Linking Assignment #2

A Summary:

This peer has demonstrated their learning on the “Language” unit through completing the “Day 1 TedTalk Questions”, the “Voice-to-Text Activity”, and “The Emoji Story Activity”. From reading their responses to these assignments and conversing with them in class, I realized that we have similar ideas and perceptions on what language truly is. For example, on the “Day 1 TedTalk Questions”, this peer mentioned that language is a way of expressing our thoughts and that it is a necessary right in life. In the same assignment, I also mentioned that language plays a crucial part in shaping our identities and we can transmit knowledge to each other’s minds through expressing our own ideas. Furthermore, the overall idea that my peer expressed for the “Voice-to-Text Activity” was that it is not always a reliable source of communication because of misinterpreting words and meanings of the message. Both my peer and I mentioned that our text deviated from conventions of written English by not correcting the run-on sentences, including some slang and contracted words, and using incorrect vocabulary. Hence, I chose to reflect on this peer's post for this linkage due to the similarities in our responses and the agreements we had; however, if my peer had completed the “Day 2 TedX Questions” and the “Golden Record Activity”, I would have had more information about their thoughts and how they view language.

My Reflection:

This peer has demonstrated their learning on the topic of “Language” by briefly answering the questions of the aforementioned activities. Based on what I have viewed, they have not added supporting evidence or images to their post that would enhance their responses and I believe this is contrary to how I demonstrate my learning. For example, I have organized all the posts for this unit under the “Language Unit” page, and this assisted my peer to easily navigate through my work. I have also labelled the sections of each post; for instance, the “Day 1 TedTalk Questions” post involved pre-, while, and post- questions, so I clearly categorized these sections in the single post of “Day 1 TedTalk Questions”. In addition, I added supporting images to make my pages more visually appealing and to give viewers another way of comprehending my ideas (such as the images representing the detailed text that I wrote). These reasons and other factors, such as bolding each question above my responses, do not make me gravitate with this peer’s presentation of the topic. Furthermore, from reading my peer’s work and talking with them in class, I understood that their experiences (as it relates to the topic) has still been similar to mine. I know because my peer and I had a conversation about how voice-to-text is not a reliable mechanism to use when sending messages to contacts. Both our unscripted texts included numerous errors and grammatical mistakes that contributed to misrepresenting our messages. My peer believes that this is a takeaway from this unit and is something important that they learned (as they had not examined this idea before). Reading their written responses on their website, they have reflected this in their “Voice-to-Text Activity” post. As a whole, this peer has expressed their learning in their assignments, but I believe that their responses lack depth that could have made me align with their presentation. Ultimately, my peer's presentation of their assignment has not changed how I view my assignment because our display manners differ, as mentioned before, but in terms of our understanding on the topic, we do agree with each other.