Zoe Armstrong – MET

The work for my IP 2 Assignment can be found here.

Usability

Usability is a two-way street between user and system. It encompasses the inherent competencies of each individual user as well as the capacities of the system to “show” the user how to navigate its parts to in turn find success. What is success in usability? According to Dix et al. (1998, p. 162) and Nielson (2003) as cited in Issa & Isaias (2015), success has to do with the “learnability, flexibility, robustness, efficiency, memorability, errors and satisfaction” a system provides its user (p. 33). For a system to have high usability means to support human beings of all backgrounds (race, socio-economic level, age, previous experience with technology, physical ability, etc.) in accomplishing the task they initially set out to use the system for, bringing the user a sense of success without having had too much of a sense of frustration or irritation. A highly usable system provides a clear and guided path for its user to follow, teaching them how to achieve the most favorable outcome for their desired task.

Educational Usability

The biggest difference between usability and educational usability is that ultimately, the goal with the latter is to learn. So though general usability is concerned with learnability, the ways in which human beings acquire information needs to be stressed even further. Learning theories and learner theories should be prioritized upon initial designs of machines and systems. An even clearer understanding that learners are extremely diverse as human beings should be maintained knowing that users will come from all walks of life. For educational usability, there must be an acknowledgement that attempting to define a target audience will be difficult. For a machine or system to be educationally useable and useful, it needs to be able to meet diverse user learning needs.

Usability Gone Wrong

Woolgar (1990) identified many examples of a usability study gone wrong. One of the largest indications of the study or system configuring its users is through the heavy reliance on manuals and technical support.  The study is attempting to test the usability of the machine, not the usability of the manuals and support hotline. “In the event of uncertainty, users are redirected back to sources – either user documentation or the the company technical support hotline – which can re-establish the correct pattern of user action,” (Woolgar, 1990, p. 80). A study determining a level of usability should not already have a “correct pattern of user action,” (Woolgar, 1990, p. 80).

The second indication from Woolgar’s 1990 study of user configuration instead of machine configuration, is the “recurrent commentary on the subjects’ performances,” (p. 85). To collect unbiased and reliable data, study participants need to be placed in an environment that would most closely mimic a typical users environment. A typical user would not have a company employee on their shoulder guiding their next move. In this sense, the observer is configuring the user in what to do next instead of exposing the errors in usability that designers and engineers need to re-configure to meet the needs of users.

Positions of Usability

Issa & Isaias (2015) view usability as a responsibility fulfilled by designers and engineers of the corresponding machine or system. Using beta from the usability evaluation stage, it is the obligation of the company to make changes that will increase the likelihood of users finding success in their desired tasks. This view of usability negates the notion that users are highly diverse human beings who will never all fall into the intended “target audience.”

Woolgar (1990) negates that same notion in stating that it is possible to define “the identity of putative users,” (p. 59). This view of usability places more of the responsibility on users. If a system is highly usable, it will be able to teach and to guide its users to the desired information. It will be able to configure these users so they understand how to find success more quickly each time they use the machine or system.

Perhaps what needs to be considered here between Woolgar and Issa & Isaias is that both their viewpoints need to be examined collectively. Usability involves that ability for the machine or system to be a flexible teacher that can guide users to find satisfaction, a perspective initiated from Issa & Isaias (2015). It also involves the users ability to learn the machine or system’s ways, while being comfortable making errors without becoming defeated, a perspective initiated from Woolgar (1990). So, though positionally these two views are quite different, together, they make a lot of sense.

References:

Issa, T., & Isaias, P. (2015) Usability and human computer interaction (HCI). In Sustainable Design (pp. 19-35). Springer.

Woolgar, S. (1990). Configuring the user: The case of usability trials. The Sociological Review, 38(1, Suppl.), S58-S99.

For this assignment, I have decided to work with the Alberta Education’s Kindergarten to Grade 6 Social Studies curriculum from 1981, from 2005 and the draft  Social Studies curriculum that was released in 2021.

SS Curriculum1981

SS Curriculum2005

SS Curriculum draft

Though Indigenous knowledge and truth and reconciliation should be woven into all school subjects, it is most prominently discussed in Social Studies. The texts we read as students in school guide the way we view the world. They prompt us to think about the people, places and values around us. Often these texts are selected based on curriculum topics. The attention to Indigeneity and Indigenous peoples within these 3 curricula relates to how much our general society (or rather, those attending K-12 public schools) will know and understand about these topics. More emphasis on Indigeneity within school settings can lead to an understanding of the importance of those whose footsteps have marked the land we are on for time immemorial. Thus, I am curious to find out how this emphasis has changed over time.

These curricula are hugely influential to our educational history and to Teacher Professional Development. The focuses of curriculum often determine where teachers spend their energy in terms of professional development. They guide the leadership direction of principals, of districts and ultimately of our public school system as a whole. Because of this, my first question is: to what extent do these curriculums emphasize Indigenous knowledge? For this search I will use the following terms:

• Indigenous
• Aboriginal
• First Nation
• Inuit
• Métis
• Native
• Indian

Here are my results:

*1981 Document is not “searchable” and thus I had to find the keywords myself. Numbers may not be exact.

It is evident based on these results that over time, Alberta Education has begun to emphasize Indigenous history and knowledge as more of a priority. As mentioned on the Indigenous Foundation Terminology page, language evolves over time, as it has in these curriculum documents. I found it especially interesting that in the 2021 draft curriculum the term “Aboriginal” did not even appear once. It is not shocking that it is not found in the 1981 curriculum however, as “this term came into popular usage in Canadian contexts after 1982,” which would have been after the document was released (Indigenous Foundations, n.d.).

As I was searching for terms in the 1981 document, I noted in Grade 3 Topic B: Lifestyles of Canadians in Other Times, that there was much discussion of settlers. Instead of referring to whom the settlers were interacting with as First Nations, Native or even Indian, they chose to use the term “other” (p.35). With so little mentioned about Indigenous folks in this document it is no wonder that at a time when residential schools were still up and running there was so little value placed on understanding and empathy for Indigenous ways of knowing and culture.

The new Social Studies draft curriculum has been criticized heavily for many reasons. In the context of Indigenous peoples, the criticism comes in that “references are too vague and at other times, they are focused on factual knowledge only, not on Indigenous Knowledge systems or perspectives,” (Peck, 2021). So, though the terms are multiple within the document, it is likely missing authentic engagement with Indigeneity and Indigenous peoples. This would be the largest limitation to my search. A word such as “native” was historically used to describe anything that began life somewhere, for example a type of tree or flower. When searching for these terms I am being given quantitative data, however to really answer my question, I would need to dig deeper into the documents to find out in what contexts these terms are or were being used.

– – –

As I have been on my own journey of truth and reconciliation, I have learnt the importance of place for Indigenous people. When we discuss ways in which we can genuinely and authentically engage with Indigenous knowledge and content, we must first understand the place we are situated and its history, especially in relation to Indigenous peoples. Because of this, my second question is: to what extent do these documents emphasize locality and place in relation to Indigenous land and peoples? For this search I will use the terms in my first search as well as:

• Community
• Locality
• Treaty
• Reserve
• Reservation

Here are my results:

*1981 Document is not “searchable” and thus I had to find the keywords myself. Numbers may not be exact.

The 2021 draft curriculum compared to the current curriculum appears to favor “treaty,” “reserve,” and “reservation” more than the 2005 curriculum. On the other hand, it hugely disregards the term “community” as the number of times this term appeared dropped significantly. From this information I could draw the conclusion that in the 2021 draft document,  we are discussing more the terms that our government uses to allow for Indigenous peoples to reside on land that is theirs. I could also attempt to conclude that a focus on what community is and it’s importance is fading.

The 1981 document very clearly favors the term “community.” It very also very clearly neglects almost all mention of any term relating to Indigenous peoples. Without too much further digging, I can conclude that this curriculum advocates and focuses on community however not in relation to Indigenous peoples and knowledge. One of the limitations of my search is that I could have also searched for words like “settler,” “colony,” “European,” so to have some numbers to compare the literal zeros that appear in my results for terms (past and present) relating to Indigenous peoples.

In conclusion, based on these searches, it would appear that we are moving in the right direction, towards truth and reconciliation. In order to continue this movement, it is crucial for the critics to continue to be vocal and to advocate for more, more, more when it comes to Indigenous peoples, knowledge and culture within our public school curricula. The literal erasure of these topics in historical curricula is unmistakable and we’ve got a lot of ground to make up on.

References:

Alberta Education (1981). 1981 Alberta Social Studies Curriculum. Curriculum Branch.

Alberta Education (2005). Social Studies Kindergarten to Grade 12.

Alberta Education (2021). Draft Social Studies Kindergarten to Grade 6 Curriculum.

Indigenous Foundations (n.d.). Terminology. Indigenous Foundations. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/terminology/

Peck, C. (2021, March 29). Analysis of the Draft Alberta K-6 Social Studies Curriculum (Part 1). Carla L. Peck, PhD. https://carlapeck.wordpress.com/2021/03/29/analysis-of-the-draft-alberta-k-6-social-studies-curriculum-part-1/

Final Project

Proposal:

I would like to focus my research around ways in which white educators (specifically in the K-12 public education system) can meaningfully and respectfully provide these opportunities for their students. The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions Calls to Action #62-65 are specifically surrounding Education for Reconciliation. As of 2021, none of these calls to action have been completed (Jewell & Mosby, 2021).

Project:

Transcript of Podcast:

ETEC 521_ Final Project _GOOD COPY (1)

Collaborative Blog

Link to blog

Al Carmichael – What’s in the bag? (Task #1) 

Al and I both have a coaching perspective. I discussed (more briefly) in my Task 1 that in having a volleyball line up card in my bag, it shows that I am physically literate enough to teach physical skills to others. Al went into more detail about the coaching items in his bag as he had many more than I did however, each of the items listed resonated with me. Most specifically the pile of marking that he takes with him for out of town tournaments as he says, we are “not paid to be a coach,” but we are paid to teach and with teaching, comes marking!

Al shared that he typically doesn’t bring a bag around with him. This is where we differ. When teaching and coaching, I have a minimum of 3 bags going. For some reason, I can’t seem to figure out how to go with less. What I really appreciated about how Al approached this activity was that he really leaned into his identity as a coach. He says, “you will find me in the gymnasium a lot, and I’m clearly a coach.” These words ring true to me as well. I got into teaching because I knew I could coach. The relationships built in the gymnasium are some of my favorite. The connections created through sport allow for a different set of skills to be acquired than in the classroom. In a sense sport can be thought of as a text technology where we often rely on oral teachings. Al describes that the technologies, though more traditional, in his bag, create a narrative about him that he is proud of. I too am proud of my identity as a coach. It brings me great joy to share the love of movement, activity and sport with young people.

Lastly, on my Task 1 activity, some of the feedback I received was that I should dive deeper into a single, more specific aspect or perspective rather than brushing across multiple. Al did a great job at leaning into this assignment from the coaching perspective. Though he is evidently also a teacher and student, among many other hats he wears I’m sure, it really gave me a good sense of how much he values the coaching part of teaching. As a younger teacher I am always wanting to have my foot in every pond. Leaning into coaching, leaning into assessment, leaning into inclusion, etc. My takeaway from Al is that it’s okay to dive deeper into one pond as we can’t be experts at everything. A school community needs individuals who specialize in all areas to create a whole school environment.

Jade Lee – Voice to Text (Task #3)

Jade chose to use Speechnotes for this task and I chose to use Google Docs’ speech-to-text function. Both of us had problems. Certain words weren’t picked up properly. Perhaps it was a pronunciation issue, perhaps as Jade mentioned, it was more an issue of connection with the microphones on the devices we chose. Though we both encountered problems, we shared that we wanted to present the original copy of what we had created as it was a more realistic result of what a student using this type of accommodation might produce.

One of the biggest differences I noted between my product and Jade’s was that hers had punctuation. I had never heard of Speechnotes but after checking out the website, one of the first things mentioned, is how to add punctuation to your notes. This is a helpful reminder as the function on Google Docs comes with no built-in explanation, leading to my one, very aggressive, run-on sentence. The seamless ability to add in punctuation afforded Jade the grammatical correctness of capital letters and proper punctuation though she felt as though some of the message was lost when the technology was unable to pick up some of the words she was speaking. Using Google Docs speech-to-text in comparison, I didn’t feel my message was lost however the reader would have had to decipher the end of a sentence on there own, perhaps when a new idea was brought up.

Another point that Jade discussed during this task that there was an opportunity to reflect on what difficulties students using these adaptations might encounter. The educational world often pushes for students who struggle with written work to try these speech to text functions but from what we have encountered through this task, the products created from these tools need heavy review, not only for punctuation and grammar but for overall understanding as well.

Emily MacDougall – Potato Printing (Task #4)

Emily and I both chose to pursue the potato printing activity for this task and it sounds like we had a very similar journey. Emily also did not realize that one would need to carve their letters the opposite direction in order to achieve the desired outcome. Luckily, she did realize this prior to the actual stamping of each of the letters, I on the otherhand did not! Emily had pretty easy letters to adjust and she even mentioned she felt lucky to have not selected a word with more difficult letters that could not be reversed, for example a G. Of course, my word, bagel, was a little trickier! I noted that Melissa Santo also began by carving the letters without thinking they would need to be reversed. Luckily she was able to save it before it got to the printing step. It brought me some peace that so many of us made the same mistake in attempting this almost foreign technology.

Emily and I  chose to describe our potato printing journey in similar ways, providing the viewer with both pictures and a description of our process. Emily used more description alongside each of her photos as though she was reflecting on the process with each one. It created a little but more flow within the story of the task. I broke mine up into a reflection section and a photo section which continues to communicate the message but perhaps in a more chunked fashion. Both ways I can see being appealing to different types of viewers.

We chose to create our prints in different ways. Emily used one potato per letter where as I created my entire word on a single potato. Both, I believe, have their advantages and disadvantages. In using a different potato for each letter, I would imagine the additional space allowed for the letters to be bigger and perhaps less risk for error. This style would likely be more similar to setting up a letter press, in that you’d need to select and place each individual letter. On the other hand having all the letters on a single potato means the spacing between letters remains consistent and you need not worry that one print will look drastically different than the other. It seems though we completed the assignment in a different way, we were both able to reflect and appreciate the invention of the printing press and where we have come to today in regards to print.

Jordon Lovig – Manual Scripts (Task #4)

Jordon’s reflection for the the manual scripts actually triggered more of a connection to my task 3 reflection which was thee voice-to-text task. Jordon’s reflection made me think of a spectrum:

When doing speech-to-text, especially the way it was intended for task 3 (unscripted and more casual), it was so easy for me to just speak my mind, not really worrying about what was coming out. Jordon’s reflection on creating his hand written text, he describes it to be a place where he creates less formal works such as poems or letters. Both of us however can agree that when typing, it often produces a more edited, revised and formal piece of text. Jordon describes writing by hand to be a place to work through thoughts which I agree with and would argue that speaking those thoughts also acts as a nice place to reflect and work through things.

As Jordon mentions, one of the privileges of writing by hand is that the writer is tasked with making corrections on the fly. In a sense, it continues to sit in a different place on the spectrum than speaking and typing as both those methods of creation typically involve editing the piece after or in the case of oral sharing, sometimes not at all. The challenge Jordon brings up about hand fatigue speaks to me as I choose to take notes on my iPad by hand. When I am really getting into it, I often find my hand tires from writing things down and it needs a little break. This is probably a challenge I should think about more for my students when asking them to complete an assignment by hand.

Tamara Jabbour – An Emoji Story (Task #6)

Tamara and I approached this task similarly. We both decided to start with the title as it is either habit or seemed like the most natural approach to us. As I was reading my colleagues attempts on this task, I found it so interesting that almost all of us were very committed to hoping that we could describe our narratives in a way that would allow the viewer to guess them correctly. Though this was not at all part of our mark, we were all fairly committed to ensuring the visual could be interpreted accurately versus just using what emojis made the most sense to us in describing the film/show/book. Both Tamara and I did not selectively choose our movies based on how easy they would be to describe, something we both wish we would have done.

It was really interesting to see the way Tamara leaned heavily into the Bolter (2001) reading from week 6. As someone who did not reference Bolter in this task, I appreciated the ways she was able to use direct quotes within her own personal reflection. They were integrated seamlessly into her own words and supported her thoughts and observations. Providing so many references gave her reflection a more academic tone which varied from mine which was more familiar as I also chose to lean into my experience as a teacher.

Tamara is also one of the few students in our section who chose to use Google Sites as opposed to the UBC Blog (WordPress). I thought the navigation on her Google Site was a lot easier and more user-friendly compared to exploring my colleagues entries on WordPress. That being said, the Google Site is navigated more like a website where as the blog has the chronological feature that makes it more “blog-like.” Initially, I had created a Google Site to present my ETEC 540 assignments but then soon realized the commenting feature on WordPress was much easier to find and use. For the purpose of connecting with classmates, I decided to try out WordPress though it was less familiar and less user-friendly for me. Tamara included a Padlet as a way for classmates to make comments which I thought was a creative way to get around the lack of commenting function. Both sites prove to serve the purpose of this course in different ways.

Simin Rupa – Golden Record Curation Quiz Data (Task #9)

Simin’s experienced for this task differed quite a bit from my own. For most of this task, I was overwhelmed. I wasn’t sure where to start or what conclusions I could really draw from the data. Simin on the other hand was able to provide a really fantastic commentary on the nodes and edges present in the images. She was able to discuss the aspect of communities, something that I stayed away from for my lack of understanding.

Quantitative data was something that came up for both Simin and I. We were both decided that the graphs represented only quantitative data and there was no real way to decipher the why behind the choices we had made for songs using only the data. Simin and I were both able to agree that to some extent, null choices were present in the data through a lack of selection. For Simin, in not matching her desired criteria, a song would be omitted. Again, we can not assume nor understand through the data, the reason why our fellow classmates also did not select certain songs but quantitatively there is some evidence present.

My favorite part of Simin’s task here however was the metaphor she used to compare the graphs of data to a city, she describes the way we travel into a city to seek connection just as the songs that were selected more often appeared within the center of the graph as they were more connected to our classmates through their selection. As someone who struggled with interpreting and finding a lot of meaning in this data, the city analogy made a lot of sense to me and allowed me the affordance of reflecting further on this task through a different lens.

Speculative Futures

September 2040:

This will be my first year piloting the new differentiation robot: Eddie. Eddie was designed as an AI teacher’s assistant with a specific focus on identifying learning needs in individual students and outputting resources at each of their levels. Eddie can quickly draft up a report on where each student is sitting in each subject, can identify areas of opportunity, areas of strength and tangible steps the teacher can take to aid with the students growth.

Eddie was created to support each student in getting the individual attention they need without requiring 24 teachers for a 24 student class. I feel extremely lucky that my classroom was selected to pilot this AI and am looking forward to being able to focus more on supporting the social and emotional needs of each of my students while Eddie takes care of curating accurate pedagogical resources for me. My students are thrilled to have a new AI buddy in the class that will assist them throughout the year.

June 2040:

Though challenging, this was one of the most rewarding years of my teaching career. With the help of Eddie, I was able to clearly and quickly identify the learning needs of my students, scaffold their learning appropriately and help them find success. Not only that, but I was able to build extremely strong relationships with each of them and I was able to spend the time helping them to grow as social and emotional human beings. Eddie provided the answers to all my questions about each of my students reading, writing and problem-solving levels. Eddie helped me to create assessment that matched students strengths and their favorite ways to show their learning. Though students still failed, they were rarely defeated. Eddie was there to provide them with a new resources to try that better matched their learning style and passions. The balance between the AI platform in Eddie and the social and emotional support I was able to provide students was the perfect setting for learning, discovering and growing.

August 2045:

I have worked successfully with Eddie over the last 4 years. There is no denying the success that students have found by working with AI that can identify each of their personal needs. Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, students were behind but I can confidently say that they are now caught up and in fact ahead in their abilities. Students are thriving and have found so much joy in learning.

September 2045:

I have just been notified that school districts across that country have been told that the government now deems teachers dispensable. Thousands have been let go as they no longer feel a physical teacher is needed with the revolution of Eddie. Eddie is able to produce all the materials students need for learning. What worries me most is that though Eddie knows more about each student than a human teacher ever could, Eddie is unable to deal with the social and emotional needs that often take priority over curriculum when they arise. Students won’t any longer have the adult role model in front of them guiding them in how to deal with tough situations.

June 2045:

2045 was a record year for absences in schools across all provinces and territories, across all grades and all schools. Enrollment in public schools has dropped by nearly 75% for the upcoming school year. School counsellors were overwhelmed with the demand for supports and over 50% of them have taken mental health leaves or have decided to leave the profession. School fights saw an increase, student isolation saw an increase, bullying saw an increase and students abilities to show empathy towards one another showed a large decrease. Though students continue to thrive academically, socially and emotionally they have been defeated.

Attention Economy

I related a lot to this week’s topic. I often find myself wasting what could be, very useful time on social media thanks to the autoplay feature and it was interesting to listen to both Harris and Tufecki dissect and present arguments on how dangerous features like autoplay can be. What really stood out to me from Harris’ (2017) Talk was when he said the goal for these advertisements is to race for our attention. Our attention is something we ultimately have control over, yet when it comes to social media, so many of us tend to lose this control.

This losing of control was something I felt when participating in the online game of User Inyerface. Here is my initial screenshot of completing the game:

What I got the most stuck on was:

• Green buttons representing things I should not be clicking or things that would send me backwards.
• Having a constant timer… as a competitive person this made me frustrated. More on this later.
• Having to erase the placeholder text before writing in my own. I think typically this deletes on its own?
• The select all and unselect all buttons mischievously placed within the other options.
• The months not being in order for entering a birthday as well as the slider for age not showing the number until you let go… I mean, come on!

Because I am rather competitive, I decided I would try the game a few times to beat my time. The game still caught me a number of times as I am just so used to doing things or rather clicking and typing things in a certain way. This muscle memory could prove to be quite dangerous and I could make for an easy target for some dark patterns. That said, here is my best time:

Harris brought up that the most common way that young people communicate is through Snapchat (2017). As a middle school teacher, I see this all the time. Students sending absolutely random photos of things to one another with little to no communicative intent. The amount of time these “messages” take from their daily lives has to be increasing everyday. Tufeki (2017) describes the way that humans no longer understand the way these algorithms work. It’s a scary feeling thinking about losing control of these algorithms knowing there is an upcoming generation of humans who rely heavily on social media to communicate and form what they think are connections with one another. It is important to have these conversations with students today to equip them to better handle the inevitable power that technology has and will continue to have.

References:

Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention?language=en

Tufekci, Z. (2017). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads?language=en

A Network of Texts

In week 6, when we discussed the breakout of the visual, one of the comments I made was that my grade 6 students really struggled this year when interpreting graphs and visuals. This assignment allowed me to step into their shoes because woah.. this graph?! Let’s just say the world of data is not one I am familiar with analyzing.

The responses and groupings of similar responses are only similar because they were selected through the quiz. Though the reasons for selection may have been similar too, these reasons are not at all reflected in the visualization. John and Akshaya (Code.org, 2017) discuss in their video  about search, that every click adds strength or weight to the nodes of search engines. To the search engine, these clicks carry importance but not necessarily justification. It is easy to click your way into a rabbit hole, however this network of clicks doesn’t always mean you’ve found what you’re searching for. In the same sense, though the visualization of song selections is neat, the only “reasoning” it provides is that for SOME reason, we decided on the same track to be selected.

To some extent the tracks that were not selected or were selected less frequently are represented in the visualization. Nodes that have less edges indicate that they were not selected as many times. For example, we can see that track 4 appears to only have one edge while track 12 looks to have about 8 edges. Though this indicates the amount of times a track was or was not selected and in turn how much weight it has, there is still no reasoning behind it. The data here is very quantitative, as is the perhaps the search engines that we use everyday.

References:

Code.org. (2017, June 13). The Internet: How Search Works (video file). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/LVV_93mBfSU

WEEK 8