1) What’s in your Bag? Valerie Ireland
Valerie’s bag is essentially a survival bag. It contains everything you would need if you were going for a day hike or getting lost in the forest. She refers to geocaching as her main hobby activity which she regularly engages in with a friend and one of her sons. She uses a Venn diagram to classify her bag items into four categories that overlap; supplies, sanitation, safety and sustenance. Where Valerie lives (in the Yukon), safety is a primary concern when going into the woods, thus bear spray and a whistle are important. Having ample sustenance, such as plenty of snacks, and supplies such as GPS, a phone and extra clothing, are also important for survival and geocaching in the woods. Valerie’s analysis of her bag and items revolves around her old school lifestyle, as she refers to how long she has owned her bag (about 20 years) and how she still uses handwritten notes for classes. Furthermore, she writes about her time geocaching with her family and living in the Yukon.
My connection to Valerie’s blog entry about her items is more of a reflection of my former self. The things that I enjoyed doing prior to entering my teaching career and having a family. I used to spend much more time in the outdoors, hiking and camping. Many of the items found in my camping bag are eerily similar to the ones found in hers, such as the whistle, granola bars and extra layers of clothes. I mentioned in my task that I considered myself old school in terms of still handwriting my class notes. This is a common thread with Valerie’s analysis as she writes about a more unplugged old school lifestyle. I also carry around a notepad and writing implements in my regular workbag, but everything else differs. We have different purposes for our respective bags, which is reflected in the items they contain and the narratives that the items represent. Valerie’s bag is a representation of leisure activities with her family, while my bag describes a different purpose of work and technology. But overall, I think this reflection shows that there exists a commonality in different people when we can relate to the contents that represent overlapping aspects of their lives.
2) The Art of Potato Printing – Robin McHugh
Robin’s experience with potato printmaking was similar to mine, as we both have previous experience with printmaking in general. We both found that issues such as having the supplies and carving the potato were not the real challenge. Where we differed was that I forgot to reverse my letters backwards for them to print in the correct direction (a cardinal rule that I had forgotten from my classes). Robin also wrote about the ‘font’ and how the font style would not be a choice, rather I just chose to carve letters in a style that was as simple and straight forward as possible. As a result, our font styles are quite similar after examining his print.
Another idea Robin wrote about was how time consuming the printmaking process is and how and painstaking typesetting 500 years ago must have been. It reminded me of the introduction to printmaking, where the instructor overviewed the process and remarked how preparation is 90 percent of printmaking, while making the print itself (i.e. putting the ink onto paper) is the quick punctuation to a long process. In addition, Robin reflected on how there are no quick fixes for any errors found in the finish product. I especially realized this when my print came out in reverse, the fix would be to carve another set of letters in reverse, on potatoes that I no longer had.
Printmaking is definitely an art form for people who are meticulous and have great attention to detail.
3) Twine Task – Katlyn Paslawski
https://blogs.ubc.ca/paslawski540/2020/06/10/twine-the-digestive-system-game/
Katlyn’s final product in the Twine task and my twine story are very different. Hers is an educational game based on the digestive system, while mine is a fictional story of the Three Bears, a story I retell my daughter before she goes to bed just about every night. I think this goes to show the versatility of this tool, as it can be utilized to represent a variety of subject matter for diverse audiences.
The connection I have with Katlyn’s Twine game is in her described experience as she was creating it. As I read her entry, I began to wonder how many other classmates also anticipated this task to be not as time consuming as it actually was. Katlyn said the more she learned about Twine, the more features she wanted to add to her game. Similarly, as I worked through the platform, watched some tutorial videos, and googled some ‘how to’ sites, I really began to enjoy the process. The more I learned about Twine, the more functionality and features were added to my story, including different story paths and pictures. Another commonality we shared is our comfort level with this activity, I also felt pulled out of my comfort zone developing when this game. I actually felt apprehensive about completing this task, even thinking that I might opt to pass on this optional task. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed the process so much that I may use twine as a literacy activity with my class.
4) An Emoji Story – Sarah Wong
https://blogs.ubc.ca/swongetec540/2020/06/19/task-no-6-emoji-story/
Sarah’s emoji story used exclusively emojis. On my emoji story, someone commented that more context could have been provided by using connecting words, which I thought we were not supposed to use. As a result, my emoji story used exclusively emojis and was difficult to figure out. It was also difficult to figure out Sarah’s emoji story.
The part that I most connected with was her frustration with the process. I also thought that this task was going to be a pretty straightforward, but ended up being many hours over many days. Most of my time was spent formulating my approach depending on whether the right emoji existed for my ideas. Sarah was also frustrated with finding the right emoji to represent her idea-based emoji story, switching between devices, which is happened to me as well (laptop, iPhone, and iPad). In addition, she wrote about wanting to use other movies before settling on one based on the emojis she wanted to use. I think the difficulty of this task originates from the text-based literacy environment that we all are so accustomed to working within. It would almost be like asking someone to learn a language and then asking then to describe something fundamentally complex with their newly learned language. I think there is a certain level of depth and complexity that can be expressed with words that cannot be expressed through pictures and/or emojis. The old adage that a picture can paint a thousand words is especially true in this case, where an emoji can represent a thousand different messages, but which is the one the author intended?
5) Golden Record – Tyler Graham
https://blogs.ubc.ca/tylerwilliam540/2020/07/03/40/
As soon as I read Tyler’s reasons to include his top ten tracks (fig. 1), I felt an immediate connection to his assessment of music and song choices. In his intro, Tyler references Handle with Care by the Traveling Wilburys and Dear Mama by Tupac Shakur as more current songs he would include. The Traveling Wilburys is a collection of music legends (Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and George Harrison) that got together to records a series of albums. And Handle with Care is a great song to represent the longevity and wide range of these relevant artists. I would also consider Tupac Shakur to represent one of the most thoughtful and commercially successful rappers of all time. His song ‘Dear Mama’ pays homage to his mother and her struggles with addiction and poverty, Tupac was born a month after his mother was released from prison. Tracks like these represent a large portion of a marginalized population that meld artistry with social and political messaging.
Many of Tyler’s song choices and the reasoning resonated with me. I too, reminisced about the inclusion of Johnny B. Goode and its part in the Back to the Future movie and my love for all things Louis Armstrong. The most interesting detail was the reference of Indian music to bands like the Beatles and George Harrison, also my personal favourites. One of George Harrison’s most notable influences and teacher was Ravi Shankar, the great sitar player. Harrison’s use of the sitar in Norwegian Wood exploded the popularity of Indian classical music. Other common songs on our lists include; Morning Star Devil bird, Wedding Song, and Tchakrulo. I think musical literacy is a very interesting point of convergence and divergence when we examine popular music versus music that is more on the fringe. I would say that most of the songs on the entire list are pretty obscure, but when we look at the overall inclusions, there are songs that are more popular than others. This exercise in general represents a microcosm of music overall.
Figure 1 Network connections between my list and Tyler’s list
6) Speculative Futures – Melody Martin
https://blogs.ubc.ca/melomart/2020/07/28/task-12-speculative-futures/
Melody’s blog post for Speculative Futures is in the form of a podcast interview, transcribed into text. Her podcast is set about 45 years into the future where people meet virtually using their avatars. She writes about how communication is now carried out using a universal pictorial language in the form of emojis. The transcribed conversation goes into detail discussing the difference between how emojis are used in current times versus how they are used 45 years into the future. It also describes how there are cultural differences in using emojis, for example, the praying hands can mean ‘please’, ‘thank you’, and the actual act of praying. Overall, it’s quite an in-depth description of emojis as a universal language.
There are major differences between Melody’s blog post and mine, the most obvious being the form; Melody’s post is done as an interview whereas mine is a narrative story. In addition, my narrative takes place in 2050, where written language is still used in conjunction with an emoji language and in Melody’s speculative future, set in 2065, all text-based language has been replaced by the universal pictorial language. The common thread between our speculative futures is the idea that communication will evolve into a pictorial (emoji) language. Underlying this evolution is the principle that the world population can universally communicate without having to translate into native tongues. The theoretical underpinning of having a universal pictorial language is based on the evolution of communication and the need to communicate with people of other languages without barriers. The idea of literacy and what we know about literacy will qualitatively change to become more inclusive of people on a world scale in the near future.