Dana and I had similar thoughts about the emoji story task and what its implications are in terms of multimodality. Dana’s overall focus was on the challenges that educators face in incorporating new forms of media into the classroom. She noted that many educators are biased towards traditional printed works (Kress, 2005), and that there is a lack of funding for media literacy programs, but she also suggests that providing students with more authentic texts, such as social media posts and online articles, can help students engage with new forms of media in a supportive and controlled environment. I really liked the task that Dana presented her students with to represent their feelings with emojis. She is so right that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, particularly when it comes to emotion. Her example of a student activity coupled with my experience with translating hypertext using emojis has encouraged me to try to find a way to incorporate more visual projects into my highschool classroom
I found that translating text into visuals and vice versa allowed me to make new connections and meanings in the story that may have otherwise been overlooked, and would like to give my students that same opportunity.
Overall, both my reflection and Dan’s emphasize the importance of adapting to new forms of media, whether as an educator or as a consumer of media.
References
Kress, G. (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 2(1), 5-22.