Task #12 – Speculative Futures

I chose Tanya’s task 12 as we both went for more of a visual representation than just a written narrative. Her dystopian video is actually quite realistic, not an extreme. My approach was more of an extreme in regards to the negative side of technology in the future. I was also very impressed with the video animation in general. This representation is probably quite likely, there is actually an ad for Alexa that is similar in that ‘she’ starts your day for you and gives you the highlights. Also with COVID there is a bit of a taste of modified schooling which can be seen in the video. Once again I really liked the comic that she created for her utopian narrative. This narrative or something like it I hope will actually happen in the future. When you think about it the ratio of 1 teacher to ~30 students is not ideal and because our learners all have different needs it would be incredibly beneficial for such personalized learning. 

Tanya’s blog has more of a traditional WordPress style to it. The top taskbar makes it easy to navigate with the drop-down menus that allows you to quickly choose what specific post you would like to see. The header photo looks like it may be a personal photo and I would guess that she is from BC as well.

Task 7: Mode-bending

I chose Connie’s mode bending task because we both did a remix of 90s/00s songs. I will admit I had to search for her original post, introducing herself to know who’s blog it was, after saving the link but not noting who’s it was. We both stated in our reflection that we were stumped to start so I imagine this was a common starting point for most. It is interesting how in general most people are more comfortable with visual than they are with audio, I know for myself I do not like hearing my own voice playback over a recording, even my voicemail recording. We both created purely audio interpretations but also included a written transcript. She made an interesting point that “while visuals are appealing, audio provides communication advantages that are impossible to set aside.” Often there can be miscommunications when we are reading written word as in our mind we may not read it as intended. With audio, there are more cues such as tone and pace and it is much easier to interpret meaning or intention.

Connie chose the same format for her blog as I did, including the same accent colour. I had a bit of a hard time navigating it as I found I couldn’t scroll through the posts they were all separate. This made me curious about my own as I typically viewed it as an editor, not as a visitor. I personally like it when there is a taskbar that separates the types of posts. Connie opted out of having the photo or logo in the top corner where I have my personal logo I had previously created.

Task 6: An Emoji Story (Song)

I was drawn to Eduardo’s emoji task because it was a song. I felt like most people chose either a song or movie so I liked that he had done something different. I am admittedly pretty terrible at song titles and the names of the artist but ironically the title is how I figured out what the song was. Based on my guess of blackbird I actually googled the lyrics to cross-reference if I was correct. I used the lyrics to compare the emojis and he did a great job. I made the statement that emojis in many ways are not language-based but we may interpret them differently. Eduardo similarly comments that they can be biased stating “an individual from another culture or from another time might not be able to derive meaning from the symbols I’ve selected to represent ideas, the world, and experiences.”

Eduardo’s blog was created using the UBC blogs however he didn’t have a taskbar so I found it quite hard to navigate his site. At the top, there was a link to a sample page which I assume was a part of the initial template. The only way to find his posts was through his homepage. He kept his site fairly monochromatic with classic fonts. His header displayed written text which I assume he chose based on the more traditional sense of text in this course.

Voice to Text Task

Pamela found this task somewhat stressful like I did. We both found it difficult to tell our story live without practicing or fully knowing how it would go. This tells me she might have a similar personality to me in that we like to have control of things. Because of this, we had the same approach in that we tried not to look at what was being written as we spoke as we knew we would get thrown off by the mistakes. One thing that Pamela did that I thought was interesting was that she added her “story” to Grammarly to see what it had to say. Surprisingly it determined there were no errors which I guess goes to show that technology doesn’t always know best. In terms of context, it is much easier for a person to catch certain things even if they may be grammatically correct. I was curious about mine so I did the same. It had 10 suggestions for me and gave me a score of 76.

I am realizing that this is the third link I have written and so far they are all 3/3 with this same template for their blog. Pamela has chosen a background however that I am not 100% sure what it is, a ski lift perhaps? She has created a drop-down menu to categorize her different posts. The title of her site is PJ MacGregor – which makes me wonder what does the J stand for?

Task 4: Potato Printing

I chose Vera’s potato printing task as I was initially drawn in as she had also done a timelapse video. While my timelapse was shot from above to just focus on the process she included herself in the video which helped to give the whole picture of the experience. I think this shows that we could be of similar age that we are familiar with time-lapses as well as thought to make one for this task. Vera mentions that she also came to the realization that the letters needed to be backwards. Her letters were much narrower than mine and she used individual potatoes for each letter whereas I created my word using only one potato. The order of the potatoes mattered more initially for me as I wouldn’t be able to change them after the fact whereas she could isolate the potatoes individually.

Vera has created her website using the UBC blogs WordPress platform. She has headings on the top of the page for the different categories. Her tabs had landing pages which has links to each post instead of a drop-down menu. She named her site “ideasworthsharing” instead of just the course name. The homepage has boxes to display previews of her various posts and for some reason, her emoji post has a pinned symbol on it. Her blog has a mellow vibe with the wheat field background.

Task #1 What’s In Your Bag?

Mandy similarly utilizes the ubc blogs wordpress platform for her blog. The task bar on the top of her blog made it very easy to navigate her different posts as well as the feed on her homepage that displayed previews of each of her posts. The background of her blog displays a photo of mountains which I am not sure if it was a stock photo or one that she has taken. I read that she is from the west coast so it is very likely that it is a personal photo as a fellow BC resident I can recognize similar landscapes.

Mandy uses bitmojis to customize many of her posts. I found that our bitmojis look quite similar and it is interesting how despite looking fairly different in person that our digital avatars can be less unique. She also customized many of her photos with text and arrows which in many ways I found to show her sense of humor. 

I was initially drawn to Mandy’s task 1 because similarly to my “bag” it also reflected that she is a Mom. I found the labels on the photo to be more helpful than just listing the contents like I had done. Her bag had more of a 50/50 mix of her items to her kids items whereas mine was a little more baby focused. This could also be indicative of the ages of our kids. She touches on her use of bitmojis in this post as a way to express her personality and convey emotion. She mentions being from a home where another language is spoken and makes me curious what language this might be. Looking at her post it reminds me how our bag can give some insights into the lives or personalities of others but it can’t provide the full picture.