ETEC 540
Task One
Ellie Brown’s Bag Project - My Teaching bag
For this task, I chose my teaching bag that I bring to and from school every day. I would consider that I use all of these items every day, except four things (post-it notes, hair scrunchies, sentimental pin, and coins). My laptop, keys, day planner, and lunch items are an absolute necessity to have every day. The “texts” that are in my teaching bag would be my day planner and laptop. These can say that I am an organized person who takes their work home with them each night. By having a day planner and a laptop, this shows a balance of welcoming the new digital technologies but also keeping the classics of pen and paper. In the classroom setting, finding a balance between digital and written literacies are unique to each class. This year I have students ranging between grade two and eight for written output. To have the ability to use computers to scribe for students is an affordance that teachers didn’t have 10-15 years ago. As a grade six teacher who loves technology, I am highly aware of how helpful technology can be to students, but at the same time I see a desperate need to continue working on penmanship.
Task Two
Comments were made through CLAS on Lera Borditsky’s lecture on “How the Languages We Speak Shape the Ways We Think”.
Task Three
Unscripted story
Reflection
For this task, I used my iPhone’s Notes app to speak into. After about a minute of speaking, it became abundantly clear that there is a time limit on how long one can speak. This task took a few “starts” of the voice-to-text feature. While recording, I did not look at my phone to see how the text was being written.
The first component I noticed that was “wrong” with my text was the almost complete lack of punctuation. Realizing I needed to add excitement to my story with an exclamation mark, I remembered the concept of verbalizing my punctuation. After that realization, there was a lot more punctuation in my story. Had I been looking at my phone screen, I predict that I would have caught that mistake earlier. Something that is “right” in my text is the software recognizing names of people and places and capitalizing those words (for example: Spring Valley, Laverock, and Rutland).
If I were to have scripted this story, there would have been more information and it would have felt more “to the point”. Personally, my oral storytelling skills differ GREATLY from my written skills. The biggest difference would be the length at which I give details of my story. I am constantly told to “get to the point” of my story as I am telling it orally. I need my audience to feel like they were with me experiencing my story! Whereas my written stories tend to be more polished and cohesive. As I write, I usually have the ‘rough draft’ and ‘final draft’ process in my head, and then after I have written my paper/assignment/story, I will do a final revision to get a ‘good copy’ version. This processing extends further than just from myself. Gnanadesikan (2011) suggests that written story telling seems to be more polished and deliberate compared to a “spoken sentence”.
Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet Links to an external site. (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).
Task Four
Preparing -- This task started on the whiteboard of my classroom. I posed the question “what is a five letter word that has all different letters?” and had students write on post-it notes for their answers. I didn’t announce this question, I had prepared it during my prep and then had lunch afterwards, so I didn’t see my students at all. When I came back from lunch, there was half of the post-it notes filled out! By the end of the week, I had a lot of options to choose from: north, south, April, waves, rocks, micro, words, fives. I chose the student suggested option of “solve” because, as a math teacher, I thought it would be very fitting!
Crafting -- The actual letters of the word “solve” turned out to be quite easy to make! It took me about 15 minutes thanks to the easy "L" and "V"! Conveniently, only two of five letters needed to be flipped around to be the correct direction after being stamped! The inside of the "E" was the trickiest part for me. Overall, this process felt very similar to pumpkin carving, which I don’t go too intricate, so letters were very manageable!
Producing -- The process of actually placing the potato on my paper was going to be a piece of cake, but it was more to it than I thought! The amount of paint on my potato made my stamp prone to moving on my paper. Also, pulling the potato stamp off from the paper became very important to do correctly. The first couple stamps pulled the paper up as I was pulling the potato away, which I was worried would smear the paint. It seemed worse in the moment because I don’t think you can tell in the final product.
Considering it took me about 30 minutes to write one 5 letter word, I can appreciate how much effort went into the early versions of newspapers! My appreciation grew even more after watching Cooke's video (2012), to see all the individual steps and amount of times he checked the spacing of the letters. All of those individual letters to convey numerous news stories on multiple pages! Cooke summarizes the complexity of printing when saying "if you get it wrong or if you haven't planned your way forward through that, then you just have to take it all apart and start all over again". Moving forward, I will do my best to not complain about my slow photocopier that hole-punches and staples in the correct order!Cooke, D. (2012). Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film. [YouTube, 7 minutes 40 seconds]
Task Six - Title & Description of a Book
This was a fun task to complete! I regularly use emojis in my texts and emails to convey more context or emotion to my words, which I believe helps for the recipient of my messages to have a deeper understanding as opposed to just words. Furthermore, I enjoyed mentally “re-reading” the first book in my favourite series. For this task, I found myself relying on emojis to represent keywords in the title and plot. Most of the words I needed to complete my title and description were already emojis and I found it fairly easy to find what I needed.
I did not start with the title of the book. I predicted the description of the book would be more difficult, so if I could not fully describe the book, then I should choose another one. There were enough emojis to give a lot of details to the description. I did notice that iPhone emoji’s didn’t fully translate to Google’s emojis, therefore I had to take a screenshot and use that in my webspace.
This was a very thoughtful task. I can imagine how easy or difficult it would be to complete depending on how detailed I chose to be or how closely the book/movie lined up to socially known ideas. For example, I chose a book (and movie) that is socially wildly popular. If someone were to pick a book or movie that was more abstract or lesser known, I could imagine that this task could have been more difficult. Additionally, if a book or movie was chosen with a lot of metaphors, using emojis could have been very problematic to understand what was being conveyed. Delivering messages through emojis can also depend on cultural backgrounds of the author and audience.
I am looking forward to looking at my classmates Task 6 to see if I can decipher their emoji titles and descriptions.
RPReplay_Final1615145973.movTask Seven
Task seven has challenged me with the task of changing the semiotic mode of Task One - What’s in your bag?. To be perfectly honest, I’ve experienced “Creators-block” when attempting to complete this task. Time is passing at a snail’s pace. It feels like I need to design a better wheel other than a circle.
For this task, I made a compilation of pre-made and self-made sound effects that describe my day. I used an app called Anchor to record and order my sounds. Then I screen-recorded my podcast to be able to upload to my Google Drive and post to my website. It felt like QUITE the process. I have never made a podcast before, so this was by no means the easiest way to accomplish my goal, but I have huge room for improvement in the future.
The New London Group (1996) states “to be relevant, learning processes need to recruit, rather than attempt to ignore and erase, the different subjectivities - interests, intentions, commitments, and purposes - students bring to learning.” By supporting multiliteracies, learning will be more relevant and meaningful to students. By appealing to their differences, students are more likely to make connections to the learning and “buy in” to the educators efforts.
Changing the mode this task is received by an audience comes with benefits and challenges.
Benefits to mode changing
The new mode can be more accessible to a wider group of individuals
The new mode can be more engaging
It allows the creator to reflect on the original mode and improve
Challenges of mode changing
There is potential to lose some of the original concept or information for the creation
Misunderstanding the new mode or poor execution can leave the audience misinformed or confused
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.
Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor. 2:55
Georgian S.S.R., chorus, "Tchakrulo," collected by Radio Moscow. 2:18
"Melancholy Blues," performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
"Johnny B. Goode," written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38
India, raga, "Jaat Kahan Ho," sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
Bulgaria, "Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin," sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59
Mexico, "El Cascabel," performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
Greetings from Earth
Task Eight
I wanted to choose songs that were from a variety of places, which is hard with just 10 picks. I wanted a mix of instrumental and singing, because the podcast (2019) mentioned that they don’t know if whoever finds this record is able to hear as we do. So a variety of sounds would hopefully include something that others could hear or interpret. I also let my personal preference have an effect since this is my task. I know i have some similar sounding options, but I like that. Lastly, the “Greetings from Earth” was the only one that was mandatory to include. It was the most diverse and inclusive of all of the tracks.
McDonald, L. (Executive Producer). (2019-present). Voyager Golden Record [Audio podcast]. Defacto Sound. https://www.20k.org/episodes/voyagergoldenrecord
Task Nine
Network Assignment Using Golden Record Curation
As I started this task, I remembered how easy Ernesto made it look so intuitive while on our last video conference. As a first time Palladio user, I can vouch it was not easy! Ernesto never suggested it would be easy, but I was determined to tinker around long enough to figure this out. It took numerous attempts to upload the file. Once successful, I began to explore how I could filter the results.
I eventually found that using the Facet filters “modularity_class” and “Source”, I was able to find the small community of my classmates that I belonged to based on the songs we have in common (Figure Two). My community is Scott Richmond, Kirsten Mckinnon, Anne Emberline, and myself based on the 5 or 6 songs we have in common. The songs that brought us together are:
I attempted to analyze the common song choices myself and constructed Table 1. Considering the Palladio data left a lot up to interpretation, I would say the classmates in my community could have selected songs due to what they thought was diverse. The data is missing the “why” of our reasoning for selecting the songs we did. The data seems very flat, or black and white without knowing why someone chose as they did. I found that it is easy to interpret everything or nothing from it, the reasoning really could go either way. To have 60% in common with three others seems like a significant amount to me, I was striving to be diverse with culture and sound to capture the countless cultures and groups of people on Earth.
My classmates mention how they determined which song made the cut on their blogs:
Kristen → “I kept age and gender in mind, considered the song’s identified meaning, and assessed the emotional response(s) each song evoked in me (joy, sorrow, neutrality, intensity/dramatic quality.)”.
Scott → “Aesthetically, I think harmony is an important element that ought to be included, but that flows from my upbringing and culture.”
Anne → “I tried to choose one from every continent. I also carefully considered different instruments and different sounds and frequencies to create a more diverse record. In the Twenty Seven Hertz podcast, they did mention potential variations in hearing certain frequencies by an extra terrestrial life form, so I wanted to include as many variations as possible.”
It would have been great to be able to visually manipulate the networks more, other than node size changing. For example, if one were to click on a track and see the edges highlighted visibly to the people who selected that track, or select a person and see all of their tracks. Another visual that would have highlighted connections would be if the program added colour to represent stronger connections or other pieces of information. Perhaps the software does allow that, but I was unable to find those features as I was tinkering around with the network.
This task was virtually impossible to do with only having 10 songs to choose, so I can appreciate even more the difficult task Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al were challenged with.
Task Ten
**MAJOR SPOILERS**
This task referred to Bagaar’s experience, User Inyerface, as a “online game”. Typically, games are fun for the players. This task had me experiencing frustration levels close to Monopoly, but without collecting $200! Looking back, the name was giving us a hint: inyerface = “in your face”. I should have known!
Other than having one of the weirdest ways to start a game, my biggest response came from the timer that was ever so present. Instantly my heart rate increased and anxiety started, which was probably added by designers to make people rush through adding their information and cause mistakes such as adding in sensitive information when they didn’t mean to.
My attention was manipulated in numerous ways. There was a constant pop up that had a very hidden close button. Getting rid of the pop up was what stumped me the most. Something else that was manipulating my attention was the “help” feature in the bottom right corner that would stretch higher and higher each time you clicked the “x” in it’s top right corner. Typically, the exit button is in the top right corner of most websites and features in websites, but this did the complete opposite. This help feature also was conveniently covering the “next” button a few times.
Subtlety was used in this game by designers. Brignull (2011) mentions that “subtlety is our friend” when it comes to dark patterns. This game uses subtlety in a few ways. As the game was collecting initial information, all the fillable spots didn’t automatically clear when you clicked to type into it. This is such a minor feature that someone may not have noticed right away and proceeded to the next page without knowing. Another subtle aspect to the game designers added was colour. Typically, we associate green with “go” or “continue”, but the cancel button was green, and out of habit, someone may click on it and start again.
The most devious part of the game was the final step where the player had to “select all that apply” for a particular word. I found this the most devious for two reasons:
It asked me to select all the “bows” - I realized pretty quickly that all the images were hair bows, archery bows, and people bowing. This would be very misleading to players, especially if english isn’t their first language.
The check boxes had a hidden top row, so one would go through the list checking all boxes, but then not be able to pass to the final page because they hadn’t checked the top hidden boxes.
All in all, this whole game was essentially backwards to how all websites currently function. I had the pleasure of finding ten dark patterns, which my least favourite was the fact that the months were not in chronological order.
Brignull, H. (2011). Dark Patterns: Deception vs. Honesty in UI Design. Interaction Design, Usability, 338.
Task Twelve - Speculative Narrative Part 1 & 2
PART ONE
Hi, my name is Expo… yes like the old fashioned marker. My great-great grandma was a teacher and my mom always looked up to her. I am 12 years old and this is my recording for Mr. Smith’s Planetary Exploration project. Today’s date is April 4th, 2153.
I chose to do my project on Planet G, or officially Planet Garbage. This was the first planet that humans created in order to keep Earth habitable. It became a planet in 2077 after the United Nations figured it would be the only way to keep Earth clean enough for humans to live.
I couldn’t find information on how Planet G was actually made, but my Grandpa told me that there are top secret astro-engineers that somehow squish all the garbage together and then connect the pieces so they don’t fly away from the planet. Grandpa said they got the idea from some old thing people use to watch called Walle or something.
Planet G is located in the Asteroid Belt. This is because scientists, astrono-physicists thought it would not have a big impact on the gravity of Earth. We obviously know now that it did change how the asteroids in the belt react and we can see the results of that change in the surfaces of Mars and Saturn. It’s been said that you can see Planet G AND the impacts on Mars and Saturn if you take a AirNeptune flight! One day I want to fly past Planet G and see the Big Impact of 2099 on Mars!
We are now on our fourth garbage planet, Trashoid the 2nd. After Planet G, it was mandatory for all the other garbage planets to be past Pluto in our solar system (which will be officially added back as a planet in 2179 when it completes its first trip around the sun). Since that change, we have not had any trash-planet impacts, and the civilization on Mars has been able to return to “normal” life.
Finally, If I was living in the 2070’s, I would have supported the vote to create Planet G. The pictures of Earth at that time look so disgusting and I can’t believe people let it get so bad. It looked like no one cared about the planet and its air quality. They should have listened to the Climate Change warnings that seemed to be happening for decades before the 2070’s.
This is the end of my recording. Thanks for watching, I’ll be available by hologram for questions and my grade Mr. Smith.
Part Two follows the same grade 6 student in Part One, EXPO. While set in another year, this audio clip allows the audience to imagine they are experiencing a typical morning for someone in the future.
