Month: August 2020

Robin Mchugh – Task No. 8 – Golden Curation Assignment

https://blogs.ubc.ca/robinmchugh540/2020/07/01/curating-my-own-golden-record/

For my last linking assignment, I have chosen Robin’s golden curation assignment. When I was attempting this assignment, I tried to take a scientific and technical approach in trying to curate 10 out of 27 songs to represent earth. I spent so much time and effort trying to analyze and perhaps over analyze some parts. Someone without a musical background probably would not appreciate how much time I spent on this assignment. 

When I looked at how Robin chose her songs, I quickly realized how simple she did it. She chose the songs based on how she her own preference. I thought to myself: “isn’t that what people appreciate the most anyways?” The majority of the people will not have a music background and most people will choose songs that they can relate to. I like how simplistic her approach was. 

Looking at her website, I did find it hard to follow and find posts. Perhaps it’s the difference between a high school teacher, where everything is very structured, versus a freelance instructor in tech, where everything is more relaxed. If this was a course website for a high school class, I don’t think it will work as everything is in chronological order. It’s very difficult to have to scroll back from the newest posts to find what you want to read. However, if this is just a normal blog that people follow, it’s absolutely fine. 

Shaun Holma – Task No. 8 – Golden Curation Assignment

http://shaunholma.com/540/T8Web/

For the last four linking assignments, I have been looking at people that have similarities with me. For my linking assignment no. 5, I have chosen a post by a student that is very different from to me. When I was doing my networking assignment using the program Palladio, I looked at which students had the lowest songs common to my own choices. One of the students was Shaun. I was surprised to see that we shared so few songs as it seems like we use the same criteria to choose our songs like using different continents and choosing songs from different musical eras. Shaun went into the depths of comparing the voices of the pieces that he chose which was something that I did not do. We also had some difference when trying to group songs into different eras. It seems like my understanding of musical eras is quite different that his.

Moving on to looking at his website, even though he also used the UBC blog interface, I find his website extremely hard to navigate. It doesn’t seem like he had put things into categories so when I tried to look at old posts, I had to scroll through all his blog posts to get to what I wanted to see.  If this was his course website and I am a student that needs to find information, I would be very confused about where to find things. I do appreciate his tasks though as they are all very creative and multimodal. It was pretty impressive to see his assignments.

Sasha Passaglia – Task No. 4 – Manual Scripts

https://blogs.ubc.ca/sashapassaglia/2020/06/05/task-4-manual-scripts/

Sasha’s task no 4 caught my attention at first because of her hand writing. It is super neat which is the same as my style of writing. I continued to read her reflection and found that there were a couple of things that resonated with me.

We are both mothers and teachers and we feel the need to write very legibly so that our students won’t be confused. I started off my career with tutoring elementary school kids. I found that if I didn’t write super neatly, they would misunderstand what I was trying to say. Both Sasha and I prefer to hand write student comments and feedback. We feel that writing has a more personal touch, much like receiving a handwritten letter feels more special than receiving a typed email. 

Due to the pandemic, we both felt that we do not write as much anymore. I used to ask my students to hand in paper lab reports and assignments so that I could mark directly on an assignment. Since the start of online learning, everything has been done through Google Classroom. At the time of completing this assignment, I have not been writing for about two months. We both felt the need to take a break in the middle as our hand muscles are not as strong as before. 

Sasha also mentioned that when she made a mistake, she used white tape to cover her mistake but ended up pressing too hard when she rewrote on top of it. I personally didn’t realize where she made the mistake at all but it would also bug me if that happened to me as I have mild OCD. 

Sasha and I both used the UBC blogs and we both have similar format and layout. I believe that  due to the fact that we seem to both like being organized, we made our website very user friendly. We both put all our assignments into categories like weekly tasks and linking assignments. We also have an introduction page that talks a little bit about ourselves.