Category: Linking Assignment

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.

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.