ETEC 540
WEEK 1
What’s in my bag?
What’s in my bag? Well… turns out more than I thought! I decided to use my everyday school backpack for this activity.
In the centre of the image is my planning binder. On the front of it is a resource for trauma informed classrooms from a professional learning session that I took during my first year teaching. I keep it at the front of my binder to remind me that my number one goal as an educator is to ensure my students feel safe and loved in my classroom. I chose to centre my image around my planning binder because well, it tends to be the centre of my life. As a newer-to-the-profession educator, I am still struggling to find that work-life balance.
On the right side of the image is most of my technology. My Macbook, iPad and chargers, that travel with me everywhere I go just in case I have a moment to get a few things done. I would like to use my iPad more for personal use, like getting better at Procreate, however as of late it is mostly to take notes and catch up on twitter.
Above my binder is my University of Alberta pencil case, where I completed my BEd. This was something I was so proud to be able to purchase and use. Above my pencil case are a few new masks, I think we all know what these are for.
The left side of the image is a bunch of knick knacks, many of which I wasn’t even aware were in my bag!
- My “Happy Birthdae Harry” wallet (I am a true gryffindor, through and through).
- My Airpods that I like to use to call my Mom when I take my “mental health walks.”
- A pair of sunglasses in case it’s sunny outside for my lunchtime supervision.
- My school keys and rainbow lanyard so students subtly know I am a safe person to talk to.
- Expo markers and flair pens because after all, I am a teacher.
- Some throat lozenges because you never know when that throat is going to go!
- A Walmart receipt and an old volleyball lineup card from coaching.
- My favorite perfume (You by Glossier)
- A small bottle of advil because I tend to get migraines every once in a while.
- Three stones that a friend bought me for. A rose quartz for unconditional love, a tourmaline black for protection and a sunstone for joy and personal power.
I would consider many of the items inside my bag to be text technologies. The obvious, my Macbook and iPad. Though similar, they promote different forms of creativity for me. I use my Macbook to create presentations, resources and respond to emails. My iPad is great for scrolling twitter and taking notes. I love the pencil feature and prefer to create mind maps, drawings and doodles with it. My planning binder is less “high tech” but a text technology none-the-less. It keeps me organized and on top of what I need to do each day with my students. Though everything in that binder was, at one point, digital, for me they are items that need to be printed. I attempted to have my planning binder on my iPad this year but immediately got overwhelmed that I couldn’t see my whole week at once. My Airpods are also a text technology that promote oral text. Through them I listen to podcasts, my favorite artists and the voices and stories of my loved ones.
The items in my bag display that I am privileged enough to engage with multiple literacies in my everyday life. My planning binder, Macbook and iPad indicate that in multiple different forms, I get to read and write. They also indicate that I am a digitally literate person. I have the skills required to use these pieces of technology. The Airpods indicate that I get to listen to information and share it with others. Even the volleyball line-up card shows that physically, I am literate enough to share my knowledge of a sport with others. The trauma-informed resource shows that I remain conscious of my cultural literacy. Knowing that I have my own needs and that those needs will be different for every single student, every single day walking through the door of my classroom.
This is a photo of my bag. It’s a backpack but has a long strap that can be worn over the shoulder too. The backpack part was very important to be because I am definitely a function-first kind of gal. It was my first-ever real leather purchase. The most I had every spent on a bag. I was hoping it would allow me to stand out a bit from all the other 500 hundred backpacks that walk the halls on students backs. It is also designed and created by a local business in the Edmonton area. It’s a sophisticated bag that I was hoping would help me to seem more like an organized professional. All things considered I am pretty organized, and I am a professional but the reality is that the outward appearance of my bag does act as a shield to the chaos that is sometimes occurring internally.
I enjoyed reflecting through this exercise. I lug this bag around with my every. single. day. The items inside of it are not by any means the most important things in my life, however in my career, they are items that I could not be successful without.
Defining Terms and Introductions
Defining Terms
Without consulting any resources, here are my initial thoughts on the terms text and technology.
Text: Any form of communication involving reading. Though I myself am a digital native, I prefer these “texts” to exist as something with pages that I can turn. That said, text can also be in the form of a shop sign, of a recipe, a postcard, a tik tok caption, etc.
Technology: Any form of hardware or software used in the digital space. We often claim technology to be something that has the ability to increase our competencies in any area we want.
WEEK 2
Language as Technology: Spoken Language
As a French immersion teacher, the hardest part of my job is getting my students to speak the their second language with one another. Because of this, I was really looking forward to Module 2. One of the things that Boroditsky (June 2017) discusses in her presentation is that some languages have genders. French is one of those languages. Though not quite as important in the oral form, my students are always finding it challenging to know and remember the gender of every noun so they are able to conjugate and form agreement accordingly. Another challenge we face with French is for students who don’t identify with gender. Some resources have come out offering more gender neutral French pronouns but more is needed to be done to bring this extremely gendered language into 2022. Another topic Boroditsky (2011) discusses in her article, How language shapes thought, is that bilinguals change how they see the world based on the language they are speaking. I would love to try an activity with my students where some complete it in French and others in English to see what differences arise.
As I was completing the readings and listening to the videos for this Module, I couldn’t help but think about the many Indigenous languages and dialects that were lost through residential schools. “But many more Indigenous languages are critically endangered – they have only a few hundred or a few dozen speakers who are quite elderly. When those speakers die, the language could die with them.” (Anderson, 2018, p. 280). Boroditsky (2017) discusses the link between language and culture. With so much loss of language, there too is such a loss of culture. So much of the information that Boroditsky (2017) shares from her research centers more around languages that, to some extent, exist in the form of writing. This makes them easier to preserve. Of the 5 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the section of Language and Culture, only 2 have been fulfilled. (Jewell & Mosby, n.d.) We need to act more quickly on these calls to action to allow for more preservation of these languages and ultimately of Indigenous culture.
References:
Anderson, C. (2018). Essentials of linguistics. McMaster University.
Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65.
Boroditsky, L. (June 2017). [Video]. How the languages we speak shape the way we think.
Jewell, J. & Mosby, I. (n.d.) Calls to action accountability: A 2021 status update on reconciliation. The Yellowhead Institute. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/trc/
WEEK 3
Language as Technology: Written Language
What effects has writing has on human thought processes?
As Gnanadesikan (2011) discusses, writing was ultimately invented to help humans remember information. Because of this, thought processes were able to gain in complexity as individuals no longer had to hold everything inside their brains. They were able to use written resources to support their theories, discoveries and adventures. Though Plato believed that writing gave the illusion of wisdom while fostering forgetfulness (Haas, 2013), I believe that it allowed for expansion of knowledge on certain topics. It allowed thought processes to expand beyond what an individual was capable of remembering.
Does it weaken memory? If so, does this matter?
In our digital age, I am more of the opinion that it matters less. When I reflect on the students in my class, some of them have “stronger” memories than others. That being said, those who lack in memory capability are typically quite good little researchers. With the answer to every question at our fingertips, I think memory is becoming less and less important and being able to research, be resourceful and think critically are more important skills. I try to provide more opportunities for students in my classroom to gain experience and expertise in these areas versus activities that require them to work with their memory.
As mentioned above, Plato may disagree with my teaching style on this one.
Is rote learning of any use in literate cultures with easy and affordable access to various methods of information storage?
Yes and no. Yes because a strong memory and body of knowledge within one’s own brain is going to make it faster for them to accomplish certain tasks. Meeting deadlines might be easier for these individuals if the skills and information they require to complete a task is already within them. No because with the right skills, all information can now be found within seconds. It might not be as timely, however I am of the belief that all humans are capable to learn anything they desire to.
How has technology of writing change the act of teaching?
Hugely. It is not longer acceptable to provide students with information in only the oral form. I can’t tell you how many times I have to repeat a direction to my students for them all to hear it and understand what needs to get done. But, the second a put a page number on the board, they know that task that needs to be accomplished.
We talk a lot of different learning styles and how as educators we can meet students who ingest information in a number of different ways. The constantly changing world of educational technology and more specifically writing technology has made it (in my opinion), easier for students to share their ideas and knowledge in the written form. Advancements in writing technology have made learning more accessible for learners.
On the flip side of the coin, writing technologies have also changed the dynamic in the classroom. Instead of worrying about students passing notes (which is also a writing technology), we now have the struggle of making sure students are on task and using their laptops and tablets responsibly. This is my first year having my own classroom laptop cart. It makes it easy to use technology in my daily lessons but it also allows provides a distraction for students who struggle to keep on task. Digital citizenship is a crucial 21st century skill that the advancement of writing technology has reminded educators we cannot ignore.
Task: Voice to Text
For this text I made 2 attempts, once in English, which is my first language, and once in French which is my second language. I teach French immersion so I am fluent but I learnt as a young kid so my accent is not perfect.
My first observation is that there are 13 different options for English and only 1 option for French. Though English is more largely spoken, there is a significant difference in the dialect of French spoken here in Canada compared to France, compared to Cameroon for example.
I would consider mistakes in these texts to be either the appearance of a different word than that which I said out loud, the absence of words uttered or the addition of words that were not said. The most common mistakes within both the texts are words that I likely did not enunciate enough. Because the task was to speak unscripted, I stuttered at times with what I wanted to say next and that is where the software made a problem. In the French text specifically, anglicisms that I use often did not record well and the software instead stuck in the closest sounding French word. There were far more errors in the French text than the English.
Had I scripted this text prior to speaking it, I would have made edits along the way and it likely would have sounded more put together. I was describing the activities I did this past weekend so I would have taken more time to reflect on each of them and the things that I felt were most important to mention. Instead, I spoke them without any preparation and what came out resembles a little more like word vomit than I’d like to admit. As Gnanadesikan (2011) mentioned in this week’s reading, writing is usually held to a higher prestige and we take more time to craft it and review it. We typically don’t do this with oral language. What comes out is typically more natural and with less of a thought behind it.
I think oral storytelling and written storytelling differ considerably. With oral storytelling there is more wiggle room. The presenter can read the audience and make adjustments as they go. The story has the ability to evolve and change a little bit each time it is being told. Written story-telling remains consistent. Once printed, it rarely evolves unless a new edition comes out. Though Schmandt-Besserat (2009) shared that there the two major systems for humans to connect and express are art and writing, I would argue that orality is even more significant.
English Text:
French Text:
References:
Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).
Haas, C. (2013). “The Technology Question.” In Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy. Routledge. (pp. 3-23).
Schmandt-Besserat, D. (2009). “Origins and Forms of Writing.” In Bazerman, C. (Ed.). Handbook of research on writing: History, society, school, individual, text. New York, NY: Routledge.
WEEK 4
The Mechanization of Writing
Task 4: Potato Printing!
This task took me back to art class. I decided to use my very favorite food as my word for this activity: bagel.
Was there something particularly challenging in the process?
Initially things got off to a solid start. I had watched the tutorial so I knew what I was in for however prior to this activity, I had never created potato stamps. The toughest part was definitely carving out the small holes in the letters of “B” and “A.” It was equally as challenging to produce the curve on the “B” and “G” with a pearing knife.
How much time did it take for you to create the stamps?
It took me about 45 minutes from start to finish. Perhaps had I slowed down, the stamps would have had cleaner lines or looked more symmetrical but I was too excited to see the product!
Have you notice anything particular about the letters that you have chosen to reproduce?
Having to move so slowly through the carving of each letter, I got very familiar with the shapes in the letters. As a grade 6 teacher, I am always looking for ways to bring math into the everyday life of my students and this proved to be a cool opportunity! The “B” resembles two half circles, the “G” is nearly an oval, the “A” a triangular shape, the “E” similar to a rectangle. I’ve never spent so much time thinking about a single letter until this activity.
Considering the time and effort that took you to create a 5-letter word, how do you feel about the mechanization of writing?
I feel grateful that the process of writing and sharing our thoughts and ideas has evolved to the place it is now. As we discussed last week and as Lamb & McCormick (2020) discussed in their podcast episodes, literate cultures did not emerge until the mass production of books, which wasn’t until the invention of the printing press. In order for people to learn to read, they needed access too the materials to do so. The reality is that access to books is still limited in many places so one should be considerate of the great privilege that comes with being able to read and write and make use of the technologies that support these two skills.
And as for my potato printing journey…
Attempt #1:
Attempt #2:
Side by side:
If at this point you’re wondering if I have realized that in cutting the letters out from left to write, it will cause the stamp to be backwards… I haven’t.
Time to stamp!
It was however, at this point that I realized something was not quite right.
And it was here that I realized the immense significance of the title to the short film we watched this week, “Upside Down, Left to Right.”
References:
Lamb, R. & McCormick, J. (2010-Present). Stuff to Blow Your Mind [Audio Podcast] iHear Radio. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind-21123915/episode/the-invention-of-the-book-part-63031174/
WEEK 5
Computer-based Writing: Early Hypertext Theory
My very first Twine:
The inspiration for this story came from some of the debacles I have faced in the last month. “June is always a tough month for teachers,” I remember my Mom sharing that with me my very first year teaching. She wasn’t wrong!
My strategy for this activity was to try to take my own story and make it as relatable for other teachers as possible. I really enjoyed the casual language that was used in The temple of No so I knew I wanted something that felt similar and used humor. I reflected upon things that I often get distracted with when attempting to do school work on the weekends… fun activities like pedicures, indulging in my favorites like beer and ice cream, watching too much Netflix and playing with my dog.
Creating this game/story on twinery.org was quite user-friendly. I decided to number my passages instead of giving them titles to keep my paths organized and easy to remember. Because this was my first experience creating something like this, I struggled to figure out how to add in fun elements like music or photos. Because I hadn’t created an account nor did I ever press “save” somewhere, I was constantly scared I would lose my progress. This made me hesitant to try out different features or buttons within the editing page.
Before this week, I had no knowledge of hypertext. The explanation that Bolter (2001) used of webpages functioning as their own but also as places along a path helped me to gain an understanding of how in depth a concept hypertext is. Twinery.org was a great hands-on and visual experience that added to my understanding of this weeks topic.
References:
Bolter, Jay David. (2001). Writing space: computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. New York, NY: Routledge.
WEEK 6
The Breakout of the Visual
An Emoji Story
For this activity, I relied mostly on ideas and larger concepts of the film. I had just seen this film the other day so the plot was quite fresh in my mind which made the task easier and more difficult at the same time. All the details were still very prominent so I struggled with what information was the most important that should be included in my Emoji Story. I could have included more detail related to the plot however, this would lend room and require so much more interpretation. Kress (2013) discussed words as being like empty entities that require readers to interpret and make meaning with. I feel this less with words and more with diagrams, images and other forms of visuals.
I used my iPhone for this activity. When texting, the software automatically suggest emojis to use for certain words so I was able to use this to my advantage when re-creating the plot of this movie. Making use of emoji’s more than once in my story really shows who the main character is and what the plot centers around.
I began with the title because that makes the most sense in my mind. Maybe I was following the “fixed order” of things that Kress (2013) discussed. I also couldn’t figure out a way to communicate via emoji if I put the title as my last line instead of my first, that it was in fact the title and not the conclusion to the plot.
As I was completing my readings and this activity this week, I couldn’t help but reflect on the experience of our 21st century learners. My grade 6s for example really struggled this year with interpreting diagrams and images in social studies. We had to work hard on the concept of interpretation and of what message the author was trying to communicate by using this visual. Though this was challenging for them, they much preferred a page of visuals to a page of text. I would get big sighs from them when we would turn the page to find long paragraphs of words. My students have constant exposure to visuals (Instagram, Snapchat, Netflix, Google, etc.) and so one would think their ability to look at them critically would be stronger. Just as the quote from Luke (2003) about Industrial-era schools, we continue to place such importance on their reading abilities (specifically of text and words) and not necessarily with new communication technologies. Students frequently fall short when it comes to “reading” visuals. These visuals that dominate the world around us and will very likely continue to.
References:
Kress (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.
WEEK 7
Literacy and Literacies
Mode-Blending Task:
What’s in my bag? Stop-Motion Edition!
I have always wanted to created a stop-motion video and this felt like a great opportunity to try it out. I used the app Stop Motion Studio to create this video. It was really user friendly and easy for me to figure out. Using the New London Group’s 1996 Framework, I have reflected on the creation of my video:
Audio Design – I had to make sure that what I wanted to say fit within the frames that it was displayed during the video. Because I recorded the audio after the fact, this was definitely the most challenging part. In my attempt from Task 1, there was much more room for additional detail as I didn’t have time or space constraints on what I wanted to “say” to describe each item.
Linguistic Design – For this video, I used a more every-day dialect and wasn’t as worried about using an eloquent level of language. I wanted it to feel more like a conversation I was having with myself compared to my first attempt in Task 1 which was more formal, more edited and more rehearsed.
Visual Design – The research I had done online suggested keeping the same frame for the entire video so I went in that direction. I chose to bring forward each item into the foreground with the backpack always remaining in the background to give light and importance to each individual object in the scene. The order in which I presented each item followed a similar order of my first attempt in Task 1 where the items of most importance were presented first.
Gestural Design – At first I thought about not including any of my body in the film however upon further reflection, I realized that it would be important to see my hand reaching into and out of the bag as well as holding the items. Items don’t simply float so that gave a little bit of perspective to the video. This also made the video a little more familiar and ideally allows the viewer to connect with it more by seeing actual human action.
Benefits & Challenges
One of my favorite parts of the New London Group’s paper was the frequent celebration of differences and their discussion about specifically, what schools can do to promote differences and the need for learning processes to recruit subjectivities (1996). I believe that this is a benefit of mode-changing. It allows for more interests, purposes and intentions to be built into learning, creating and ultimately designing. It is also an opportunity for “Transformed Practice,” which was also discussed my the New London Group (1996). Allowing space to take knowledge or information already acquired and create something new with it. As a designer and learner, I was able to become extremely familiar with the information I was working with.
A challenge of mode-changing may be in the time that it requires. From the perspective of a middle-school teacher, I can only imagine attempting to ask a colleague to make a stop-motion video with me to present the nutrient cycle to students. We are already so short on time and only have so many preps in a week that for most, the simplest way is going back to basics and presenting information to students in un-redesgined ways. One of the points the New London Group makes is a need for metalanguage and how teachers need to be motivated to work with this (1996). Similar things can be said for mode-changing. With the right attitude, it can be a lot of fun, however many may considerate daunting and time consuming.
In an ideal world, teachers would be provided with enough time and access to create multimodal resources that would engage learners across a broad array of subjectivities. Until then, we keep fighting the good fight!
References:
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.
WEEK 8
The Politics of Text
Golden Record Curation
This assignment was the most challenging for me so far. Because I don’t have a musical background, I wasn’t too sure where to start. Only two of the record’s 27 musical tracks were familiar to me. I reflected a lot about what Tim Ferris had to say in the 2019 podcast episode. He mentioned a few key points that I tried to play off of in my selection of 10 tracks. The first that this record was to be a message of peace. Because of this, when wavering between a few songs, I would select those that sounded more peaceful to me. The second point he made was that the record was to represent music from all around the world. I tried to maintain this with my selections. The last was the point made about the way in which music can communicate the human experience and can be interpreted in so many different ways. This last point really allowed me to reflect on what music really is and how it could sound or even feel to someone or something that cannot hear in the same way humans do.
I began by downloading each of the songs into Serato. If you’ve never heard of Serato, it is a DJ and music production software that can analyze songs. It gives the listener information about the key and the beats per minute (BPM) of a track. This allowed me to narrow down my track selections with a little more precision than simply if I liked the song.
Here are my 10 picks from the Golden Record:
- Bach, “Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin, performed by Arthur Grumiaux. This track was analyzed by Serato to be the slowest song on the Golden Record with a BPM of 70. Though a slower song, it still sounds quite upbeat leading in a more peaceful and even hopeful direction. Bach was from Europe so this track was also selected to represent that part of the world.
- Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor. This song was analyzed by Serato to be the fastest song on the Golden Record with a BPM of 137. It has a lot of intense sounds so, to me, represents some of the chaos that is the human experience. Stravinsky was from Russia so this track was selected as a representation of that part of the world.
- “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry. This song was analyzed to be in the key of G which we think of to be higher. Incase those who discover the Golden Record can only hear certain keys, this song was selected to represent these higher pitches. Berry is from the United States so this track can act as a representation of that part of the world. It was also one of the two tracks that I had heard before.
- New Guinea, men’s house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. This song was analyzed to be in the key of C, a key thought of to be somewhat in the middle. Perhaps the finders of the Golden Record can only hear more neutral pitches. The song, originating from New Guinea, was selected to represent the southern and eastern hemisphere. The soft flutey-like sound is also quite peaceful.
- India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. This track was analyzed in the the key of D. Another key that is somewhat in the middle of the musical scale. This track also includes lyrics that add sounds that appear differently than musical instruments. A track from India, this song represents yet another part of our world here on earth.
- Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. This track was analyzed to be in the key of A, a lower key. Perhaps the discoverers of the Golden Album are only able to hear these lower keys. This track comes from Japan, representing this part of the world. It is another track that contains many flute-like sounds which brings me feelings of peace and warmth.
- Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. This track was analyzed again to be in the key of A, though it was mostly selected to represent another worldly place and a different kind of sound than what appears on many of the other tracks. The percussion sound is unique and offers a different beat to follow incase the extraterrestrials are only able to hear these particular sounds. This is the first selection from the continent of Africa so this track was used to represent that part of the world.
- Java, court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers,” recorded by Robert Brown. This track was analyzed to be in the key of A, another song in the lower key. It was selected however, as it was one of the songs that feels sad. To me, sadness is unique to the human experience and so it felt important to include it. Java is located in Indonesia thus checking off another worldly location.
- Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. This track was analyzed in the key of D. It was selected though for its unique sound coming from the didgeridoo. This is a very low instrument that allows for another type of sound to be explored by the finders of the Golden Record. This track can also be used to represent Australia, an area that hasn’t been represented yet.
- Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. This was a selfish selection. What a track. The other song off the Golden Record that I had heard before, this is a movie ballad, used for so many intense moments. As Ferris (2019) mentions, it is an epic song that only feels right to include on this record, taking this epic journey. If I am imagining the Golden Record floating through space, past planets, stars, space junk, etc. I am imagining it happening to this track.
Here is a map of my 10 picks, there are only 9 points as both Beethoven and Bach are from Germany.
References:
McDonald, L. (Executive Producer). (2016-Present). Twenty thousand hertz. [Audio podcast]. Defaacto Sound. https://www.20k.org/episodes/voyagergoldenrecord?rq=golden%20record
Serato (Computer software). (1999). Retrieved from https://serato.com/
WEEK 9
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 10
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
WEEK 12
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.
LINKING ASSIGNMENT
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.
FINAL PROJECT
Describing Communication Technologies
References:
Bellis, M. (2020, January 13). The history of the computer keyboard. Thought Co. www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-computer-keyboard-1991402
Cicerchia, M. (N.D.). Why is keyboarding important? Touch-type, Read and Spell (TTRS). www.readandspell.com/why-is-keyboarding-important
Schmandt-Besserat, D. (2009). “Origins and Forms of Writing.” In Bazerman, C. (Ed.) Handbook of research on writing: History, society, school, individual, text. New York, NY: Routledge.
Zhaoyuan Ma, D., Edge, L., Findlater & H. Z. Tan. (2015) “Haptic keyclick feedback improves typing speed and reduces typing errors on a flat keyboard.” IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC), 2015, pp. 220-227. doi: 10.1109/WHC.2015.7177717.