Linking Assignment
The idea behind this assignment was to connect with our colleagues by visiting their web spaces and think about their engagement with the course and the weekly tasks. To look at how our approaches, experiences, and ideas compared to each other.
In a course that didn’t have the usual weekly discussion posts, I found that I felt much more connected to my classmates, sometimes eagerly awaiting to see how they had approached and carried out the task
This is a collection of links to blog postings that really resonated with me for one reason or another. Some are here because they expanded my thinking with new ideas and approaches. Others are here because they inspired my work as I took sneak peeks during the week to see what others were up to. It’s rare to have a course where every week you catch yourself thinking...
“I can’t wait to see what so and so is up to”.
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Thank you to my colleagues in ETEC 540 - You are amazing and inspiring!
Link # 1: Jess O’Hanley-What’s in My Bag?
This first task in the course was one where I didn’t take a quick peek through colleagues’ work and ideas first. This worked out really well because as I read through Jess’s contribution to the task it really made go back and think about how I had approached the project. Firstly, I was struck by the idea of a #adultgapyear which I’d never heard of. An amazing idea that would never have occurred to me, and the bravery that it takes. I’ve always been so focused on career and school and often think how did life get so busy and complicated.
Our two bags couldn’t have been any more different, how could we have gone in such different directions?
What I realize is that, especially at the start of the course, when I was asked to think about ‘text and technology’ and a bag that I immediately thought of work and school. In my mind when I seem to think about technology it’s all about seriousness in school and work. Looking at Jess’s post made me realize I have other bags that I could have used. In fact, I love photography also, why did I not think to pick up my camera bag with all its tech and use that for the assignment.
The first thought that comes to mind is “that bag is for fun and leisure and getting outside of my head for a while” so it doesn’t even occur to me to use it. The second thought was that Jess has items in there that I have in my bag but has a much broader idea/definition of what technology is for. She describes her iPad as a tool for her illustrator hobby, even saying “I do this for fun” On the other hand, I tend to describe technology by how I use it for work or school.
So, I really have to thank Jess for making me realize what a narrow definition I was working with, expanding my view of how text technology fits into life, and that I actually use technology in other parts of my life for fun/entertainment.
Now I have to explore her idea of #funemployment and #adultgapyear
link # 2: Chris Smith – Twine Task
This was one of my favourite Tasks during the course. As I said in my post I haven’t really thought of myself as a creative person in the past so the task was a bit daunting. I told a story but I stuck to what I knew and created an adventure for nursing students. I was quite proud of the result (and still am). Looking back, I was a bit restrictive in my thinking. Sure, I put some fun in with little offshoot loops that ended in a joke or brought you back to the beginning. However, because I was planning it as a teaching tool for students I stuck to a strict step by step path that I wanted the students to work through. While there was fun and entertainment to engage the students, it was less of a story than a series of logical steps that I wanted the students to move through.
Then I experienced Chris’s Twine story, and it truly was a story with highs, lows, suspense linked with humour. It brought me back to the ideas we were being exposed to in the course. While Chris was using hyperlinks as the text technology, his story was engaging because he had retained much of what was distinctive and valuable from oral storytelling. In an earlier task (voice to text) we experienced what it was like to go from an oral to written language pattern and what was lost in translation, the tone, inflection, cadence, etc. In his Twine, Chris had managed to retain so much of that. He didn’t have the many offshoots or loops that I thought I needed to make the story interesting. Instead what he had were powerfully descriptive wording and careful pacing with pauses for emphasis. I could actually experience the ups and downs of the story, almost hear the suspenseful music in my head, and was just waiting for something to quickly jump out at me.
So, kudos to Chris for showing me how to keep some of the best parts of oral storytelling, to look at the timing and ways to create a mood. I’m still working on a version for my students without the many loops and strict format, they’ll love it with the extra depth I’ve learned to put in.
Link # 3: Charles Currie – Mode Bending
This task was one of the most difficult and most engaging weeks in the course. Most of the week I was at a loss. Audio? So…talk into the microphone? This was also one of the weeks that I took sneak peeks at what approaches my classmates were using. Charles gets so much credit for starting me off on a way to complete the task. His audio recording of a typical workday was not only creative but a very effective way of telling a story. The idea of representing items and activities of his day with sounds finally got me out of thinking that audio meant I had to use my voice. If I closed my eyes and listened I could imagine his day. Telling a story with sounds.
From there the credit also goes to our instructor Ernesto, who told me about an interesting podcast “Everything is Alive" That’s where the idea of personifying the objects in my bag came from. I got to search and use many various sounds and also use my voice for storytelling. It has me reflecting that up till now I haven’t given audio much credit as an engaging way of communicating. Up till now I mostly listen to music as background to something else I am doing, I don’t listen to podcasts, and I’ve never really listened to an old-time radio broadcast. So, after a bit of learning and work (ok a lot) I am starting to realize that by completely ignoring a communication mode leaves out a great way to engage students. It’s not strictly oral storytelling but a new text technology way that can add a new dimension of communicating with students
Link # 4: Jess O’Hanley - Predictive Text
I absolutely loved Jess’s take on the Predictive Text Assignment. It’s interesting to compare the two blogs. Mine starts out as a negative rant about the difficulty of using predictive text to say anything meaningful. On the other hand, Jess comes across with a positive creative way to work with predictive text, she actually seems to embrace the strange word combinations that emerge. There’s a sense of pleasure that the recipient will have to think and questions the intentions of the text. It is quite freeing. In my blog, it shows how much I wanted the text to say something clear, meaningful, and educated MET student sounding.
Then, interestingly the tables turn a bit. My blog goes a bit Pollyanna positive-sounding, where I resolve that I just need to teach my predictive text better. I end up planning to be more involved with the AI in my phone. While Jess points the unease about the ‘little guy (or girl) that lives in our technology, that how our phones know us better (and predict) than we know ourselves.
The most interesting to note is that both of us personify the AI in our phones. Jess calls it the ‘little guy’, meanwhile I talk about teaching it as if it were a student.
It makes me wonder when, where, and how AI and humans will intersect?
Link # 5: Johnny Wu – Golden Record Creation
This was another of those really daunting weeks with a task that made me stretch what I think niche of strengths is. Music is certainly not one of them, as I said in my blog I’m a musical philistine. So, my chosen method as to make each sure each musical choice had a different instrument, different sound, and if needed a different rhythm. So, at the end of the week as I looked through my colleagues’ presentations of the task, I was quite impressed with the rationale behind their choices; diversity, musicality, emotion, and culture. All of it including mine seemed to look at aspects of music.
Johnny’s contribution was the one that really made me sit back and think twice. We were mainly thinking about music, while to me Johnny was thinking about communication. What message would the music convey to the aliens? Most of us wanted to send a message that showed how diverse and wonderful we are. While Johnny was much more pragmatic, he didn’t want us to communicate that we are an invadable planet. He wanted the record to show intensity from a variety of nations, so that we were formidable. I love the giggle it gave me, and even more the out of the box thinking the blog.
That got me thinking some more. How do we know that we are actually communicating what we intend? Perhaps for aliens intense strong music is actually interpreted as a lullaby. After all, look at the Klingon language in Star Trek, all of their speech sounds intense, strong, and formidable…even when they are being nice, perhaps singing a lullaby. Humans may interpret it as a threat.
So, are we really communicating what we intend? Or is it all filtered through our unconscious lens of culture and experience?
The funny part of this is that I teach students nurses ‘communication’ and ‘relational practice’ skills…. Hmmm… ?
Link # 5: Sylvia M. Chu – Speculative Futures
I really appreciated and connected with Sylvia’s 2 speculative futures. Not only because I have a nursing background and could relate to the material. I really enjoyed the presentation of the two stories. And how they were connected to each other. There was something really engaging about reading about the first Dr. Tang and his concerns about the effects of our possible future dependence on AI. Then to go to the great great great grandson actually experiencing how dependant he is on the AI.
“He just realized that without his A.I. devices he was not a doctor.
He asked himself how am I supposed to treat him if these devices do not work?”
I really liked the ways it made me think in terms of AI. It also hit a bit close to home, because they are concerns we are starting to have about nursing now. We don’t yet have Holodecks, but we have Virtual Reality. UbiSIM-Virtual Reality Training Platform is one that I had an opportunity to try out at a recent conference. It was all a bit overwhelming as it put you right in the scenario if you turned your head or walked the scene would shift if you touched something the controllers in your hands have haptic technology that makes them vibrate. It sounds like an exciting new way to teach…
Until you think about the fact that we already have some concerns about technology causing a loss of skills in nursing. For example, taking blood pressure. We teach the student the manual skill of taking blood pressure. Once working as an RN, there are automatic blood pressure machines on the unit and use them all the time. Nurses can become so unused to performing the manual skill, that they would rather take the elevator to another floor to get a new BP machine than do it themselves…the future is already arriving…
“He just realized that without his BP Monitor he was not a NURSE.
He asked himself how am I supposed to treat him if these devices do not work?”
As a part of the ETEC 540 community network we also get to explore the writings and projects of our colleagues’ web spaces. Making connections between their projects and ideas with my own.
Here are my reflections and links to my MET colleagues
