Month: June 2020

Helen Rogan – Task No. 3 – Voice to Text

https://blogs.ubc.ca/helenrogan/2020/05/29/task-three-voice-to-text/

Helen’s task no 3 resonated with me because she talked about how she met her husband. I was interested because I also talked about how I met my husband. When recording our unscripted story, we both felt that there were really important parts of the story that we missed. If we had scripted it in advance, the story would have been more complete. There were a number of places where it was confusing because the voice to text app was limited. For example, we both found the lack of punctuation to be problematic which created one long run on sentence. We both use the same app to do this activity. 

We also ran off into tangents sometimes because our thoughts are not planned out. When you are speaking, there is much more context, but when reading just the text, it was a little confusing to follow as to when the main story is happening and when the person that is telling the story is telling a side story. 

Helen and I both used the UBC blogs and we both have a similar format and layout. She had a link on the top which made accessing her tasks very easy. Once on the tasks page, her posts are posted chronologically. She also had a main page which tells the reader about herself. My blog was formatted exactly the same way. A benefit of using this is that the audiences can easily find what they need when there are more posts. It also organizes all the posts into categories that make sense instead of all the posts in chronological order which most blogs use. 

Alanna Carmichael  – Task No. 3 – Voice to Text

https://blogs.ubc.ca/alannacarmichael540/2020/05/29/33/

Alanna’s task no 3 resonated with me because the picture of her dog caught my attention. I have two small dogs about the same size and my husband has a golden retriever. We have three dogs in the family! We also ran into the problem of our small dogs’ fur getting too long. I had to make my husband groom them eventually because we did not want to risk going out to our groomer. They turned out fine. 

Regarding the assignment, one of the problems that we both ran into is lack of punctuation. We used a different tool and her assignment showed some punctuation  here and there while mine was just a giant sentence unless I told the app where to apply punctuation. I did not realize the importance of punctuation until I read something without them. It is both confusing and it could change the meeting of a sentence entirely. 

We both agree that although these voice to text apps are advertised as a tool to help students, oftentimes, it will become troublesome and confusing for students to use due to the difference between written and oral output. Even if an oral output is scripted, it will vary greatly from something that is meant to be written. 

Alanna and I both used UBC blogs as our platform but our textural architecture is quite different. Alanna has all her posts on the front page in chronological order. The problem with this is if there are posts in different categories, trying to find something from the same category would become difficult. If this was used as a content management system for a course website, students will have trouble looking for past content that they might need. However, if her site is used for something like a current issues page, it would be ideal as the most current posts are always on the top left. 

I did my page more like a course website in which I have all my weekly assignments under one tab. The students can easily go to that section if they need to access a specific document or posts. 

Tyler Graham – Task No. 1 – In my Bag

https://blogs.ubc.ca/monsieurgraham/540-3/

Tyler’s Task no. 1 resonated with me because we were born in the same generation. I am just four years younger. I don’t consider myself a millennial or a Gen-Xer so I agree with him that we qualify as an “Xennial”. We are the generation that grew up analog and became digital. We were the generation that finally caught up with digital technology when we grew up. We are no longer seen as the old people that don’t know tech. 

Even though I am proficient in technology, I still prefer some traditional ways of doing things. For example, I use google calendar but I still keep a paper agenda to write down all the things that I need to do. I still prefer paper assignments to digital. I still keep a handwritten grade book in addition to the digital one because I am afraid that something would happen and I will lose all my marks. I have been assured multiple times from the tech  department that they back up multiple times but I still do what I do.

Tyler and I both used the UBC blogs as our platform and although there aren’t a lot of assignments yet, Tyler has already set up headings across the top making it very easy to access his posts. I had something similar but I like to group all my weekly tasks together to create a cleaner look.  Both of our pages are easily accessible and intuitive to the audience. The main difference is that because he speaks French, he has defaulted his page to French. I don’t speak French at all but I can still look for things around his page. He also did not introduce himself on his website so I wouldn’t have known that was Tyler’s page if it wasn’t linked to his name on Canvas.