Interact with the activity below :
Use your arrow keys to glide across, participate in each activity on each slide then look for your summary results at the end, enjoy!
For this activity, I included the use of language to produce or consume texts, as a matter of design involving three elements, available design, designing, and the redesigned (NLG, 1996, p.74). I used H5P authoring tools to deliver a friendly learner experience. The first phase of my available design was based on my social activities, and I used a combination of text and music to bring my point across. Fast forward to a few weeks later and I redesigned the original product.
“One of the key ideas informing the notion of Multiliteracies is the increasing complexity and interrelationship of different modes of meaning. (p,78) The six areas mentioned are Linguistic Design, Visual Design, Audio Design, Gestural Design, Spatial Design, and Multimodal Design. Multimodal Design (NLG, 1996, p.78). This makes me think about how much Education is evolving in many ways to celebrate diversity in learning, the analogy that (Meyer et al., 2014), used about GPS, breaks down the emerging trend of UDL by asking two simple questions that I apply to my pedagogy, “What is our destination and how do we plan to get there?” (p,48). Applying this to my class, to answer the first question, personally, before I plan lessons the most important thing that I do is first get to know who my students are. For example, what are Tom’s learning preferences and readiness, which types of activities will engage him based on his learning preferences and interests, what behavioural strategies are used when he starts to be disruptive in class?
Secondly, to get to the destination or help students achieve their goals, I try to proactively remove barriers to learning, incorporate new instructional strategies, make adaptations within the curriculum or modifications to the curriculum where applicable, and assess students based on their mastery levels of the subject matter. The practical idea of UDL is that “it can help us redesign teaching and learning by guiding the design of an entirely new system with flexibility” (Meyer et al., 2002, p.50) so that there are alternatives to the curriculum to make it accessible for all learners.
I say all of this because I see a connection between multimodalities and the principles of universal design for learning. While redesigning the activity I had to think about my learners as if I was doing a lesson for my class and their different learning styles and what might appeal to them.
Technology plays an integral role in learning and helps to lessen the barriers that exist for learning to take place. Some of the challenges I encountered throughout this activity included the availability of free resources. Most resources are subscription-based and when planning for students you want something you can easily use.
Another challenge in creating mode bending is the digital divide, where discrepancies in who had access to technology is becoming more apparent (Dobson & Willinsky, 2009, p.11). Unfortunately, a lot of children around the world do not have equity in accessing such resources.
Digital literacy is so closely connected to the traditional association of literacy and democratic rights, as well as to more specific notions of e-government (Dobson & Willinsky’s, 2009, p.12).
The most crucial benefit of mode bending in an educational setting is the ability to utilize digital resources that match a student’s ability. It also enables teachers to customize learning experiences to suit students’ needs. So, for this activity, I created an interactive slide with voice-over, simple questions, visuals, and audio using H5P. From these activities, students can also draw upon their experience of other available designs as a resource for making new meanings from the texts they encounter. (NLG, 1996. p.76).
References
Cazden, C., Cope, B., Kalantzis, M., Luke, A., Luke, C., Nakata, M., & New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of Multiliteracies Designing Social Futures. In B. Cope, & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), (pp. 19-46). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203979402-6
Dobson and Willinsky’s (2009) chapter “Digital Literacy (Links to an external site.)” in the Cambridge Handbook of Literacy.
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