My Linking Assignment work is below -- with button links to work and drop-down buttons for reflections.
I've also placed button links to my padlet next to each link for visitors to leave comments. To contribute, just click on the "+" button.
After navigating Nick's site -- to access his introduction and read through some of his work -- I learned that he and I have a connection, as I too taught internationally. While Nick's experiences has been located in Japan, my time in Asia was spent in China and South Korea. While in Japan, Nick has been working with Apple products and other learning technology in educational settings. After leaving China, the first seven years of my teaching career was in private international schools in South Korea and Egypt, within one-to-one programs -- supported by Apple hardware (laptops, iPads, and Apple TV) and Google software (like Google Classroom) -- where technology was readily available and supported for teachers and students. Interestingly, Nick's position at his school sounds similar to a technology position I had been interested in at the school I had been working at in Egypt, before the pandemic and my family returned to Canada.
In regards to the work for task 2, I think we were both reflecting on and connecting to our experiences, having lived in other parts of the world within cultures and languages very different from our own. I found it interesting to read how Nick reflected on the concept of time and how language can shape our experience and perception of it -- as I too had been "stuck" culturally, within a horizontally oriented "edge" representing time, which began at one node ([my]creation) and proceeded toward a final destination node (end of time and space [or at least my experience within them]), travelling from left to right. It was interesting to learn about these differences amongst cultures in the world while hanging them on some relevant life experience of my own.
Each spoken language offers the means to represent the world, giving the speaker the power to describe their understanding and experiences within it, limited only by the vocabulary and conventions of the language being used. Boroditsky's work from 2011 helps to build upon this, using evidence and the research of others to clearly prove that different languages do indeed shape cognition differently, which results in a different understanding of the world altogether.
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An ongoing reflection on the design of this changing text space and the platforms we chose...
WordPress VS. Google Sites...
Nick used WordPress, selecting a template entitled "Cele" (created by Compete Themes) to house his work. The template is described on the site as "[c]lean and minimalist" (Cele WordPress Theme by Compete Themes, n.d.).
Google Sites (the platform I chose for the course) and WordPress (the platform Nick chose) are both easily accessed online by users. They are designed to be flexible and useful across a wide variety of functions.
WordPress is scalable (for additional costs beyond the free initial account) and so can be customized for more complex applications and savvy designers/users. That said, there is "a bit of initial learning from users and then tweaking to make sure that the site looks and performs the way [the designer/user wants] it to" (Keeton, 2023).
Google Sites are designed for "everyone who needs a simple website for anything at all" (Keeton, 2023). I have used Google's family of apps in teaching since I became a teacher in 2012. In that sense, I am familiar with the platform and how it integrates with Google's other platforms.
According to Keeton, "[t]he customization and flexibility in Google Sites vs. that from WordPress aren’t great. However, the simplicity and lightweight efficiency that comes from the service make it a great option for anyone who needs a one-off website or a simple, static web presence" (Keeton, 2023).
Both sites (WordPress vs. Google Sites) require users to read English typed text -- whether with our human eyes (reading text ourselves) or our human ears (listening to text-to-speech). The sites and their text are explored from top to bottom, while text is read left to write. Both sites have navigation bars or menus on the left of the page (which is a common arrangement for sites to scaffold users' navigation of a site). Both our pages make use of hypertext links to connect to other sections of our coursework or to external information.
Nick's site (created with WordPress) affords navigation between his different pieces of work and learning, but lacks intuitive navigation for users in my opinion. It is somewhat tricky to survey his learning from the course through his site's navigation setup. Some visual isolation of items (via colour or font styles) for users and a clearly labelled navigation system to easily reference back to other sections would make it more intuitive for users perhaps. I wonder if this may be related to the steep learning curve associated with WordPress when looking to make the site function as efficiently as intended. When designing my site, I tried to keep it's design simple to aid in user navigation, yet create distinction between pages and sections through hypermedia. I approached the site creation in a way that is similar to the way I design my pages for my students, asking myself: "will they be able to find this, read this, and/or access this?"
Google Sites -- while less customizable than WordPress -- enables users to establish intuitive navigation through thoughtfully created, well-placed hypertext and hypermedia links/buttons. Designers can easily embed videos from Youtube, interactive elements like Padlet without much learning required. If a mistake is made, it can easily be rectified without much frustration.
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References
Boroditsky, L. (2011). How Language Shapes Thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62–65.
Cele WordPress Theme by Compete Themes. (n.d.). Compete Themes. Retrieved March 18, 2025, from https://www.competethemes.com/cele/
Keeton, B. J. (2023, February 25). WordPress vs Google Sites (2025)—Comparing The Differences. Elegant Themes Blog. https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/wordpress/wordpress-vs-google-sites-which-platform-best-meets-your-needs
Nick. (n.d.). Week 2 – Task 2 – nicketec540. Retrieved March 18, 2025, from https://blogs.ubc.ca/nicketec540/2025/01/17/week-2-task-2/
It seems that Natalie and I -- as well as other students in this course -- appreciate the value of punctuation when seeking to communicate effectively with written English text. While I chose to use Google's voice-to-text software within a Google Doc, Natalie produced her voice-to-text document with SeeSaw. Interestingly, my school district is currently on a trial use of SeeSaw, exploring it as a potential portfolio platform to replace our current tool for showcasing student work and growth (Scholantis). While both the tools Natalie and I used missed or misspelled words and made punctuation errors, it seems the SeeSaw tool with Apple's voice-to-text is better able at placing punctuation to create a more understandable text (in terms of its compliance with traditional conventions and mechanics of written English text).
What I found interesting is how Natalie reflected on the voice-to-text assignment, connecting her thinking to Ong's work, highlighting how oral traditions are able to maintain accuracy across iterations through time, yet each iteration is invariably different from the previous version. Over enough time, I still struggle with understanding how that accuracy can be maintained over such distances and between "storytellers" without a written text for reference and interpretation.
Yet, logic and the literature clearly suggests this level of accuracy is possible (Ong, 2002). It is my understanding that the adhesive is found in the cultural practices and ways of being in culturally close-knit communities which connect to and draw from the narratives told, which fosters accuracy over time. Personally, I am reminded of teaching in a middle school setting to a degree, from year to year. For example, while my classroom is not embedded within an oral cultural tradition of passing on knowledge, I do have lessons that repeat throughout my day, modified each year -- speaking with and to students in my classes -- which may provide an analogy.
As a grade seven English Language Arts teacher, I plan for each lesson to include an assortment of lecture, discussion, media, collaborative activities and student reflection. A lesson on plot structure, for example, is planned a day or two beforehand after revisiting the iterative year-plan and taught in first period. After that, I have another class that takes the same lesson. What is interesting is that I make subtle adjustments to each lesson throughout the day -- some consciously and others perhaps less so. While the lesson's main goals are achieved across the grade level (measured through the traditions/routines/practices of student performance in formal/informal assessment), each lesson for each group of students is somewhat different in how it was exactly delivered by me (a human teacher). This difference is likely accounted for by my mood, the behaviour of students, and the time of day. Each year there are adjustments to include or exclude content based on my reflections and new information or understanding.
This analogy helps me consider how accuracy can be established and maintained within oral traditions -- with routines and traditions helping to cement a general understanding for accuracy of information over time within a group of people (even individuals) -- yet I still struggle to understand how this accuracy can exist over great lengths of time and with large, culturally complex groups of people. I imagine how different my version of my story for task 3 would be different today, were I to do it again. I imagine how different that same story would be modified even more-so by another story-teller. What would remain and how accurate would it be to the original? What was my intent? What cultural practices prepared me for consistency in its retelling? While this example is quite different from the transmission of cultural knowledge, history, and story telling being maintained, it does help me balance my understandings of the interplay between accuracy, authenticity, and culture.
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An ongoing reflection on the design of this changing text space and the platforms we choose...
WordPress VS. Google Sites...
Natalie used WordPress, selecting a template entitled "Catch Box" (created by Catch Themes) to house her work. The template is described on the site as "a simple, elegant WordPress theme to quickly get [a] website up and running [that is] clean, minimalistic and niche-oriented" (Free and Premium Responsive WordPress Themes, n.d.).
I discussed WordPress as a platform, in comparison to what I chose (Google Sites), within Nick's work for task 2. For my needs as a designer, Google Sites offers me efficiency when customizing my site with users in mind. Each time I visit a classmate's site, it gives me ideas on how I can improve the experience of viewing and exploring my own site and content. After looking through Nick's pages, I decided to slim down my navigation bar and limit the links to my weekly "unpacking" of modules to buttons on the landing, home page.
I found Natalie's design more easily navigated than Nick's. I was better able to find specific tasks and specific work, using the search function. I also enjoyed how easy it was to leave comments on her work, which inspired me to embed a Padlet on each section and page of my site. I decided to use the same Padlet on each page of my site to collect all links and feedback from my classmates in one place. I switched off control over moderation, to allow any viewer immediate access to any contributor's ideas or links.
I wish I had added to my site the means of sharing links and ideas earlier in the course, as it would likely have fostered more collaboration and connection with my classmates. This has been a shortcoming in my site's design.
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References
Abe Aboud (Director). (2014, September 8). Walter Ong—Oral Cultures and Early Writing [Video recording]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvF30zFImuo
Free and Premium Responsive WordPress Themes. (n.d.). Catch Themes. Retrieved March 19, 2025, from https://catchthemes.com/
Keizer, N. (2025, January 25). Voice to Text Task 3 – Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing. https://blogs.ubc.ca/keizern/voice-to-text-task-3/
Ong, W. J. (2002). The orality of language. In Orality and Literacy (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Isabella and I are both classroom teachers, which requires us to use digital and manual tools for word processing when planning, teaching or communicating with students, families, or colleagues. We both have an appreciation for planning and organizing by hand in the moment (likely due to the busy nature of our work), yet place a preference on digital word processing, in terms of its efficiency and clarity for viewing.
Isabella's handwritten work is legible and has a certain aesthetic quality, or beauty, that makes it pleasing to look at before reading. It is well spaced, clear, and the letters flow smoothly. My hand written work was much more difficult to (re)read -- even when making sense of my own writing just after completing a thought on the page; I can only imagine how tricky it would be for another viewer to make sense of the text I manually produced, without access to my thinking.
Digital word processing eliminates the inconsistency between creators, authors and designers, creating a standardized structure for creating and presenting text within the formalized rules and traditions of a written language. This standardized structure has been designed by building upon the familiar existing structures of the past: the scroll (to navigate the document digitally from top to bottom) and the codex (when printed, which recreates a horizontal, linear progression of ideas in text on sequential pages, from a beginning to an end) ([4.3] Economies of Writing -or-Writing About Writing: ETEC_V 540 65A 2024W2 Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing, n.d.). Creators are able to edit with ease; for example, when moving large sections of text from one place to another or simply by making use of word count, spelling, and grammar tools. With this standardized structure for word processing comes efficiency in our workflow, but at the sacrifice of unique styles of handwriting and the chance to slow the process down, which brings me to a comment Isabella mentioned in her work regarding authenticity.
Isabella decided to "write in a journal format to avoid stressing out [which] played a significant role in the authenticity of [her] work" (Veltri, n.d.). I appreciate this comment and find value in the pursuit of authenticity in writing and education. In my experience, honesty is a daily commitment which builds integrity and quality over time -- in anything we do. Unscripted and unplanned manual writing has the capacity for more authenticity than its digital counterpart, in that the unfiltered thoughts of its creators are physically marked on a page in a unique way, limited only by the physical capacity of the person holding the pen or pencil. Digital word processing affords writers the means to easily manipulate text in a number of ways, reducing the raw authenticity of the moment in which it was recorded. This may be why both Isabella and I still prefer to use a journal to collect "in-the-moment" anecdotes throughout the day, which we can then reflect upon later (without revising or editing). It affords the chance for us to consider our attitudes and their impact on our thinking and perception of an event. This level of authenticity is important to professional growth and fosters inspired practice as educators.
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An ongoing reflection on the design of this changing text space and the platforms we choose...
WordPress VS. Google Sites...
Isabella used WordPress, selecting a template entitled "Suits" (created by Theme Weaver) to house her work. Theme Weaver has been creating template themes for WordPress since 2009 and describes their designs as clean, built with solid code, and well-supported.
After exploring these three classmates' sites -- all produced with WordPress -- I still prefer Google Sites. While I recognize my bias in this, the platform continues to satisfy my needs when editing and reconfiguring my site.
That said, I found Isabella's design much more intuitive and easy to navigate than the other WordPress sites. The navigation bar on Isabella's, placed at the top of her site, includes hypertext links to sections of her site and her work. This feature made it more comfortable for me as a user and viewer to explore her work and thinking without getting or feeling lost.
I appreciate her use of colour on her site, as it helps to visually isolate content and ideas.
I left a comment on Isabella's work, but was unable to see how it was added to the dialogue on her site in regards to her work. I assume she has set moderator controls to view a comment before it is added to her page. I hope to find another classmate who has -- in the spirit of authenticity and transparency -- untoggled the moderator controls, enabling visitors to post without being censored or filtered.
That said, Google Sites does not have an efficient tool for site visitors to leave comments. I toyed with the idea of creating forms to collect information, but then the viewers of the site would not be able to view or join in on the group conversation. This is why I decided to embed a padlet for comments and sharing and I hope to see some added over the coming days.
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References
[4.3] Economies of Writing -or-Writing About Writing: ETEC_V 540 65A 2024W2 Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing. (n.d.). Retrieved February 18, 2025, from https://canvas.ubc.ca/courses/151736/pages/4-dot-3-economies-of-writing-or-writing-about-writing?module_item_id=7553214
Veltri, I. (n.d.). TASK 4 – MANUAL SCRIPTS – ETEC 540 66A – TEXT TECHNOLOGIES. Retrieved March 19, 2025, from https://blogs.ubc.ca/veltri540/2025/01/12/task-4-manual-scripts/#comment-6
Since beginning the work for the Linking Assignment, I have enjoyed looking back sequentially through the tasks I have completed while also seeing what others in the course have done. Once I connect to another's work me in some capacity, I collect the links and begin reflecting on that connection. I began by planning to take only one link from each classmate; if a classmate had more than one piece of work I wanted to connect to, I would have to go beyond the minimum of six links (from six different classmates) to share it. I began by exploring the sites of classmates who had similar song selections from the network assignment in task 9, as I was interested in comparing our ideas and work. The links I have collected are typically from the first sites I explored for sequential tasks I found fun and interesting, making efforts to limit one link from each classmate, to include more perspectives. That said, there have been two sites that were difficult to navigate, so I looked elsewhere for a connection. This approach, in my mind, is authentic in that I am actively seeking out and responding to ideas honestly and in the moment, as the connections are made in my mind. The approach is relevant in that I am employing contemporary literacy practices (making use of hypermedia to both explore and create content in a non-linear way, from node to node along any number of edges). I do spend time editing and revising what I post on this page, but my comments on my classmates' pages was thought or felt in the moment I viewed their work. With that said, I'd like to unpack my connection to Sourabh's task 5 work.
When I arrived at Sourabh's site, I used the button labelled home at the top of the page to access what then appeared as a gallery of his completed work -- some with attached icon images others without. His most recent work is at the top of the page. I scrolled down the page to find a hypermedia link to access his Twine for task 5. I was immediately impressed with how he has successfully embedded his Twine into WordPress, enabling me to interact with and play his game while visiting his site. I had great difficulty doing this on my page, using Google Sites, and had resorted to posting a link to the file which could then be downloaded to play. Having successfully extracted the files from NexaCorp in Sourabh's game, I felt that I had cheated myself and any of my site visitors from easily accessing the Twine I had created. Contemporary literacy is found within the user and their expectations for expedience, efficiency, and access . So after viewing his work and game, I searched for a platform and found itch.io, which enables account holders to share the indie games they create. Using this platform I was able to upload my project and generate an embeddable URL, which worked in my Google Site thereby created more access to my work.
After reading Sourabh's reflection on his work, it is clear that we approached this task quite differently. I often attempt to seek continuity in my work throughout courses and assignments, so I had decided to use the narrative I had created for task 4, the manual script, as a guide for the playable, text-based story I wanted to create. I thought the story would be fun to create and share with my family and students at school. I planned to make adjustments to the plot as I worked through the project, much like I would have drafted an essay fifteen years ago with a digital word processor. Sourabh, on the other hand, methodically planned out a design with access or usability in mind, creating a branched narrative playable game, from beginning to (and without dead) end(s). Bolter (2000) explains how "[w]eb pages[,] function as ordinary text, but they also function as places along a path" and it is clear that Sourabh applied this in his game's design. This approach was in keeping with Five College Digital Humanities, structuring the game beforehand so that it can be more easily assembled as whole story with various paths (2016). I -- on the other hand -- googled for help after stumbling into problems, reading through Twine support chat forums. Sometimes I would find what I needed, other times it became so frustrating I gave up. I had wanted to add both audio and images to my game, but I could not get them to work properly. These issues compounded when I didn't know where to go next with my story. Had I planned out the branches of my narrative beforehand like Sourabh, I would likely have reduced my frustration and persevered to find solutions and improve (access to my) content-- and would have had more fun as well.
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An ongoing reflection on the design of this changing text space and the platforms we choose...
WordPress VS. Google Sites...
Sourabh used WordPress, selecting a template entitled "Coldbox" (created by mirucon) to house his work. Coldbox is described as "a clean blog-focused WordPress Theme"
After exploring more than four classmates' sites -- all produced with WordPress -- I continue to prefer Google Sites. While I had thought I found a limitation with my platform's functionality in embedding content, Sourabh's site pushed me to explore how I might learn how to embed my Twine using a platform like itch.io.
That said, I found Sourabh's site to be less user friendly than Isabella's -- lacking clear and easy to use navigation tools and visuals to help guide and inform the viewer/user.
I left a comment on Sourabh's work, but was initially given an error message from WordPress when I tried to post. I tried a second time and was successful in posting. As with the other sites I've visited, I am unable to see if my comments have been added to the dialogue on the site (but it has only been a couple of days).
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References
Aggarwal, S. (2025, February 9). Twine – ETEC 540. https://blogs.ubc.ca/sourabhaggarwal/2025/02/09/twine/
Bolter, J. D. (2000). Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print: EBSCOhost. https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=a5bc0c49-9cce-4612-b64c-2949fef5f096%40redis&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPXNoaWImc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#AN=56673&db=nlebk
Coldbox – A beautiful WordPress Theme. (n.d.). Coldbox. Retrieved March 20, 2025, from https://coldbox.miruc.co
Download the latest indie games. (n.d.). Itch.Io. Retrieved March 20, 2025, from https://itch.io/
Five College Digital Humanities (5CollDH) (Director). (2016, June 30). How to use Twine to make your own text adventure games! [Video recording]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M41FFlLqu_M
Week 6 - Task 6 - An Emoji Story (Tatiana)
Hey Tatiana, was the show you watched called Lollipop Flower?
Likely not, but my incorrect guess highlights the different approaches used by Tatiana and myself in this task, which demonstrates the complexity of communicating through icons and symbols alone, without the scaffolding provided by written or spoken language to communicate subtle details and meaning to an audience or viewer. Tatiana shares her learning from Bolter's (2001) work, sharing that "picture writing appears immediate and direct but ultimately depends on the reader’s interpretation, allowing for diverse perspectives on the same message" (Kloster, n.d.).
I tried to capture the title and the plot of the film I chose, attempting to be as literal as possible when selecting emojis. My efforts were focused on reducing ideas or phrases to individual words -- or parts of compound nouns -- attempting to represent characters, concepts, events, and settings. Like Tatiana, I wanted my work to reflect honesty, so I selected the most recent film I had watched. I had thought my efforts would help the viewer interpret my emoji story by limiting the inaccuracy of my own interpretation in its writing. Tatiana's approach was a little different, for example when selecting emojis for the title, she "focused on words, attempting to convey [concepts] through a single visual symbol" (Kloster, n.d.). With her approach, it follows that her emoji story is much shorter than my own, and therefore perhaps less confusing.
I interpret that the plot involves three women whose friendship and love for is tested through heartbreak, a house fire, and perhaps troubling paperwork involving lawyers, but things end well for a loving family. Am I close? I imagine not.
Upon revisiting my work for this task and Tatiana's, it is striking how clearly Bolter's findings can be observed, that while icons and symbols can be somewhat universal in their meaning, in tandem with others images the message degrades as it is open to incredibly diverse interpretations, unique to the culture of the individual viewer. Without specific written or spoken words for exact context "to convey nuanced, sequential storytelling," Tatiana selects a quote from Bolter to capture this effectively: “Picture writing lacks narrative power.”
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An ongoing reflection on the design of this changing text space and the platforms we choose...
WordPress VS. Google Sites...
Tatiana used Google Sites to house her work and Padlet to offer visitors the means to engage with her content, offer comments and share. Both Tatiana and I appreciate how Padlet offers visitors increased access through the options of how a visitor might share, whether it be an image, text, audio, video, etc.
Whether our understanding of the New London Group's multi-literacies or Dobson and Willinksy's multimodal design informed our work, the padlet offers visitors to our sites options -- in terms of how and what they share. The options are intended to offer access through more affordances, thereby fostering engagement and participation. When users or viewers have options that are relevant to their culture and individuality, they are more likely to join the activity.
I left a typed text comment with a symbolic gif and also an audio comment on Tatiana's padlet. Shortly thereafter, she made an audio comment on mine. Clearly the collaborative and inclusive multimodal design of padlet works to some degree, in fostering engagement through the meaning making of participants. I look forward to reading more posts as they arrive. :)
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References
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. (2nd ed). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Dobson, T., & Willinsky, J. (2009). Digital literacy. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of literacy (pp. 286-312). Cambridge University Press.
Kloster, T. (n.d.). ETEC 540 Blog—An emoji story. Retrieved March 21, 2025, from https://sites.google.com/view/etec540/weekly-tasks/an-emoji-story
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.
"When [Jon] first examined the visualization of our song choices, [he] noticed how difficult it was to interpret and understand what [he] was looking at. In particular, the most challenging part of this task was trying to identify where the lines intersected, and what their meaning was. (And to be honest, [he is] not entirely sure that [he] elicited the true meaning [of] all of the patterns that were shown)" (Gock, n.d.). I appreciate Jon's honesty and wish to share my own; I was able to open the visualization with Palladio, but struggled with the filtering options, without any success. I was limited to the initial visualization and did not further research Palladio filtering functions. Therefore, I also appreciate Jon's methodic and technical breakdown of the information from the visualization created through our song selections.
Jon took his work a step further, in his efforts to unpack the connections between song selections and his classmates. To accomplish this, he explored some of his classmates' work for task nine, reading their reflections and rationales for song selections. This helped him to "find information from the visualizations about frequency and patterns of selections, [but] not fully discern the meaning behind the choices (and thus the data) itself" (Gock, n.d.). While I arrived at the same conclusion, I did not take this step to verify my thinking. As I value accuracy and authenticity, I thank Jon for reminding me of their importance.
As a forty-year old educator with a humanities background, some technology platforms initially feel beyond my skillset and so I appreciate observing others' methods with the tools, so that I might learn from them. For example, I would not have considered going "into the notepad version of the .json file" as Jon had, to see what information was not being represented in the visualization (Gock, n.d.). Seeing the novel strategies of others improves my own learning and builds confidence to revisit difficult tasks or concepts. Thank you, Jon.
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An ongoing reflection on the design of this changing text space and the platforms we choose...
WordPress VS. Google Sites...
Jon used WordPress, selecting a template entitled "Chosen" (created by Compete Themes) to house his work. Chosen is described as a "bold and minimalist" design (Chosen WordPress Theme by Compete Themes, n.d.).
I appreciate the usability of Jon's well-designed site, with navigation hypertext links easily found at the top of his page. The simplistic design with black font set against an off-white background makes it easy to focus on the information he intends to share. Seeing this simplicity of design has me considering my own site's design. Have I included too much? In my efforts to isolate and separate information, have I made my pages cluttered and difficult to view?
I left a comment on Jon's work and as with the other WordPress sites I've visited, I am unable to see if my comments have been added to the dialogue on the site -- as they must first be approved by a moderator.
While I value the collaborative and inclusive multimodal design of an embedded padlet on my Google Site, I have a growing concern that visitors to my site are resisting making comments on the platform.
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References
Chosen WordPress Theme by Compete Themes. (n.d.). Compete Themes. Retrieved March 23, 2025, from https://www.competethemes.com/chosen/
Gock, J. (n.d.). Task 9: Network Assignment – My ETEC 540 Portfolio. Retrieved March 23, 2025, from https://blogs.ubc.ca/jgock87/2025/03/06/task-9-network-assignment/
Some final reflective thoughts...
I have noticed that each link and reflection I have shared above offers insight into the value I place on honesty and integrity as an educator -- authentic, accurate, and honest communication.
Culture and place shape our communities' and individual identities, with language to interpret and share our worlds; Nick and I have both witnessed this this in our travels. Successful cultural traditions, customs, and technologies establish structures within a language system, evolving that system in an iterative remediation through time, thereby creating a shared history and level of cultural knowledge.
Successful conventions of a language system become widespread and establish accuracy -- like that which we expect from effective communication in the modern, globalized world; Natalie and I both value the accuracy and efficiency afforded by typed, digital text over the relative inefficiency of speech-to-text technology -- likely because we are familiar with the widespread and established methods of digital typing in word processing.
Related to accuracy, communication reflects the authenticity of its participants -- as individuals, and as representatives of their community. Educators strive to share accurate information, therefore it follows that they make great efforts to be genuine and authentic when reflecting on their own learning. I appreciated Tatiana's mention of her commitment to authenticity when selecting the show she would summarize with emojis. Impactful and long-lasting human learning is an active endeavour built upon acceptance and willful (re)shaping of (mis)understanding. Viewing Sourabh's success with embedding his Twine game on his site motivated me to review my own Twine game, do some research, and then improve how my work is communicated and shared.
As human beings, educators are fallible. Honest reflection and communication inspires our practice, keeping us humbly grounded and gracefully accepting when reviewing our work or helping others. Isabella and I demonstrate the priority we place on this level of authenticity through our use of journals to manually collect anecdotes and observations throughout our day, to reflect and improve our practice as teachers. Jon's work and my own demonstrates the benefits of observing different approaches to a problem. Natalie, Isabella and I certainly appreciate clarity and efficiency, which is demonstrated in our appreciation of digital word processing tools to refine written work.