Month: October 2021

In revisiting our first task from this course, I have been reflecting upon our public and private lives and our use of social media.  So much of what we choose to put out there and what creates our digital footprints and personas is a privately curated assortment of images, thoughts, sounds and feelings.  I liken this selection process to choosing one’s wardrobe.  On Ellie Brown’s website, as I look back to our first task, this is the reason that she included photos of the people whose bag contents were displayed.   In examining the literal baggage that people carry around with them, we are invited into some of the more private aspects of their lives.

Some people will create “ghost” accounts on social media so that they can be anonymous voyeurs of the actions and thoughts of others.  Or, like me, they may be very careful in their selections of what they feel is appropriate to put out to the world.  Perhaps what I DON’T post is much more indicative of my true self, and obviously more private, and may be as interesting of a journey as Camille Thoman and Ellie Brown’s BAG project was.

For this week’s task, I am looking to recontextualize, to, “…shap[e] emergent meaning” (p. 75, The New London Group), the images on my cell phone.  I am hoping to create a video that shows my self-editing process and is akin to the activity of baring my private baggage, completed six weeks ago.

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My video is too large to upload here.  I have posted it to YouTube.

I quite like this new app and am glad that I have added it to my digital tech tool box.  I think taking a viewer on a trip through all of the apps on my phone might be like emptying my digital pockets, baring my private stuff and perhaps illustrate how much time I waste on other, less productive, tools!

Maybe an idea for another task.

 

Ellie Brown’s website

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

 

Wow!  This was a tricky task. – Thank you for a thought provoking week!

Emoji Book Summary (this is a link to a PDF)

“The main point is that the relationship between word and image is becoming unstable” (Bolter, p.49).

Bolter discusses at length how the relationship between words and images is tenuous and constantly shifting.  I was quite inclined to agree with him about the power of the visual image, being a visual artist myself, but having worked on this week’s tasks for hours and finding no sense of success has really changed my thinking.

While films have much power and cultural importance (p. 57, Bolter), I would argue that images without language haven’t the same weight and that pictures and words will be interdependent for years to come.  Emoji’s have a place in sending messages and adding tone, but I was unable to string together any real sentences or detailed descriptions.  In trying to summarize the latest book that I read, I found that I had to keep removing details that I felt were important to the characters and the story line.  Now, I have a brief summary of what could be any ‘whodunnit?’  style of mystery.

In short, using generic images resulted in a generic plot.  Though this seems obvious to me now, I needed to complete the task to truly understand what Bolton meant when he wrote, “…picture writing lacks narrative power” (p. 59).   I am relating this back to a self portrait project that I am working on with my senior Art students this week and next, where they use Typography or written words to create the value ranges in their images.  We discuss how a simple portrait describes what they look like and the words they use describes who they are.  These can be quite powerful when completed.   Another timely art lesson!

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

 

Day one – Here is some pre-Twine reflection and research that I have done based on my questions.  I read some interesting discussion posts about adding ‘agency’ to the decision making in Twine to create games, rather than stories.  I wonder if it really turns the narrative into a true game, or if it is just a way of making the story reading process more fun?  I’m not sure where to draw the line on my thoughts here, but perhaps it will become more clear once I begin using Twine and see how this unfolds.

I recommend this article by Emily Short.

And now to try and create a game-like? story in Twine….

Day two – I am five hours in, on evening number two, and am learning now that “hot-linking’ images is a bad thing to do.  I will now try to find instructions to host images elsewhere?  I’m VERY new to coding and this is quite complex!  Also, it is almost my bedtime 🙁

Day three – I stayed up way past my bedtime last night and got quite frustrated.   Tonight has gone better.  I have been saving images into my UBC blog media files – but music in mp3 format still won’t save there.  I have now created 8 pages in Twine, learned how to host and resize images.  I have changed backgrounds, added buttons, created links and am next wanting to create hypertext that links out of the story/game.  I will save this for tomorrow; it is bedtime.

Day four and five – I finally feel like I am making some real headway!  I can now link out of the site and have created 20 pages!  I have changed text colours, enchanted a word to make it float and have been adding pictures with ease. 

I like the way the story web is shaping up and wonder about using this Software to create a very in-depth Family Tree, where you could link directly to people who are living and collect digital artifacts for those who are not.  This could be quite cool!

I’ve finished my twine-based pottery story/lesson.  I didn’t succeed in creating “Agency”, but I have learned a lot and revisited a movie that I haven’t seen in years.  I chose to base this around a movie theme to help add engagement.  I chose pottery as my starting point as it seemed best to start with a least one thing that I know!

PotteryTwine – ETEC 540.html

Finally, I really appreciated the Hypertext reading this week.  When I was in elementary school (in the mid to late 80’s), I was part of a “gifted” program and had the opportunity to work with one of the earliest Hypercard programs.  I wasn’t able to create nearly the level of connections with it that I just completed in Twine, but I did work with a partner to make a digital ‘choose your own adventure’ style of story in grade five and remember how fun that had been and how special we had felt.  There were only the two computers that we could access and they were on a bus that travelled between schools in our small rural district…

“Although in a printed book it would be intolerably pedantic to write footnotes, in the computer we have already come to regard this layered writing and reading as natural.”  (p 27, Bolter).

Bolter, Jay David. (2001). Writing space: computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. New York, NY: Routledge.

 

 

I opted for this task because I had just finished digging all the potatoes out of my garden, so it seemed like a sign, and I am just moving into a printmaking project with my grade 8/9 Drawing and Painting class of 30 students this next week.  With my background in Art, I have taken relief printing classes at a university level and regularly teach screen printing and lino cut printing at my Secondary School.  I could not, however, recall the last time I tried potato printing, so was keen to do something fun and playful.

To challenge myself, I did not pre-draw the letters on to the potatoes and I didn’t worry about matching the sizes of the potatoes that I selected from my drawer.  I used acrylic paint for my ‘ink’ and printed onto the paper grocery bag scraps that I had left over from wrapping a birthday present.  I like the way that the thick pthalo blue paint looks on the recycled and reused brown paper.

I worked quickly and had this completed in about 10 minutes.  Most of that time was spent cutting the potatoes, and I smiled a bit to myself as I realized that many students would create their letter stamps backwards.  It is something I always warn my students about, if they are designing a project with words in it.

I really enjoy making things by hand and truly appreciate the time I spend weaving, crocheting, painting, throwing pottery and sewing.  This added value of handmade items is part of what drives my creativity.  I love the personal touch and the variety within the prints.  However, there is no way that I would want to create an entire book using this method of printing and I am thankful that I can reflect upon my printing process by typing out this sentence on my MacBook . ????

Thank you to Johannes Gutenberg for inventing the printing press and thank you to artisans like Paul Collier who help to keep some of the older technologies alive and working so that we can fully understand the advancements over time.