Monthly Archives: July 2022

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ETEC 540 Linking Assignment

https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540trista/2022/06/11/task-4-manual-scripts/#comment-10

by Trista Ding

 

Hi Trista,

Hope all is well.

I enjoyed reading your task 4, and in particular your discussion about the impact of digitalization within the workplace on our perception and usage of writing by hand. This discussion paralleled the one within the “Stuff to Blow Your Mind” podcast where they discussed the invention (and evolution of the book). When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense that as a culture that connects work with technology, we would dismiss the need or influence of hand-writing with work.

Your discussion about editing reminded me of the “Allusionist” podcast featuring Gretchen McCulloch where they discuss how auto-correct can influence the way one writes. I often turn off the grammar suggestion functionality of Word because I find it distracting.

And finally, I appreciated your assessment that writing by hand “comes from the heart.” I share that feeling, but upon reflection wonder if it is actually any different than dancing your fingers across a keyboard? Is playing an acoustic guitar any less genuine than an electric guitar? It is interesting how our minds conjure our engagement level within an activity.

  • How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

Based on her description, Trista and I had similar experiences as we undertook task 4. As I explored the responses from other classmates, there was a familiar refrain within them all… technology seems to be ushering in a new non-hand-writing world that doesn’t require the same mindfulness when engaging with what is being written.

  • What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

Just like me, Trista used an image to help illustrate her hand-writing example.

  • How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authoring and end-user interface?

Trista used two image images that were laid out in a similar manner as the three that I displayed. I also included the writing implement in one of the images.

  • What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

Trista and I both used a WordPress blog site so the require literacies and functionality were nearly identical. Even the construct of our posts match as we established context then went on to discuss our observations.

  •  What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

The big difference between our textual architecture was that Trista focused on efficiency while I decided to focus on process of writing.

  • How do the constraints of the course design manifest in your architectural choices? How have you responded to the pedagogical underpinnings of this course design in your own web space?  

Not sure that either of us pushed the boundaries of the posts themselves; and not sure the tasks themselves throughout this course suggested or encouraged that approach when posting tasks. Together, in our own unique ways, we tried to uncover how writing by end influenced our approach to the materials being written. In that way the pedagogical underpinnings were uncovered through our posts.

 

Task 3 Voice to Text Task

By Joseph Villella

https://blogs.ubc.ca/jvillella540/2022/06/04/task-3-voice-to-text-task/#comment-2

As you point out, voice-to-text technology definitely has challenged when it comes to interpreting cadence, inflection, punctuation, and tone. There are many humans who also have challenges understanding others even when they speak the same language. Sarcasm and intonation produce meaning on their own that can’t easily be expressed through writing words. It is one of the reasons that written/visual language evolves as Gretchen McCulloch and Helen Zaltzman discuss in “Allusionist” podcast.

It takes a special kind of writer, and some creative use of punctuation, to write in a manner that duplicates how one speaks. With that said, I agree with Gnanadesikan (2011) when he says : “Spoken words, by contrast, are inherently ephemeral. So written language seems more real to us than spoken language” (p.4)

Reference

Gnanadesikan, A. E., & Wiley Online Library. (2011). The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet (1. Aufl.; 1 ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

 

  • How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

Once again in this task, many of the submissions and findings across the section were similar. Joseph’s eloquent response uncovered many of the same findings as my observations, so I would anticipate that our experiences in compiling the posts were similar.

  • What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

Both posts were uploaded to our UBC WordPress blogs. Whereas I chose to record my audio along with video, Joseph used Speechnotes and did not post his audio. He did a great job posting the processed voice-to-text and showing the differences (through striking out words) but without hearing the audio, it was hard to determine how the software came up with its interpretation.

  • How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authoring and end-user interface?

As described above the layouts of our content shared some similarities but mine was slightly more dynamic in the materials offered for review.

  • What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

The omission of the audio file within Joseph’s post inhibited the user from fully understanding the context.

  •  What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

Constructivism is the basis of most of the presented tasks. As such, context was essential to fully interpreting and building upon the content presented. As stated above, the lack of context gave the sense of a missing step in the process within Joseph’s post.

  • How do the constraints of the course design manifest in your architectural choices? How have you responded to the pedagogical underpinnings of this course design in your own web space?  

Both Joseph and I describe our findings through responding to the prompts laid out in the assignment outline. We both referenced texts from the week’s module to emphasize the correlation between the task and the module’s content.

 

Task 1 What’s in your bag?

By Jennifer Guth

 

https://blogs.ubc.ca/jgttetec540/2022/05/28/task-1-whats-in-your-bag/#comment-3

 

Thanks for sharing your task 1. It is a fascinating peek into your digital footprint, and I enjoyed how you integrated the key themes of the course into your post. Your apps seem to fall into three categories: entertainment, information, and communication. All three categories are woven together so seamlessly.

While I am a fan of podcasts and reading, I just haven’t embraced audiobooks. I quite enjoy my e-reader, and don’t require the tactile nature of books, but for whatever reason I have yet to jump into eBooks. Out of interest, I just checked, and discovered that Adobe Reader provides a read out loud function that reads PDF text. Might try to convert some epubs and pdfs to test out this function although not sure it will be as good as a professional unautomated book reader.

When I think about my own connection to technology and text/information, I often fear the same things as Postman describes in Technopoly. “New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the area in which thoughts develop” (Postman, 1993, p.20).

Just the other day, I was reflecting on the types of mobile phone I have had over the past twenty years from thick “un-app-ed” bricks to fancy touch devices that are far more powerful than the first computer I ever used. As the functionality of mobile devices evolve, so does our reliance on them as tools to communicate and interact.

 

References

Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology (1st Vintage Books ed.). Vintage Books.

 

  • How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

Jennifer elected to explore her mobile device, or digital bag as she called it, instead of a physical bag and as a result our experiences differed. Although I explore tangible content of my bad, Jennifer delved into an exploration of what applications she used, why, and how she interacted with them

  • What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

We both used UBC’s WordPress blog for posting our tasks

  • How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authoring and end-user interface?

Jennifer sub-divided her content into key themes whereas I struck to the questions as defined in the last.

  • What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

As our audiences were the same, not sure the required literacies differed much in this task. If it had been a general audience perhaps some users may have had a challenge understanding the app concepts, but then again they may have had a challenge understanding some of the photography and videography terms I used as well.

  •  What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

All of the ETEC 540 tasks included some form of constructivism, and required users to make connections between the task content and that of the module. As such, the experience would have been similar for the majority of readers (who had also reviewed the week’s module).

  • How do the constraints of the course design manifest in your architectural choices? How have you responded to the pedagogical underpinnings of this course design in your own web space?  

As described above, I really tried to incorporate several levels of texts within all my texts and this was no exception. From multiple images to responses that followed the content of each aligned module. While Jennifer’s submission was great, the lack of additional media reduced its impact since it lacked some context. As this was the first task, the majority of the class attempted to build upon the example provided (that in itself is a constraint).

Task 5 Twine Task

By Trista Svennes

https://blogs.ubc.ca/metetec540/2022/06/16/task-5-twine-task/#comment-5

Hi Trista,

I wasn’t able to open your Twine, but I did enjoy reading about your approach to this task. We shared a number of similarities in our approaches. Your response made me reflect on how the medium (in this case Twine) influences our creative process by limiting the flow of ideas similar to how Douglas (1963) described the design process. While some writers and designers can think on multiple levels simultaneously, I get the sense that most of us are more linear in our approach and need to parse it into sections based on context.

 

  • How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

I shared Trista’s enthusiasm for this task. The opportunity to explore Twine and see what we could create was an exciting premise.

  • What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

I had no success in downloading and playing Trista’s Twine (much like others with my submission), so I’m not sure the authoring tool was ideal.

It would have been beneficial to find a Twine player to house and play the stories, and embed that player into our blogs. However, I haven’t had any success in finding one.

  • How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authoring and end-user interface?

We used the same tool, and a similar approach to build our stories, so I don’t think the experience differed much. I tried to incorporate music and animations (the latter with little success), so that would have been one of the differences.

  • What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

Twine was a fun platform to explore, but because of its programming, it was not very intuitive. As a result, one’s technical literacy is paramount to success.

  • What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

I appreciated how Trista made natural connections to Bolter’s hyperlink discussion. That sense of connectivity between concepts and content within Twine really helped bring these linkages to life.

  • How do the constraints of the course design manifest in your architectural choices?

The biggest constraint with regards to this task was Twine itself. I’m sure one can take multiple training courses in how to use Twine (especially in order to develop content like the provided example), so it almost seemed unfair to show the example and only provide a week to develop our own content.

  • How have you responded to the pedagogical underpinnings of this course design in your own web space?

Our webspaces are relatively easy to navigate. Trista created a few menus while I elected to use only one assignment menu.

Task 8: Golden Record Curation Assignment (Mandatory task)

By Zoe Armstrong

https://blogs.ubc.ca/zarmstrong/2022/07/12/week-8/?unapproved=4&moderation-hash=00a0ef5c800a8077cdc2f702fe7a09df#comment-4

Hi Zoe,

Thank you for your thoughtful overview of the Politics of Text. Having approached the task in a similar manner, I really appreciated how you elucidated your rationale. In particular, your reflection piece when it came to how sound can influence the listener.

BTW I am going to check out Serato – sounds cool!

I was also struck on how you visually represented to scope of the works globally. That map was a great example of the connecting the musical choices with their locales.

Thanks for sharing!

 

  • How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

Zoe did a great job of uncovering Serato to help guide her musical choices. My choices were a reflection of striving to provide a broad collection of music based on genre, era, and location. As it turned out our final decisions were similar.

  • What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

I am looking forward to investigating how Serato works, and finding some usages for it. Upon reflection, I should have track down some album covers or other materials to showcase the music and my choices.

  • How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authoring and end-user interface?

I think our layouts with the blog format were very similar, and as a result the user experience would most likely be the same as well.

  • What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

Using Serato enabled Zoe to appeal to more musicology-piles rather than my approach that was not as technical.

  • What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

We were exploring digitizing in this module, and it was fun to reflect on my experience in radio and television while doing this task. Much of my work from that time is now on formats that are challenging to digitize without particular analogue to digital equipment.

  • How do the constraints of the course design manifest in your architectural choices?

I do wonder about the accessibility of this task for those that have a hearing impairment. I wasn’t able to find many visual representations of the musical selections.

  • How have you responded to the pedagogical underpinnings of this course design in your own web space?

I used a table to display my selections while Zoe bolded the titles and provided her explanation in paragraph form.

Task 9 Visualizations of the Golden Record Selections

(Website commentary is not enabled)

By Al Carmichael

Hi Al,

Thank you for sharing your analysis of the Golden Record Curation selections. Your efforts to better visualize and analyze the data helped me get a better sense of the information as it was initially presented in manner that was hard to extrapolate any findings. While I was able to play around with the application, I found it challenging especially on a Mac (you’d think it should be more intuitive on a Mac?!). While our conclusions were similar, I agree that “correlations (of the responses) can merely suggest hypotheses, which must then be tested, and we are lacking further data upon which to test.”

I left this task wanting to find out more about the rationales. It was something that the visualization just couldn’t provide. If that additional information was available the previous task would have required a much more robust submission.

BTW love the t-shirt idea!

 

  • How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

Allan really explored the software and was able to delve into the analytics much more effectively than me. I wondered if the issue was that I was using a Mac and not a PC. When I tried to manoeuvre my way through the platform I kept encountering obstacles.

  • What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

Allan’s layout within his blog was great, but didn’t allow for comments on the platform. Instead I sent him a message through Canvas to provide my comments.

  • How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authoring and end-user interface?

As discussed above, the inability to comment on the post was the only issue I encountered when interacting with Allan’s post.

  • What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

I endeavoured to expand on the concepts and literacies we were investigating in this module whereas Allan really focused on the data that was being discussed. I think both approaches are effective in their own respective ways.

  •  What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

Hopefully my response encouraged others to reflect on their choices and those of our colleagues. The module topic for Week 9 was a network of texts, and together thinking about the data and the interplay between the musical choices was evident between our two submissions.

  • How do the constraints of the course design manifest in your architectural choices? How have you responded to the pedagogical underpinnings of this course design in your own web space?  

How we interact with different technologies and what texts mean to us have been big take-aways for me within ETEC 540. Finding linkages between tasks from colleagues tended to be easy as we all endeavoured to integrate the pedagogical underpinnings of the course and its design into our weekly responses. Task 9 was no exception.

[6.4] Task 6: An emoji story (Optional task)

By Kayli McKay

https://mskmckay.weebly.com/etec-540/an-emoji-story#comments

 

Hi Kayli,

I tried to stick to my original movie choice but it was tough in the Emoji task. Thought you told an amazingly accurate story using emojis… And who knew their was an ant emoji. I decided to take a much high-level explanation of the movie otherwise the emoji “story” would have been so many lines longer.

What were your thoughts about this task? I appreciated that it provided an opportunity to translate something using a universal language. Although that universal language could still be interpreted in different ways.

 

  • How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?

Kayli’s response provide insight into how she approached the emoji task, and our approaches were very similar.

  • What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work?

Having seen Ant Man, it was fun to de-code her description of the film. It was similar to playing Pictionary.

  • How does their tool differ from yours in the ways in which it allows content-authoring and end-user interface?

It would have been fun to gamify these submissions so that users could provide their interpretations of the emoji sentences

  • What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?

There were no particular literacies required in this task however if the user did not pay attention to pop culture, they may have difficulty determining what movies or shows are being depicted. With that said, emojis felt universal in that it is a visual language.

  •  What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?

That visual language was what really impacted during this task, and through the week’s readings.

  • How do the constraints of the course design manifest in your architectural choices? How have you responded to the pedagogical underpinnings of this course design in your own web space?  

Other than the potato art task, this one seemed the most accessible to me. Mind you, if a student was visually impaired this task would have been much more challenging. I wonder if there is value in creating a descriptive video task as an alternative.

 

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FINAL PROJECT: A futuristic look at textbooks

Didactic Podcast (July 2071)

This (fictitious) podcast emanates from 2072 and explores how textbooks have evolved. The “Didactic” podcast describes the history of textbooks and how they have matured by 2072.

Transcript (full reference list is below)

If you’re tuning into this podcast, you are most likely familiar with environments where student engage in learning, but prior to the pandemic thirty years ago education hadn’t changed much for hundreds of years.

Excerpt from UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay (March 26, 2020): https://youtu.be/St_BQRSXmew

Sure, there were niche online pedagogy but it was consider more of a fad than a transformation of face-to-face in-class knowledge dissemination. The same can be said for textbooks. Long considered a required component of pedagogy, the way students interact with similar content is nowhere close to what teachers even envisioned back in 2020.

Excerpt from What is the future of textbooks? TextbookHub asks Teachers: https://youtu.be/T-kdEfoPu-o

It’s July 22, 2052, and this is DIDACTIC, a podcast about educational technology and its origins. I’m Sam Charles.

If you’re not familiar with the term textbook don’t be embarrassed. The term itself went out of style a couple of decades ago. While it is occasionally used today in a retro-chic sort of way, we are more accustomed to terminology such as interactive content, immersive educational components (IECs) and holographic two-way pedagogy.

Textbooks were physical books, not like the digital content we use today, that included materials and content that aligned with the curriculum of a course of lesson. According to Wikipedia, they date back to Ancient Greece where educators wrote educational texts focused on the alphabet, knowledge, and storytelling. Once they could be produced on mass, in the 15th century, the usage of these physical textbooks took off. They became common place as a teaching instrument since the 19th century.

Marshall McLuhan, in 1960, said: The sheer quantity of information conveyed by press-magazines-film-TV-radio far exceeds the quantity of information conveyed by school instruction and texts. This challenge has destroyed the monopoly of the book as a teaching aid and cracked the very walls of the classroom so suddenly that we’re confused, baffled.

Still, there were many educators who felt textbooks were paramount the success of educators in maintaining a consistent curriculum.

Excerpt from Oxford Education video: https://youtu.be/qqxc18pWzjc

Chen’s comments are similar to those of Prof. Miriam Ben-Peretz in 1990 article entitled the teacher-curriculum: freeing teachers from the tyranny of texts”. In the article, she talked about how “the adoption of appropriate materials and their skillful adaptation to specific classroom situations will either facilitate or hinder the teaching efforts of even the most dedicated of teachers.” According to Ben-Peretz, the textbooks inhibited the educator and the learner from choosing and expanding upon content at their pace.

In 1998 Loewenberg Ball and Feiman Nemser called for educators to only use these resources as an accompaniment to their planning and content delivery.

Sociologist Ryan Cragun stated in his 2007 paper “The Future of Textbooks” that “textbooks boil down subject matter to its simplest form, facilitating digestion, but foregoing complexity. They also tend to favor breadth – covering as much content as possible – at the expense of depth.”

Despite those calls for a shift from traditional textbooks, those textbooks remained a staple of pedagogy until the well into the 21st century through its ease of use but gradually the public shifted its focus.

During that time, Neil Postman famously stated in his book Technopoly: the surrender of culture to technology: “New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop.”

In a sense that technology, or at least the connection between the technology and the learners interests, was what was missing. Textbooks lacked dimension, depth and interactivity that users both educators and learners sought. Once technology and its usability came into stride with the needs of users, the sun began to set on textbooks like the emerging two moons (Phobos and Deimos) rising over Mars.

Still, even in 2013 according to Reuters, “online products accounted for 27 percent of the $12.4 billion spent on textbooks for secondary schools and colleges in the United States.” But, that wasn’t looking at the whole picture.

One person who didn’t see the demise of the textbook was John Maxwell. In his 1985 article “The future of textbooks: Can they help individualize education,” he argued that “textbooks will not only survive present controversies, but they will emerge as more useful tools than they are now.” He suggested that more than 90 percent of what occurred in classrooms in his jurisdiction were shaped by and centered around textbooks

In their book Multimodal texts in Disciplinary Education, Kristina Danielsson and Staffan Selander talked about “Working with texts in deliberate ways is a foundation for supporting students’ subject learning, and their potential to demonstrate their knowledge in the subject.

Peering into their crystal ball they envisioned, “digitally produced texts enabling other possibilities that open up for a more flexible reading order. For the reader, therefore, the reading process would differ from traditional texts. In a digital text, the question of beginning or ending would not be self-evident.

In the early stages of the transition away from textbooks, publishers like Cengage and McGraw-Hill tried to keep pace. According to a 2018 blog post by Kate Hassey, these publishers tried hybrid approaches of combining their printed textbooks with online software. It was perhaps too little, too late. Despite the addition of data and analytics, simply the cost, weight and continuous push for smarter, more sustainable materials led to the textbook’s demise.

It was a similar sentiment in 2010 by Celia Henry Arnaud who said “Improvements in technology could eventually pull those heavy conventional textbooks out of students’ backpacks, but textbooks as we know them probably won’t disappear anytime soon.”

Interactive and adaptive technologies quickly put textbooks in the rear-view mirrors of their solar powered self-driving vehicles.

Today, holograms and personalization using artificial intelligence drive student interest into areas that they have shown an aptitude or interest. The holograms act as an instructor when a human one is not available.

There is little doubt that the internet and technologies that sprung from it has enabled educators and learners to access information more easily as a result learning as accelerated but also adjusted to the varying needs of educators, learners, and subject matter. Assessment and experiential learning are now seamlessly integrated into these new technologies.

These technologies, that we now take for granted, allow for more enquiry. They allow for what we can call smart scaffolding.

Smart scaffolding is basically the ability of these new technologies to embrace Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) including intrinsic CL (inherent to a subject matter), extraneous CL (caused by the instructional design) and germane CL (required for connecting material to long-term memory)… they are precisely the reasons that textbooks of yesteryear faded away.

In their 2016 article “Technology and textbooks: The future,” Stephen L. Baglione & Kevin Sullivan recognized that it was possible for e-textbooks to be customized to fit students’ specific needs, and they foresaw that between the rising costs of producing textbooks and advancing technology that dramatic changes were on the horizon.

Their vision was closer to what has become our reality. While we no longer use terms like e-textbooks since books as they used to exist are becoming more and more rare. Technology has allowed what those researchers consider science fiction to become today’s reality.

Humans have long sought to prognosticate what is next in the evolution of education and pedagogy. In a 2017 paper by Ornat Turin entitled “How the futuristic school was imagined in science fiction movies and literature, she said “one is expected to accept the convergence of teaching instruments and information hardware with the human body.”

Today, reading is done through technologies that don’t impact our vision. These advancements followed the same trajectory as bone conduction in the audio sphere. Headphones and earbuds were eventually usurped by embedded chips that conducted sound through bone vibration. When research finally detailed the correlation between usage and eye health, the replacement of screens took some time. Using technologies that built-upon braille, artificial reality and other immersive technologies, we now have tools that enable us to explore knowledge in ways that never before seemed possible.

Innovation takes time. How we learn continues to evolve generation over generation. We become curious about new things so we investigate, experiment and build a spatial understanding so others can better understand.

This has been Didactic… Until next time, I’m Sam Charles

 

References

 

Arnaud, C. (2010). The future of textbooks. Catalysis Reviews. Science and Engineering, (27 September 2010), 63.

 

Baglione, S. L., & Sullivan, K. (2016). Technology and textbooks: The future. The American  Journal of Distance Education, 30(3), 145-155. https://doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2016.1186466

 

Ball, D. L., & Feiman-Nemser, S. (1988). Using textbooks and teachers’ guides: A dilemma for beginning teachers and teacher educators. Curriculum Inquiry, 18(4), 401-423. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.1988.11076050

 

Ben-Peretz, M. (1990). The teacher-curriculum encounter: Freeing teachers from the tyranny of texts. State University of New York Press.

 

Cragun, R. T. (2007). The future of textbooks? Electronic Journal of Sociology, (1), 1.

 

Danielsson, K., & OAPEN. (2021). Multimodal texts in disciplinary education: A comprehensive framework. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63960-0

 

Hassey, K. (2018, July 18). What is the future of textbooks and digital learning? Future textbooks digital elearning. Retrieved July 27, 2022, from https://blog.gutenberg-technology.com/en/future-textbooks-digital-elearning

 

Maxwell, J. (1985). The future of textbooks: Can they help individualize education? NASSP Bulletin, 69(481), 68-74. https://doi.org/10.1177/019263658506948111

 

Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology (1st ed.). Knopf. Oxford Education. (2017). The importance of textbooks. Retrieved July 27, 2022, from https://youtu.be/qqxc18pWzjc.

 

TextbookHub. (2020). What is the future of textbooks? TextbookHub asks Teachers. Retrieved July 27, 2022, from https://youtu.be/T-kdEfoPu-o.

 

Turin, Ornat. (2017). How is the futuristic school imagined in science fiction movies and literature?. History of Education and Children’s Literature. 12. 673-697.

 

UNESCO. (2020). Global Education Coalition, Message from Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General. Retrieved July 27, 2022, from https://youtu.be/St_BQRSXmew.

 

All music is from YouTube’s Audio Library and considered Creatives Commons (not requiring attribution)

Tracks include: Skylines (Anno Dimini Beats), Earth Appears (Brian Bolger), Back To The Future (Ofshane), and El Secreto (Young Logos).

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Task 11: Detain/Release or Algorithms of Predictive Text

As a big fan of true-crime podcasts, I love a good “falsely accused” / “Quest for Justice” story. This exercise reminded me a lot of last week’s attention economy exercise. Regardless of who you locked up or who you released you’d never seem to come out even. Nearly an impossible scenario as you either incarcerate too many alleged criminals and over-crowd jails or show too much leniency and some alleged criminals will re-offend.

The question for this task revolves around implications and consequences that AI-informed decision making brings to certain aspects of life. As prefaced, with my affinity to true-crime podcasts, the topic of The Crime Machine podcast regarding predictive policing algorithms was not a new one. In fact, I recently started listening to a new series from NPR’s Embedded featuring a police department in Yonkers, New York, where they are moving away from algorithms and towards more face-to-face interactions. That police force actually continues to use algorithms but to help prioritize the areas in which they focus their attention (rather than making arrests or meeting quotas – although that could be argued is simply semantics).

Whether it is professional sports (where analytics play an increasing important role in just about every sport) to policing as Cathy O’Neil (2017) points out, AI is changing our world. “Data scientists are stitching the status quo of the social order into models, like PredPol, that hold ever-greater sway over our lives.” There is no question that AI is having an impact on curriculum development, just look at the 2019 report from UNESCO entitled “The Impact of AI on curriculum systems: towards an orbit-shifting dialogue.

What I felt the exercise was missing was a more human connection. Instead of blurring the faces, I would have preferred to hear from the alleged criminals (or actors playing criminals). I felt the system’s instructions pushed the user to be more lenient and thereby ignore other factors. I tried to be lenient with non-violent offenders and jail the violent ones but that didn’t work out so well.

The big question I left the last two tasks with is: Do numbers lie or do they tell the whole story? Not sure I have come to a conclusion on that just yet. Data can definitely paint a picture, but they always leave gaps.

References

O’Neil, C. (2017, April 6). Justice in the age of big data. Retrieved June 18, 2019, from ideas.ted.com website:  (Links to an external site.)https://ideas.ted.com/justice-in-the-age-of-big-data/

 

 

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Task 10: Attention Economy

My career has run parallel to advertising for many years. I worked in radio and television for nearly two-decades where I wrote commercials and created content that led people to want to watch or listen. There was a direct correlation between my pay cheques and advertising revenue. Today, I use those same skills to help post-secondary leaders to persuade audiences. I appreciated what Tristan Harris (2017) called the “race for attention.” As humans, and technology users, we are being prompted to follow certain rules and logic that are being spoon-fed to us. Task 10 provided several glaring examples of what that looks like.

As a user, you needed to read (and not follow your “technological” inkling) in order to not push the green or lock button but instead read the fine print. Nearing the end, I struggled with proving that I was human!? How I wished there was a “select all” option. The other attribute that also jumped out at me was the concept of patterns. The Task 10 game “User Inyerface” brilliantly created persuasive architecture that was intended to not have the user complete the questionnaire with ease. Zeynep Tufekci (2017) described the usage of persuasive architecture within the digital world, but it got me wondering if everything should be easy?

Taking my time and reading carefully, I was able to complete the task in a reasonable amount of time (probably less than 10-minutes including two false-starts). If I hadn’t been prepped by reading and watching Module 10, I would imagine it would have taken longer.

From a pedagogical perspective, you can definitely see the possibilities for empowering and assisting learners and educators through this technology but unfortunately most of these tools are being used for nefarious purposes from marketing to politics.

 

References

Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention?language=en (Links to an external site.)

Tufekci, Z. (2017). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. Retrieved from  (Links to an external site.)https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads?language=en (Links to an external site.)

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Task 9 Network Assignment Using Golden Record Curation Quiz Data (Mandatory task)

What strikes me reviewing our section’s music choices within the Palladio platform is the interconnectivity or correlation of everything. As humans have evolved in our communication, we tend to seek out connections between people and things. Whether hyperlinks, algorithms, or network theory in general, we are constantly in search of linkages.

Political implications of such groupings considering what data is missing, assumed, or misinterpreted.

By picking more than one musical track, each participant in this exercise was relying upon their own subjective choices and rationale. While the combination choices is interesting, the groupings don’t necessary provide an in-depth understanding of each individual’s rationale or their connections. For example, I sought to provide a robust and varied collection of music that represented different time periods and geographies while others may have selected their music on other preferences such as musical taste.

Interestingly, when you split the full view in half horizontally, 9 names were included in the bottom network with 7 at the top. Split down the middle vertically, it was an even 8 names on the left and 8 on the right. This analysis would indicate that the choices, of those included in the exercise, were relative evenly distributed.

While you may be able to justify your musical choices in the Quiz, there also may exist reasons why you did not choose other pieces. Can the reasons for these “null” choices ever be reflected/interpreted in the data? 

Instead of the solely representing the musical choices, perhaps a word cloud could have been developed that highlighted the choice rationale linking those choices with the tracks to provide a more wholesome overview of the selection process. Adding the choice variable and linking it to individuals and their selections would have provided a visualization that provided a more holistic correlation between choices and rationale.

 

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Task 8: Golden Record Curation Assignment

Overview

I tried to make my selections reflect the diversity of music across the world along with across time. There were a number of classical/orchestral tracks, so I tried to pick just one. Variety was the main focus I had in mind as I curated the 10 pieces of music. As the podcast described, picking music that reflects earth and humans is no easy endeavour. Instruments and voices extend beyond cultures as do tempos and harmonies. From the perspective of this week’s readings, the discussion of preservation as it relates to culture was striking. Who chooses what we preserve? Are they an appropriate arbiter of determining what is worthy and what is not? Who is being cater to? Would an extraterrestrial appreciate a particular sound or tempo over another? If one knew, would it change their choices?

Even collecting these 10 selections as a group may influence how they are construed together It is similar to how Smith (1999) describes the benefits and drawbacks of using digitization as a preservation technique. In the podcast, they also discussed the rationale for using the copper and gold album (and their inclination to use it today if the project were to be redone) – I thought that was quite interesting as I was expecting them to take an audiophile approach that records sound better than digital audio but instead they discussed the tactile components of the media.

Music Selection Rationale
Wedding song – Peru

 

 A beautiful song with vocal only was both lovely and haunting at the same time. This was the only track with a female voice, so I felt it was important to include. It goes to my diversity emphasis withing the selection process.
Tchakrulo – Choir – Georgia

 

 The podcast called this a drinking song, but I liked the voices together more than their call for another drink. The harmonic singing is very impactful and worthy of its inclusion in the top 10. As above, the gender of the voices set it apart from other available pieces.
Johnny B Goode – Chuck Berry

 

 I like the story behind the song. Wouldn’t image that extraterrestrials understand English, but the description of a time and place is a nice compliment to the other tracks. How the voice and instruments play off one another is also fun.
Melancholy Blues-L Armstrong&HisHotSeven

 

 I love how the instruments play off one another to tell a story of their own. I don’t find this track melancholy at all, as it always has a clarinet response to the trombone and trumpet; quite sassy actually. Selecting this track, it dawned on me of the fun (or challenge) of choosing the order of the tracks on the album.
Melanesian panpipes

 

 If breathing had a song this would be it. Another track where it differs from more contemporary music and very unique. If the extraterrestrials did breathe then perhaps they would have a greater appreciation for this instrument and track.
El Cascabel-Lorenzo Barcelata&the Mari

 

 Less aggressive a track than some of the higher-tempo options, I enjoy the rhythm of the tune. The vocals are a pleasing accompaniment to the instruments. With diversity in mind, I selected this track as it provided a difference sound than others.
Flowing Streams – China

 

 This instrument is so different from many contemporary North American instruments. It is a nice counterpoint to many of the other tracks. Britannica describes three main characteristics of Chinese music as linearity, transparency, and word orientation.
Cranes in their nest-Japan(Shakuhachi) Instrumental only piece is calming to my ears and differs from much of the other music that includes vocals. The slower tempo was a nice change from much of the other music.  Tranquility was not as evident in the other selected music.
Tchenhoukoumen, percussion Senegal

 

 I enjoy the beat on this track and the increased tempo as it progressed. The rhythmic nature of this track is exciting but with an uplifting edge whereas some of the other tracks seemed very aggressive. I would describe this track as being beat-first rather than having the beat in the background.
Bach, Brandenburg no 2, part 1

 

 The complexity of this orchestration is what placed it among the top 10. The highs and lows along with the tempo changes is an idea juxtaposition to many of the other tracks. The variety of the instruments was also a nice compliment to many of the other pieces of music.
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ETEC 540 Link Submission (Part 1)

Task 4 Manual Scripts

By Trista Ding

https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540trista/2022/06/11/task-4-manual-scripts/#comment-10

Hi Trista,

Hope all is well.

I enjoyed reading your task 4, and in particular your discussion about the impact of digitalization within the workplace on our perception and usage of writing by hand. This discussion paralleled the one within the “Stuff to Blow Your Mind” podcast where they discussed the invention (and evolution of the book). When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense that as a culture that connects work with technology, we would dismiss the need or influence of hand-writing with work.

Your discussion about editing reminded me of the “Allusionist” podcast featuring Gretchen McCulloch where they discuss how auto-correct can influence the way one writes. I often turn off the grammar suggestion functionality of Word because I find it distracting.

And finally, I appreciated your assessment that writing by hand “comes from the heart.” I share that feeling, but upon reflection wonder if it is actually any different than dancing your fingers across a keyboard? Is playing an acoustic guitar any less genuine than an electric guitar? It is interesting how our minds conjure our engagement level within an activity.

 

Task 3 Voice to Text Task

By Joseph Villella

https://blogs.ubc.ca/jvillella540/2022/06/04/task-3-voice-to-text-task/#comment-2

As you point out, voice-to-text technology definitely has challenges when it comes to interpreting cadence, inflection, punctuation, and tone. There are many humans who also have challenges understanding others even when they speak the same language. Sarcasm and intonation produce meaning on their own that can’t easily be expressed through writing words. It is one of the reasons that written/visual language evolves as Gretchen McCulloch and Helen Zaltzman discuss in “Allusionist” podcast.

It takes a special kind of writer, and some creative use of punctuation, to write in a manner that duplicates how one speaks. With that said, I agree with Gnanadesikan (2011) when he says : “Spoken words, by contrast, are inherently ephemeral. So written language seems more real to us than spoken language” (p.4)

Reference

Gnanadesikan, A. E., & Wiley Online Library. (2011). The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet (1. Aufl.; 1 ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

 

Task 1 What’s in your bag?

By Jennifer Guth

https://blogs.ubc.ca/jgttetec540/2022/05/28/task-1-whats-in-your-bag/#comment-3

Thanks for sharing your task 1. It is a fascinating peek into your digital footprint, and I enjoyed how you integrated the key themes of the course into your post. Your apps seem to fall into three categories: entertainment, information, and communication. All three categories are woven together so seamlessly.

While I am a fan of podcasts and reading, I just haven’t embraced audiobooks. I quite enjoy my e-reader, and don’t require the tactile nature of books, but for whatever reason I have yet to jump into eBooks. Out of interest, I just checked, and discovered that Adobe Reader provides a read out loud function that reads PDF text. Might try to convert some epubs and pdfs to test out this function although not sure it will be as good as a professional unautomated book reader.

When I think about my own connection to technology and text/information, I often fear the same things as Postman describes in Technopoly. “New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the area in which thoughts develop” (Postman, 1993, p.20).

Just the other day, I was reflecting on the types of mobile phone I have had over the past twenty years from thick “un-app-ed” bricks to fancy touch devices that are far more powerful than the first computer I ever used. As the functionality of mobile devices evolve, so does our reliance on them as tools to communicate and interact.

References

Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology (1st Vintage Books ed.). Vintage Books.

 

Task 5 Twine Task

By Trista Svennes

Task 5: Twine Task

Hi Trista,

I wasn’t able to open your Twine, but I did enjoy reading about your approach to this task. We shared a number of similarities in our approaches. Your response made me reflect on how the medium (in this case Twine) influences our creative process by limiting the flow of ideas similar to how Douglas (1963) described the design process. While some writers and designers can think on multiple levels simultaneously, I get the sense that most of us are more linear in our approach and need to parse it into sections based on context.