I decided to check out  Gary’s Voice to text Task.(Feb 21, 2021)

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

Looking at Gary’s Voice to text exercise, I can definitely see one major difference, which is that his included punctuation whereas mine barely had any! There were commas and periods in the correct places in Gary’s story. Thus it was a lot easier to read through and follow the story that was being told. Gary used a  free trial for an office transcription program called Otter. Looking through other classmates voice to text tasks, I can see that his punctuated story is more of an anomaly.

Gary’s story was about his excursion in Alaska with his partner and having the chance to go dog sledding. It did not feel rehearsed and felt very casual as I was reading it. There was a certain flow to it where I was able to see how Gary told stories in person. There were a few repeated words, which was similar to my voice to text as well. Gary mentioned in his post that he used a lot of repetition/filler words which he said gave him time to decide on how to move forward, what to say and how to say his story. Even with this, I felt that his story was well organized compared to mine. My story has many filler words and I used less words trying to tell my story within the 5 minutes allotted to tell our stories (I compared word count – Gary said ~100 more words). And my story also had many run-on sentences.

Gary’s reflection mirrors some similarities to what I thought after doing this task as well. He mentioned how each oral re-telling of a story is an improvisation based on the mood of the audience, speaker, location, time of day, etc. Even though I have told my own story several times, it was a very different experience re-telling it without a live audience. Getting that audience interaction helps you as the speaker figure out how to say certain parts or if things should be left out. I found that having the pressure from the time limit made my own re-telling of my story to be very stale, since I was trying to cram in the most important parts of the story and tell it in chronological order.  In oral conversations emotions are portrayed from the tone, volume changes, dramatic pauses, etc. which would give more character to the story – but this is clearly lost in transcript. Also, with oral stories, you can repeat information or go back to a part of the story without there being a big break in the flow of the story. Listeners are much more forgiving in that respect. In written form, it would be much too confusing repeating something or looping back to a part of the story.

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

I’m currently using the WordPress theme Pink Touch 2, and Gary is also using WordPress but with the Serene theme. Serene is a lot wider and makes the texts on the screen a lot larger compared to the theme I have chosen. Pink Touch 2 is a theme that concentrates everything to the center of the site. I will probably change my theme soon since I don’t think it’s the easiest theme to use for large blocks of text. Gary’s blog theme makes it a lot easier for people who have difficulty reading smaller lettering.

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

Gary’s blog is in chronological order with the newest post at the top of his landing (home) page. There are no other tab buttons to choose from so his site is very simple and straight forward to travel to his entry. He only has 2 posts as of me writing this post. In contrast, my current site is organized in a way where you need to use the menu (tabs) to navigate to my tasks or linking assignments from my home page. Once you select a category, then users can see a list of links to each of my posts. Since the menu is available on every page, a users journey is self directed based on what they need. My home page is minimal and tells users to direct themselves to the page they are interested in.