Category: Weekly Tasks

This was so far one of the most difficult tasks I have had to complete for the class so far. I spent at least a week trying to think about how to analyze the data. It was rather difficult because there were so many ways that the data could be sorted.

Once sorted, I did not feel that I was familiar enough with my classmates to allow for a complete analysis. For example, some data that would have been useful would be age, background, etc … I tried to look at my classmates’ websites but not all of them have an about me page (which I would suggest making it one of the tasks for future courses) and trying to look at everyone’s work at the same time was overwhelming.

Every time I thought I found some sort of connection, there would be something else that did not make sense. I remember reading from our chat group that one student did a lottery for choosing the ten pieces which makes trying to analyze the data even more complicated. Despite the many challenges, I tried to analyze the data that was given to me in a number of different ways to the best of my ability. 

Using Palladio, the first thing I did was to find the person who was most similar to me. It was a coincidence that Helen was closest to me and that I used her post for one of my linking assignments because we were both talking about the story of how we met our husbands. When I looked at Helen’s explanation of song choices, I found that we were so different and yet had a similar way of classifying songs. Helen has no background in music while I do but we both choose to curate music from different places around the world. Due to my science background, I chose a systematic approach to choosing the songs and picking one from each continent while Helen’s humanities background lead her to pick a couple of songs from areas around the world but not necessary continents. 

Next, I was interested to look at who I have the least in common with. There were three people who shared only three songs with me and I chose to analyze one of them. I was surprised to see that from the data, Shaun and I only shared so few songs in common. Looking at his choices, I would have thought we had more in common because we both talked about choosing songs from different continents and also songs from different musical eras. I really liked how Shaun even went into depths of comparing different songs from the same continents and also paying tribute to different instrument voices. This is not something I thought of doing. However, one thing did bother me is that while he mentioned grouping songs in different musical eras, he has only included one era which is the classical period but has put the wrong composers in that period. This is something only people with a music background would notice.

Next, I went to find my group and look at those who made selections closest to my own. I wanted to try and find similarities and differences between who we were. I was in a group with Laura and Kristin and they both shared four song choices with me. I was not quite sure how we were put into a group because to me, having four out of ten choices is not that similar. I was curious to see if we have any similarities in our background but did not find any information about their background on their blog. I next looked at how they both chose their list of ten pieces for the golden record.

Laura originally wanted to do something similar to me which is “progressing from the more traditional tone to rock”. It was not as technical as my analysis but we had the same idea. She did change her criteria to “focus on global and temporal diversity, and the human voice.” It was quite different from how I chose my songs.

Kristin, on the other hand, had a very systematic way in choosing her songs, which I appreciated. She mainly went for songs that have a different tone. What bothered me was how she chose the classical songs. Again because she did not have a music background, at least she did not mention that she did, she grouped composers together that were from different eras and said that they were basically the same thing. I think it was only by chance that Laura, Kristin and I were put into the same group. I do not think we have that many similarities. 

Lastly, I took a look at the most and least popular song choices from our class. I was surprised that every single piece was chosen at least once. The most popular song chosen from our class was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. It was not a surprise to me as this piece had a significant cultural influence due to the time that it was written. It had a long lasting impact on various different cultures. Even for people without classical music training know about the motive of the song, “dit-dit-dit-dah”. It is still widely used in different scenarios and cultures. 

I was surprised to see one person, Daniella who chose New Guinea’s Men’s House Song. I tried to look at Daniella’s reasoning behind choosing this piece and looked into her background. There was not much about her but she did say she chose her songs based on the “emotional effect” on her. When I looked at the list of 27 pieces, I didn’t choose Men’s House Song because I did not like how it sounded.

To take this further, people might subconsciously not pick this piece due to the title which was gender specific. In 2017, the Me too (#MeToo) movement started. This is a movement that promotes feminism and targets men due to sexual harassment and abuse. Many women stepped into the light to publicize allegations of sex crimes commitment by powerful men. Although this might be far fetched but with a population of over 50% female in our class, it might have something to do with why this piece was chosen only once. 

After a long data analysis, I was able to learn a few things about my classmates using indirect data from their song curation. There was a diverse amount of criteria which my classmates used to classify which songs seemed the most important or most appropriate to them. There were some overarching criteria that seem to be due to their cultural significance such as the Fifth Symphony. Its influence can be quantifiably measured by the amount of selections it received. The least selected song can also derive its lack of selection through social influences and current events. I found it quite interesting to compare and contrast my own selections and the selections of my classmates as the dateset provided a good source for identifying cultural, social and personal differences.

Instead of explaining why I choose each song using 3 – 5 sentences each, I am going to explain my thought process behind how I narrowed down my 10 selected songs.

In addition to being a science high school teacher, I have a strong background in music. I used to teach piano and music theory as a side job. Part of music theory is music history, so I am familiar with how to categorize songs based on the composer, era, genre, etc …. 

I found it quite difficult to curate 10 pieces of music that represented the entire world because I couldn’t simply just split the world into 10 different parts. What I did at the beginning was forming a chart that broke down each song into the composer, title, location of where it was composed, the genre and the year it was composed. After spending some time researching and listening to each song, I had the idea of having two main categories of songs. The first five songs were chosen based on the era or year of composition and the second five songs were chosen from five of the continents of the world. 

When I studied music, the history courses were based on music eras. The main eras are medieval, renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, and postmodern. I tried to choose at least one song that represented each era with the exception of the medieval and renaissance. I also tried to choose songs that were from different genres. These are the first five songs that I chose based on era:

Baroque: Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano.

Classical: Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor.

Romantic: Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor. 4:35

Postmodern Jazz: “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05

Postmodern Rock and Roll: “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry.

For the second five songs, I chose one song that represented each continent with the exception of Antarctica and Europe. I did not include Europe as most of the songs from the first category are from Europe and I did not include Antarctica as I don’t think there were any pieces from that region. 

Africa: Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle.

Oceania: Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes.

North America: Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México.

South America: Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen.

Asia: India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar.

Here’s the  video that I created for this task.

When I did task one, my 1.5 year old son, Dreydon, was in the room with me. He had no idea what I was working on and so did not show any interest. However, when I did this task, after I finished my video, I played it on the big screen and he was quickly intrigued but what was going on.

Shortly, I saw him take my Minnie Mouse wristlet and he began to take things out and looked at them. I find it quite interesting and suitable for this week’s readings on how multi-modal literacy is important in education, especially in younger students.

At the beginning, I was so excited about this assignment because who doesn’t love emojis? I use emojis all the time when I am communicating and I find that an emoji can represent my feelings better than just words. 

Shortly into this assignment, I was so frustrated as it became very difficult to convey what I am trying to say with just emojis. I thought I knew my emojis very well but I had to scroll through them over and over again just to find the right one to use. Most of the time, it didn’t even make complete sense. I thought this would be an easy assignment that might take me an hour at maximum to complete. I ended up doing this through a couple of days because I would sit there for half an hour being frustrated about not finding the right emoji to use. I also had trouble with using the emoji from the keyboard so I had to use my phone. 

For this task, I relied more on ideas and the actual words instead of syllables. I find that using syllables would be very confusing as the reader wouldn’t know when you are using syllables and when you are using the actual objects without prior explanation. I started with the title right away. I asked at least ten of my friends if they knew which movie I was referring to and only two of them were able to guess the right answer. 

Something that might be logical to me might not be for someone else. The two friends that guessed it correctly are also my closest friends that know what kind of movies I like. I feel at least in part this was the reason they were able to guess correctly.

I did choose the movie based on how easy it was to visualize. I had a couple of movies in mind that I wanted to do but quickly scrapped the idea. It’s either that the title gives it away (ie: Harry Potter lightning) or that the synopsis is way too long or abstract. I ended up with my choice of movie because I had a general idea of what main emojis I wanted to use. 

Doing this assignment makes me wonder if this is exactly how people in prehistoric times communicated. Our emojis are basically hieroglyphics. I find that thought interesting. Although I love using emojis, I would still prefer to use words if I can only choose one mode of communication.

Please click the following link to see my twine game. You will have to press download once you click into the link in order to see the actual game.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k3oeYKg-tao6v1XG9GISq8nrEIjw0JMq/view?usp=sharing

Below is a screen shot of what I did in twine.

Commentary

Do you normally write by hand or type? Did you find this task difficult or easy? Explain.

When I have to write an essay, I normally type, but when I give comments on students’ work or when I tutor, I write by hand. This task was not difficult for me because I am used to writing and I like it. I have always been told that my penmanship is amazing which has kept me writing.

What did you do when you made a mistake or wanted to change your writing? How did you edit your work? Did your choice of media play a part in how you edited your work?

When I made a mistake or wanted to change my writing, I just erased it because I used an erasable pen. I actually had to do a draft prior to writing my good copy which took up some time. When I type out my work, I rarely do a draft because I can just edit my work in real time. I was extra careful when writing out my story as I did not want to redo the entire thing. 

What do you feel is the most significant difference between writing by hand and using mechanized forms of writing? Which do you prefer and why?

The most significant difference between writing by hand and using mechanized forms of writing is the amount of time it takes. It took me thirty minutes just to write out my good copy of the essay while it will only take me under five minutes to type out the entire thing. Another significant difference is spell check. When I was writing out my essay, I realized that I had to double check a couple of words  because I was not sure if I was spelling them correctly. I had relied on spell check for so long that I didn’t even realize I had forgotten the correct spelling of so many words. My preference would highly depend on what I need to do. If I need to write an essay or communicate with parents, I would much rather type. However, if I need to give feedback, due to all the symbols in chemistry and math, it would be much easier for me to write rather than trying to type up a chemical equation.

Voice to Text Story from https://speechnotes.co/

For this voice to text tax I would like to talk about the story of how me and my husband met I’ve actually talked about my story a couple of times for example and I wedding Eastern party but I’ve always liked that was always special to me so I tell you guys a little bit more i’m so about 5 years ago it was September I remembered my at was at work so we’re both teachers and my department head. To look over because we where we need to hire another person for our department and so I looked at this resume I didn’t know then but eventually you turned into my future husband but I looked at this resume and thought to myself besides background he’s also passionate music and so on and so I had a pretty good impression of him from his resume. At the interview I interviewed him and eventually he got the job and I think we started dating just just about half a year after we met the more I got to know him the more I thought that we were meant to be because not only did and and we went to the sisters and brothers like a Catholic school so he went to Vancouver call academy and they’re just sisters and brothers Catholic schools of each other but the funny thing is it probably X and after that after that we went because we didn’t really want to work at the same school as my husband because then you have nothing to talk about because you’ll be at school and we’re in the same department and so I start looking for another job the the Catholic School. It was an all-boys and they had an opening and I was like oh my gosh I could never I can never teach at an all-boys School it was my husband told me to call anyways and so I did and I got the job which is the current School. And I love it so much that I was always afraid of but it just so happens that it really suited me and so other things that I thought it was meant to be between me and my husband we were actually born in the same Hospital. Excuse my mom about which hospital I was born in and then he was talking to his mama’s so I thought that was quite amazing as well and of course I like to be Cantonese and so our family background quite similar as well and so I think all of these things put together make me think that this was meant to be and then there’s probably a reason why I didn’t met him earlier because I feel like this is the right time that I’ve met him at the right part of my life where I careers of has been expecting another baby girl coming in and so that’s our story

Observations

The dictation derived from the voice to speech program is very different from the way I speak or write.  Speaking is more casual while writing is more formal. It seemed very different when I needed to say the actual punctuation marks in order for them to show up. My voice to text speech ended up just like a bunch of long run-on sentences. 

There are so many things that are wrong in the text. Some parts of texts are missing. Some words turned out to be something else. It did not have any punctuation so it makes it very difficult to comprehend. The majority of the content is right but might just make sense to me since I know my own story. If someone else was to read this story, they might not be able to comprehend.

Some common mistakes in the text include words that turned out wrong because they didn’t fit into the sentence. The missing punctuation marks were the most obvious mistakes. 

If I had scripted the story, I would probably have spoken more slowly and clearly. The words might be more accurate. The flow of the story might also be better. I did stop for a brief moment during my recording because I was trying to think about what to say next. Some contents were also out of order because I added parts of it later. 

Oral storytelling is more dynamic. It is different every time and you can provide different emphasis using different tones. On the other hand, written storytelling is more structured because the writer can plan ahead what he or she plans to say since it is static and lacks emotion, word usage and description become much more important.

My name is Sarah Wong and I am a high school science teacher from Burnaby B.C. I chose the bag that I used most recently which was a rose pink Minnie Mouse backpack wristlet that I got on my trip to Disneyland this past winter. 

From the contents of my bag and the way I meticulously placed them for the picture, most people will guess that I am a very organized person. I do have mild OCD and I hate clutter; so I try to keep things simple and only bring what I need in my bag. Additionally, most of my bags are very small so I can’t fit more things in there even if I wanted to. 

In this bag is my card holder which holds my three credit cards and one bank card in the front, a driver’s license, my student card in the back, and a bubble tea rewards card tucked inside . I also have hand cream, one chapstick with SPF, and a lipstick from FRESH. I normally carry my phone with me but my Samsung Note 8 is too large to fit into the bag so I usually just hold it. I always have hand cream and chapstick with me wherever I go because I hate having dry hands and lips. I have one with SPF as my lips have gotten sunburnt a couple of times in the past and the other lipstick is for a slight red tint so I look more awake. 

Some might wonder, do I not need keys? The fact is that I rarely travel alone and if I do, my husband is usually home, so I never bother to bring my home keys. When I travel further, my husband drives me and so I rarely have my car keys in my bag. If you have read my bio in the “About Me’ section on my WordPress page, you will know that I have a one and a half year old son and am expecting another baby this September. Surely I must have a diaper bag that is full of baby related stuff right? The truth is my family and I have not gone out with our son for over two months due to the COVID 19 pandemic so we have unpacked the diaper bag. Even if we do bring one, my husband has a diaper backpack full of my son’s stuff that he carries. 

All of the items in my bag contain some form of text digitally imprinted on them with the exception of my lipstick because all of the print have rubbed off. On my hand cream and chapstick are digitally printed labels that state the brand and ingredients of the product. There’s also a website included which could link to the company’s website. My bubble tea rewards card also has digitally printed text and the company’s URL which could be considered as text technology.

On my credit and bank cards are encrypted information that connects to my bank accounts. My drivers license, which also has my personal health number,  and UBC student card is linked to a digitally identification system. These items show that I live in the city, like to take care of myself, and enjoy bubble tea. 

15 to 20 years ago, which is from 2000 – 2005, this bag will probably look quite similar. There may have been some cash during that time but credit cards were already prevalent then. The only things that would be different would be the pattern of the wallet and the brands of the lipstick and hand cream. All of these things were bought much later than 2005. Due to the limited contents in my bag, I don’t think an archaeologist from the future will get too much information about this temporal period. 

The contents of my bag is pretty much a reflection of who I am. I love Disney and so most of the things that I do are Disney related. I am often seen as charismatic, bubbly and outgoing. I also like a clean and organized environment so I will never let garbage or any bad influence stay in my bag or my life.