that Lubna made resonated with me, the most because I find that writing physically has always worked with my memory better as well and it is something I made a conscious decision about incorporating into my daily life, especially when trying to remember information I need to. In undergrad, I would always opt to write notes by hand, rather than take out my laptop, which I always had in my bag anyways because I knew I would remember key details better if I wrote it out by hand. This act, helped me perform better in any quizzes, tests, and exams I had to take.

Lubna also mentioned that digital writing tools like spell checkers help with academic writing. This is something that I struggle with as an educator and is often why when working on writing pieces, I have my students complete a hand written rough copy before completing a typed digital copy. I find that there is no other way to accurately assess students authentic vocabulary or writing skills.

For my first linking assignment, I decided to focus on Chris’s ‘What’s In My Bag’ post. I chose to focus on Chris’s post because he varied from me in a few ways. Firstly, Chris is, male-presenting so I thought it would be intriguing to see if there are any differences between myself (someone who identifies as female) and Chris and what we would carry in our work bags. Chris also works in a post-secondary institution which I was intrigued by as I work in an elementary school. Chris’s job relies heavily on technology and supporting students with the use of it. Although my job does require aspects of technology, I am not dependant on it.

I noticed that Chris and I both take more than one form of hydration with us as well as keys for work. Where Chris and I differ is the amount of technology we carry to and from work. Chris mentioned in his post that he works in a hybrid environment, which means that sometimes he works from home and sometimes he travels to a physical space to work. For myself, all the technology that I need to take with me to home and work is my laptop. The other forms of technology (example: Apple TV, projector, portable speaker, iPads, wireless presenter, etc.) are items I can keep in my classroom and do not need to lug back and forth. Chris carries things like I do, a laptop, but additionally he carries, a wireless mouse, a flash drive, portable power pack, and wireless headphones because he needs to be prepared in his working environment.

Reading Chris’s post and learning about his working environment was helpful for me because it helped me to see that I do appreciate having a separation of my work environment and my home environment and not having to take a lot of items back and forth. Although, Chris may enjoy a hybrid working environment, for myself, the separation of these two spaces if helpful for me.