Task 6: An Emoji Story
https://blogs.ubc.ca/duncman/2024/06/22/task-6-emoji-story/
Hi Duncan,
As soon as I saw the desert emoji for your title, I guessed Dune. And then as I looked through your other emojis, in particular the planets and the worm, I knew for sure you were talking about Dune. One thing that I found interesting was that you mentioned you had to group the emojis, rather than having individual emojis or having them placed one after the other. To be honest, I did not see the spacing between your emojis and thought you had your emojis all in one line. I was going to comment on how your approach was really different from mine because I separated my emojis into different lines in order to illustrate the different events. Upon closer inspection, I do see groupings in your emojis and can make sense of the separate events. Isn’t it interesting how a writing system is not just the letters and the words, but it also takes into account the spacing and punctuation? Imagine telling an entire story using emojis and no spaces and how that can lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
Task 7: Mode-bending
https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540hyc/2024/06/30/task-7-mode-bending/
Hi Julia,
Thank you for introducing genially to me as I had never heard of it or used it before. This is a great way to use hyperlinks to allow users to interact with the content and further explore areas of interest. Even though it was my first time navigating genially, I had no problems understanding the different emojis and functions. While I agree that it may be confusing for people who are not familiar with digital interactive mediums, I think it was quite user-friendly in the sense that users could simply click around to find out where all the links led to. I can definitely see myself incorporating this in the classroom when I ask students to analyze literary texts and I can provide further support by including links to word definitions or contextual explanations. Your approach was very different from mine because I was focusing on the characteristics of the objects themselves and presenting them in different mediums. I like that you chose to link to the internet and provide more information that could not have been presented through the pictures. I think it’s also really important that you are allowing the user to choose what they want to learn more about. This is another big difference from my approach as I did not incorporate interactivity or autonomy for my users.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/metrlim/2024/08/07/task-7-mode-bending-whats-in-my-bag/
Hi Rachel,
I love that we both decided to recreate the sounds of the objects, but I am amazed by how you experimented with different technologies and you were able to present the audio in an interactive and visual way. On the other hand, I went with the very traditional route of just recording the different sounds and actions and posting a video file. I like your approach better because then the user can choose which ones to listen to again without having to go through an entire file. You also brought up a really good point about how the sounds we chose may be stereotypical or unorthodox. For example, I chose to represent my wallet with the sounds of coins clinking, while you chose a hitting sound with your card (or wallet?). For my project, I only included sounds from objects that I thought would have distinct sounds and I completely ignored my USB. After hearing your USB sound, I had an “Oh yeah!” moment because I completely forgot that very obvious sound when inserting a USB into a computer! That says a lot about how it’s been so long since I actually used my USB.
Task 8: Golden Record Curation Assignment
https://blogs.ubc.ca/texttech540/category/task8/
Hi Lachelle,
I like the very different approach you had for this task. As a result of my very limited musical background, I trusted the creators to have selected a great variety of songs from different geographical regions and with different instruments and styles. Therefore, I focused on choosing tracks that had personal meaning to me or that represented the project’s message of peace and joy. Whereas I selected the tracks based on emotions and values, you were focusing more on their musicality. You mentioned the importance of choosing different instruments in the hopes that alien lifeforms would be able to hear the sound frequencies. That was something that I had not considered at all. I was so focused on how to represent humanity that I completely disregarded the audience. I also really liked what you said on Steve’s post about how “by the time any life form ostensibly finds this Golden Record, music will likely have changed to something beyond our current comprehension.” Indeed, it is interesting to think about how the selection of tracks would change as time goes on. If we were to do this task again in 10 years, would we still choose the same 10 tracks?
Task 9: Network Assignment Using Golden Record Curation Quiz Data
https://blogs.ubc.ca/warrenwong/2024/07/16/task-9-network-assignment/
Hi Warren,
I was curious to read your approach to this task because the results of my analysis showed that we had the most similarities in our choices – 6! It’s interesting that the most similarities between two students was 7. The data was so confusing I did not even attempt to figure that out. I also liked that you looked into the most popular tracks while I was just focusing on how the students were grouped and how many connections were happening in each group. The top tracks were a surprise for me because I thought that the orchestral classics would be the most popular due to their wider exposure. Like you, I found it frustrating that we didn’t have enough data to analyze why the tracks were chosen or not chosen in order to create more meaningful connections. We were asked to provide qualitative insights during Task 8, but unfortunately that data was not part of the input for Palladio. It would be interesting to look up alternative AI tools that allow and consider these data points when making correlations.
Task 11: Text-to-Image
https://blogs.ubc.ca/carlodefazio/2024/07/31/task-11-text-to-image/
Hi Carlo,
I enjoyed reading your post because I was curious what other prompts people used and the kinds of results they had on Craiyon. One difference I immediately noticed was that your prompts were very specific and detailed, whereas I had very general prompts like “boy with sports car” or “family cooking together”. I thought my prompts were not specific enough and that was why the images generated weren’t exactly what I was looking for and did not do a good job representing different races and genders. However, after seeing your results I now realize that AI is just not very good at generating images still due to a lack of input data. It would be interesting to look into how old Craiyon is, and how it would evolve in a few years’ time to be more accurate in its representations. Conversely, are there other AI image generators that are a lot more accurate and is there a reason for that?
Task 12: Speculative Futures
https://jotisingh.weebly.com/tasks
Hi Joti,
I enjoyed reading your narrative for this task because we had a similar prompt. I also created an instrument in order to impose control on society. However, whereas mine had the ability to read people’s intentions and prevent crime, yours was to stifle free thought and suppress dissent. This got me thinking about what we already use in society to numb the mind. There are already tactics such as playing peaceful music and shining blue light at train stations to calm people down and dissuade them from jumping in front of a train to commit suicide. There are also various drugs that take away people’s ability to think and feel. Several systems in society suppress creativity and critical thinking. It really makes you wonder if too much harmony suggests that people are not thinking enough. This is like a Black Mirror episode where you think the concept is absolutely crazy, but then as you think about it more you realize that it is already happening to a certain extent in some parts of the world. I also really like what you said about how technological advancements should be provoking thought and innovation. However, in the wrong hands, it could be the tool that completely stifles that. I think this is really similar to the education system and how certain educators teach compliance and reproduction rather than innovation. Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
Reflection
This was a really interesting assignment in the sense that I got to see how other students approached the different tasks and it made me reflect on my own considerations or oversights. My major takeaway from this assignment was that I was more focused on my own personal perceptions and opinions and neglected to think about how my audience would perceive the information.
For Task 7, I really liked how Rachel and Julia both focused on interactivity and autonomy for the user. This is something that I did not consider when I was choosing my modes. I was focusing too much on the objects themselves and trying to portray their characteristics and texts in interesting ways. As an educator, I made the mistake of focusing on the content rather than on the students. What’s the point of using technology to try and present the information in different ways if I’m not considering the accessibility and usability for my students?
Similarly, for Task 8, I had another “Oh yeah!” moment, when I read Lachelle’s comment about choosing different instruments and vocals so that the aliens would be able to hear them. Again, I was so focused on trying to pick tracks that represent humanity that I neglected to consider whether or not the audience would even be able to hear the tracks. As the saying goes, my content would probably fall on deaf ears because I didn’t consider my audience.
Another oversight I had was not choosing a website template that allowed users to post comments on every page. I spent all my time completing the tasks and did not realize my webpages did not allow comments until Steph mentioned it on my homepage. As a result, my fellow classmates had to post their comments on my homepage and I think that really took away from their experience of reading and directly responding to my tasks. After looking through all of the other websites, I really like how some people visually laid out their tasks all on one page for users to click through, and some pages were very easy to comment on and interact with others. My own website, upon reflection, was not user-friendly at all.
This is similar to what Joti mentioned in his Task 12 about how technology is a tool that can either encourage creativity and innovation or it is used to stifle thought and imagination. For several of the tasks, I chose what I was comfortable with and decided to use technological tools out of convenience and familiarity. Other than Tasks 9 and 11 where I tried new tools and pushed myself to understand the technology, I was focusing more on presenting my content. This is not to say that it is necessary to try new tools all the time. Instead, what I need to do as an educator is to focus on my audience more and think about ways to make my content more accessible for my students. If my current toolkit is not enough to provide students with multi-modality and autonomy, then I need to think about other ways to present my information.