Assignments and Activities

My daily need for items in my bag usually has to do with food. My bag is mostly how I carry around my snacks and lunch, and I often snack before, during, and after school. My bag itself is a rubber, waterproof bike courier bag, and this tells others that I need a significant tool to battle the wet weather we sometimes get on the island. Energy bars, trail mix, (and apples, granola bars, sandwiches, etc. that are usually in my bag) tell others that I like to keep my blood sugar topped up so that I can keep up with students. 

The whistle hints at the fact that I lead games, referee basketball, and I use it often teaching PE. This tells others about the spaces I occupy, including gyms and outdoor spaces, and it even alludes to values that I have regarding physical fitness and it's role in a happy and healthy lifestyle. 

My pens and pencils are proof of my English literacy, and USBs are proof of my computer literacy. I sometimes have a laptop in my bag which would point to this as well. 

I don't think the contents of my bag leads me to develop a narrative about myself, however. I like to think of any material items as tools, and I intentionally don't put value on them. Perhaps the lack of items points to my minimalism, and that I value simplicity, or the environment by not creating a demand for junk. On second thought, perhaps the quality of the food I consume tells the narrative that I'm healthy, but the quality of a laptop or material good doesn't influence my narrative of myself. 

I think that 15-25 years ago this bag might have looked in slightly better condition, but it's held up quite nicely since I bought it around 2010. I think archeologists or historians might look at the USBs, food products, and writing tools as clues to how we communicate and work as a society. These primary sources offer a glimpse of what technologies are available to us at this moment, and shows the affordances that we currently value.

One last thing I didn't mention is the ibuprofen. This item usually isn't in my bag, but I had a molar removed this past week due to a tooth infection. The ibuprofen was a definite necessity, but I think I can leave it at home for next week. 

Task 2 - Does language shape the way we think?

This is the first time I've watched and been asked to respond to a recorded lecture in this MET program, and I found this exercise quite beneficial. Dr Boroditsky's presentation style mixed with humor kept me engaged, and I found this quite interesting. Here are some moments where I made personal connections to points she brought up:

At nine minutes, Dr Boroditsky talks about the benefits of learning a second language, and I have been considering this as my own child just started french immersion at a school in the Comox Valley. Will french immersion improve his thinking or ability to delve into topics in a deeper manner, or will he be too occupied with learning new vocabulary that prevents this? The questions brought up here are interesting to consider, and I was curious to hear Dr Boroditsky's thoughts on how learning another language can expand our thoughts. 

At 24:30, the idea about gendered language made me think about my own experience watching Disney movies as a child, and how language can also reinforce stereotypical views of people in society. I thought of the examples of the hyenas in the Lion King, or the crows in Dumbo. Although this wasn't exactly what Boroditsky was talking about, how a language is spoken can also subconsciously affect our thoughts of people within our society. 

At 27:30, the piece about Cheney very much resonated with units on media literacy I have taught in my own classes. Language can be manipulative; it can assign blame, innocence, guilt, shame, power, or complacency. The various headlines and explanations of the Cheney incident shows the power of language to influence the opinions of others, and this is very important for future global citizens to understand fully. 

When researchers were shown getting Amazon tribe members to count or estimate without previous numeracy experience (at 37 minutes) I was reminded of the patience I often need when getting students to count or estimate distances, percents, or other measurements. Considering numeracy a language as opposed to a topic of study in existing languages can help educators have more patience when teaching it to students.  

The humorous anecdote about prunes vs dried plums, 42 minutes in, reminded me of the book Freakonomics. Behavioral economics highlights the power of psychology in marketing, and data to support findings like this are quite interesting. The power of language in marketing and how people can be manipulated, or how we have subconscious attitudes towards various products or words is very fascinating. Other examples I can think of are rapeseed oil (canola oil) and Chinese gooseberries (kiwis).

And lastly, the question from the audience member at 57 minutes about texting and how it changes thoughts made a strong connection to a book I am currently reading. 'Brainstorm' by Daniel Siegel highlights the fact Boroditsky mentioned, which is that older people often look down at the changes youth make to language and discount their efforts to connect with others. Siegel and Boroditsky both highlight how studies can help shape their opinions, and I like how Boroditsky explains her thought process in research design when trying to understand something new. 

Again, I really enjoyed watching this lecture on my own time, and I hope we get the chance to do more similar activities in this course in the future. 

Story to Text - Using 'Voice Typing' in Google Docs

Below is a copy of the text produced as I told a story orally using Google's Voice Typing:

In April of 2010 I was biking down a hill from my house to meet a friend at a Community Rec Center. as I left my driveway to roll down the hill a car passed me in an unnoticeable way. Soon after I caught up to the car and Road slightly behind it as we descended. The car must not have seen me because it quickly took a right turn into a garden center halfway down the hill. I instantly slammed on my brakes, leaned my hand and shoulder against the car, and tried to turn in the direction it was going. I put my hand hands back on The Handlebar and continued to apply the brakes. the car had turned very sharply And even though I was turning with it my front tire hit the slope in the curb which caused my front tire to slide out. I instantly fell on top of the bike with my left hand out stretched in between the front right and rear right Wheels of the vehicle bracket which happened to be a Ford Aerostar minivan clothes bracket. as I was lying face down on the ground the right rear wheel of the vehicle rolled over the left portion of my back and dropped off over my left shoulder. the incident lasted such a short amount of time, yet it felt like it happened in three or four different moments. when the car is the car had driven away slightly to go park, I jumped up to my feet in anger. I said quote you literally just ran me over you and quote. I went from standing to a seated position on the grass cradling my left elbow thinking that I had just broken my collarbone. not thinking that my injury was significant I phoned my sister to come and pick me up As opposed to phoning 911. As I sat on the grass a number of people started to huddle around me asking if I was okay. my breathing was becoming quite labored, and the only thing I could do was to look down at the grass and tried to catch my breath. I stayed this way until both my sister and an ambulance showed up. the trip to the hospital was uncomfortable and a nurse tried multiple times to try to get an IV into my arm, even though I questioned its necessity. after getting to the hospital and getting x-rays taken, it was discovered that my left shoulder blade had been broken into seven main pieces. muscle on either side of the shoulder blade would keep it in cased, But I had to wear a sling to help keep weight off of the broken area bruising in my ribs as well as cracked ribs made it difficult to take a deep breath and anytime I was about to sneeze I braced in panic for the pain. I had to sleep upright for a long time. I never realized how often your shoulder blade moves simply walking down the street. it felt like I had to walk with a cup of water on the top of my head  trying not to spell it. 

This was a bad injury but it made me stronger. Since this accident I have realized many times that I came very close to death when the car tire rolled right beside my head. Thinking about death makes you appreciate life. it makes you grateful that you are still alive. this accident has helped me to prioritize things in my life that I think will be important by the time I reach the end of it.

Analysis: 

I was quite impressed at the efficiency and accuracy of this voice to text software, as I haven't used anything like this in the past five years or so. Most of the mistakes were in grammar, like capitalizing the first word of a sentence. I was impressed at the proper spelling of words like to/two/too, and four/for, so voice to text seems to understand context or where words should be used properly. 

Some other mistakes were user error, such as when I thought I could say 'close bracket', 'quote', or 'end quote'. I thought I would try these considering I knew that saying 'comma' and 'period' produced the appropriate punctuation, but I'm sure I was off target a bit. I consider the mistakes to be such because of the rules of writing that I have been taught, and the writing doesn't follow basic rules that I teach in an English class. 

An interesting thought that the Ong paper in our weekly reading made me consider is the fact that my storytelling/pace/style of talking was significantly different for this activity than it would have been if I were telling this story to a friend. Knowing that it would be turned into text made me consider how it would look, and I contemplated my own “changes in mental and social structures incident to the use of writing” (Ong, 1982/2002, p.6). 

Maybe I completed this exercise incorrectly by doing this, but spoken words are often more spontaneous, with less structure. Oral storytelling can include incomplete sentences, informal grammar, and filler words like 'um' and 'like'. I talked significantly more slowly when telling this story to intentionally make my story sound like something out of a book, as opposed to something told by a friend. 

Lastly, when reading the Has (2013) chapter in this week's readings, I had contradicting or challenging thoughts to the argument that technologies like voice-to-text software influence writing and literacy. These tools are only chosen and useful if they can produce writing the way it has been used in the past. The tools conform to reading and writing; not the other way around. I feel that it wouldn't take much time to clean up a document like the one I created above, but I question the quality of the work produced if I used voice to text, to complete an assignment like this even. 

I tell students that good lessons create more questions than answers, and I think this last question is one that I will consider for longer than this week. 

References:

Haas, C. (2013). The technology question. In Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy (pp. 3–23). Routledge. 

Ong, W. J. (2002). Chapter 1: The orality of language. In Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (pp. 5–16). Routledge. (Original work published 1982). 

Task 4 - Manual Scripts

Here are some photos of the journal entry I chose to wrote for this assignment:

I think that the way I choose to record or 'write' information depends on the task I'm completing. In this course for instance, my work must be done online via typing, but I often write notes to myself and brainstorm ideas with pencil and paper. I have good handwriting when I'm taking my time, so I found this task quite easy. 

When I made a mistake or wanted to change something in my writing, I erased it. Even though pencil is seen as the less-mature writing tool in the eyes of society, I always write in pencil and love the affordance of easy error-correction it provides. 

The most significant difference between writing by hand and typing is the ability to store, send, or publish information to a larger audience. Connecting to the internet to move ideas makes typing superior to writing in a variety of scenarios. When deciding which form I prefer, I think it depends on what I'm trying to do. Typing makes work look more professional, even to students in my classes, and being able to print, edit, and store for later makes typing my preferred method. When I'm writing for me, I enjoy handwriting. I write notes to my child and put them in his lunch, I write down ideas for activities in my classes, and I recently made a scavenger hunt for my partner using post-it notes around the house. Handwriting is easy to create something when you don't have a printer on hand, and it's easy to change if you use pencil and have an eraser. 

In another vein, his assignment made me think about a recent Andrew Huberman podcast that I listened to, where he said that taking notes and writing by hand leads to significantly better cognitive outcomes (short and long term recall) compared to taking notes on a computer. I don't have a source for his information other than his podcast, but this makes me curious to look it up or see if there are any studies that compare the two. 

This morning I also came across a study presented by Edutopia that looked at Math outcomes when students study via AI tutors vs traditional (pen and paper) methods. The results showed that writing by hand led to better long term outcomes, but AI tutors improved initial skills quite dramatically. The video is here: https://www.edutopia.org/video/how-ai-vaporizes-long-term-learning

I know in my own experience that writing out grocery lists by hand leads me to better remember my grocery items, even when I forget the list at home. Is there something that makes writing by hand cognitively superior? Should we place more emphasis on handwriting than we have in recent years? Just a couple questions for anyone looking for a prompt in our linking assignments. 

Thanks for reading!

References:

Edutopia. (n.d.). How AI vaporizes long-term learning [Video]. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/video/how-ai-vaporizes-long-term-learning 

Task 6 - An Emoji Story

Okay, I added in a whole bunch of movie titles and tried to use emojis to show what they are because I liked this challenge a lot. Let me know if you can guess any of the following films:

🍍🚂

⛪🧑‍🍼

⭐🪖

🤫🐑

🦁👑

🦇🚹

🤠🤠🍆⛰️ 

🕷️🚹

🐘🤵

💰💰💰🚼

And here's the one I will try to create a synopsis for:🔒📈🛢️💨🛢️💨

Synopsis: 👬👬 🃏 💸 🥷🚔

The main challenge I encountered during this activity was that there were often no emojis to express a certain word or phrase. I had to rely on something similar that people might have a hard time decoding, but that's what I think makes this activity fun. I sent a picture of these to my siblings and they had fun trying to guess the movies. 

For the above I often started with a movie title, then tried to find emojis that would do a good job of representing the titles. If I couldn't find something good, then I would scratch that movie and move on to another one. I actually haven't seen a movie for at least a couple years, and I don't remember the last TV show or movie that I watched. 

I'm not sure if I should comment on any of the weekly readings for this assignment, but I found Bolter's Chapter 4 interesting, and it's beneficial for educators to consider the affordances of both printed text as well as a digital resource. I question Bolter's distinction between print resources that he describes as being linear, with online ones which are not. I don't see how online resources aren't linear as well. Did anyone else see this distinction as being slightly unclear? 

Another criticism here is that online reading or fragmented reading experiences can lead to cognitive overload, which doesn't enable proper synthesis or understanding of the material. Bolter's enthusiasm for hypertext could be misled if a reader learns more from reading a printed source. I'm leaving the door open here in case any classmates want to comment or challenge any of my thoughts. 

Thanks for reading!

Week 7 - Literacy and Literacies

Here are a few thoughts that surfaced for me this week, in case you want to respond to any for our linking assignment:

There had been a long period of time in my life when I valued and respected written histories more than oral ones. Oral histories can be so easily changed or forgotten I thought, and this makes them much less accountable or credible. If you don't write something down, it can't be remembered. 

I don't feel the same now. Histories and stories in textbooks can be changed, and new histories can be re-written from differing perspectives. Looking at an American history textbook today can show a stable version of events in the past, but one might argue that this more firmly solidifies an inaccurate version of events that was written from a biased perspective. When you ask North American citizens today who was most responsible for defeating Nazis in WWII, not many would give due credit to Russia.

Anyways, the challenge of turning a digital resource into an oral description of what's in my bag inspired this thought. 

Another thought I had was the affordance of personal connection when using storytelling or oral description. Photos obviously offer affordances that descriptions can't, but oral descriptions can create stronger personal connections with the reader, or storyteller. Could I be a storyteller in this instance? Possibly. 

And lastly before I share my assignment, another thought that created closure for me in this course is the fact that I came across Prensky's work on 'Digital Natives' and 'Digital Immigrants' in my very first course in this MET program. At the time these classifications really rubbed me the wrong way, and I remembered the 'lifelong learner' identity that was granted (imposed?) to teachers during my BEd degree. Now in my final course in the MET program, I enjoyed the criticism of this binary categorization, and I felt I never had the words to describe why it could be troublesome. Did anyone else have a similar experience?

Task 7 - Mode-bending, and redefining our understandings of literacy

My redesign approach to this assignment was initially planned to be an auditory collage of items in my bag; keys jingling, trail mix packages crumpling... but I realized that most of my peers went in this direction. Instead, I attempted to convert the photo into a tactile experience, emphasizing materiality and texture. Even though I asked at my school, I was unable to print a braille description of my items, so instead, here is a braille listing of my items using an online braille translator. 

⠞⠗⠁⠊⠇ ⠍⠊⠭

⠥⠎⠃

⠺⠓⠊⠎⠞⠇⠑

⠇⠁⠝⠽⠁⠗⠙ ⠺⠊⠞⠓ ⠅⠑⠽⠎

⠞⠓⠗⠑⠑ ⠏⠑⠝⠉⠊⠇⠎

⠋⠕⠥⠗ ⠏⠑⠝⠎

⠓⠊⠛⠓⠇⠊⠛⠓⠞⠑⠗ 

Benefits here are ones of inclusivity. I think it's important to state that for some people, this could be the only way they would be able to see what's in my bag. A challenge here is to find the correct words to describe my items, and to actually produce braille pages in their finished form. Details would be difficult to convey, but it could allow some a way to make meaning. The New London Group's multiliteracies approach highlights social, cultural, and diverse forms of meaning-making, and by shifting to a different mode, this reshapes the narrative, offers different affordances, and also can change who the insiders and outsiders are. 

Thanks for reading. 

References

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants, part 2: Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6), 1-6. 

Task 8 - Golden Record Curation Assignment

In curating these 27 musical pieces down to 10, I feel like I don't have enough knowledge about what each of these pieces represent in terms of cultural expression, significance, emotional depth, diversity, or musical structure to represent humanity adequately. Why am I feeling so much pressure here?

These aforementioned factors are the things I considered, as well as trying to eliminate any repetition, when curating my list. With apprehension, here is my list of ten songs:

1. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 2

2. Beethoven's String Quartet No 13

3. Stravinsky - Rite of Spring

4. Senegal's Percussion

5. Navajo Night Chant

6. Dark Was the Night

7. Johnny B Goode

8. Melancholy Blues

9. Jaat Kahan Ho 

10. Tsuru No Sugomori" ("Crane's Nest") 

This assignment made me think of an activity I regularly use in the Social Studies classroom, where I get students to select the most significant moments during a specific time period, like the cold war or WWII. Judging or assessing the historical significance of events and defending our choices can help us to remember them better, but here I think I would have liked to know the songs a bit more, or had the insight of a musical expert. 

I think the last line in the module this week was the most powerful learning moment for me, and this assignment reinforced that. Stating "We do not add text to the technology, the texts are the technology" seemed to create closure or reinforcement here. I like the thought of viewing our societies from the perspective of alien life, but doesn't the content of the record depend on the ability to play it with a record player? In this case, both the record player and the texts are the technology. 

Task 9: Networking Assignment Using Palladio & Golden Record Quiz Data

The Palladio visualization tool is an interesting app, and seems to reveal patterns and connections in datasets; in this case, grouping people by their Golden Record music curation choices. 

Even though these groupings are accurate, they may not reflect or convey reasons behind music choices, or show why connections exist. I know that I was trying to reflect a variety of musical tastes and songs that have been historically significant to our galaxy's alien population, but other students might have gone with their personal favourite songs, or used different criteria when selecting music. Some might have paid more attention to include music from a variety of centuries or decades. These visualizations might not answer the (usually) most important question; the 'why?' 

What are some other reasons why I had similar choices as peers? Similar educations? Preferences or musical tastes based on culture? Perceived universality? Similar preferences based on our age? 

While playing around the the data presented in this file, I couldn't help but think of it's applications in other contexts. Here are a few that came to mind:

• Pedagogical analysis - mapping student responses can show trends or point out strengths and weaknesses of lessons. 

• Collaborative Learning - viewing themes, texts, or historical events as being interconnected. 

• Educational Policy - grouping or analyzing data before and after curriculum/policy changes can be a good way to gauge their effectiveness.

• Digital Literacy - students learn visual and data-driven storytelling, and are encouraged to look past the raw data to become more informed digital citizens. 

These facets in education can create opportunities for critical thinking, creativity, and interdisciplinary learning.

In the context of this course, the Palladio app is a text, but like other texts, there can be hidden meanings, biases, or affordances that cause them to be selected or used. To my classmates looking for possible extension or linking activity prompts, what do you think the designer of this MET course was thinking when they created this discussion prompt showcasing the Palladio app?

Task 10 - Attention Economy

The more I try to tell students about how their time and attention is monetized, the less they seem to care. This seems to be a fallacy of the current human condition, and I am worried that students aren't finding their passions or considering what meaningful pursuits they want to have in their lives because they are distracted by online content. Even being the parent of a five year old, I regularly see other parents glued to their phones when in the company of their kids. If we know that devices are disturbing meaningful connections in our lives, why do we keep overusing them? Are we that enslaved to distracting content?

Some interesting discussions I had this week involved potentially banning cell phones in school, and the barriers and implications of doing so. If you have the time, here's an interesting article that a co-worker shared with me.

The weekly task for this module was punishment. I think the timing of when I did this task didn't help, as I sat down to do it after a long school day. Trying to fill out forms that were intentionally user-unfriendly highlighted how good or bad your experience can be online based on the organization of the page. 

Some of the ways that I noticed design interfered with user experience was highlighting incorrect text, widgets getting in the way, misleading buttons, counterintuitive progressions, and frustrating popups. 

The screenshot below shows how far I got. Was this the final screen?

References:

Stokel-Walker, C. (2024, September 5). Do school phone bans help students? Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-school-phone-bans-help-students/