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This was a my criteria for my curated list:

As I initially scanned through the songs, I had thought by selecting by title.  I automatically picked Chuck Berry’s song, immediately recognizing it from Back to the Future.  As I continued, however, I realized that I knew very few of the remaining songs by title name and that my initial selection criteria was not going to be effective.  Accordingly, I decided my second criteria was going to be that I had to pick songs that were from each continent.  I figured since this record is going into space as a representation of music of Earth to whoever finds it, they must have picked songs from all the continents.  It is too bad that either wind or some other noise from Antarctica isn’t represented.  My final criteria was to select those songs that either elicited feelings and emotions from me or those which I associated to specific memories. This criterion is the one I used most when I finally curated my list to ten songs.

• Track 3: Percussion (Senegal) – Tchenhoukoumen
  • This song and its beat made me want to get up and dance. It reminded me of my memories of working for a pharmacy run by our Ugandan family friend, who would expose us to African music.

• Track 5: Morning Star and Devil Bird
  • I chose this song, as I appreciated the didgeridoo at the beginning.   This intro/hook to this song is what had me listening to the entire clip.  The harmony the artist provided with the didgeridoo and then with no music at the end left me with a feeling of wanting more.

• Track 7: Johnny B. Goode
  • I chose this song for three reasons. The first being that Chuck Berry was a defining leader for the genre of Rock n’ Roll.  The second reason is it reminds me of one of my favourite movies, “Back to the Future” with Michael J. Fox playing this song at the high school dance.  The third is my dad and I would have a good time dancing to this song.

• Track 12: Tchakrulo – Choir – Georgia
  • I chose this song, as it reminded me about all men’s choir concerts I have gone to see in the past so it brings back good memories. The harmony of simply voices without accompanying instruments gives me goosebumps.

• Track 13: Panpies and Drum (Peru)
  • I picked this song, as the drumbeat had me hooked.  It reminded me of a rhythm I experienced when I was in Argentina. It was similar to cumbia music I danced to there.  I did get sidetracked down the rabbit hole of Argentine cumbia music, but it was a fun side-track.

• Track 14: Melancholy Blues – L Armstrong & His Hot Seven
  • I chose this song, as in addition to my appreciation of Louis Armstrong, it brought me back to lessons I have taught about Civil Rights in the USA and the effect of music.

• Track 16: Rite of Spring (Sacrificial Dance)
  • I picked this song, as it reminds me of songs that could be in adventure movies such as Indiana Jones. I found it very reminiscent of an action sequence in a film. Although I am not a huge fan of such movies, I was drawn to this song, as it can be translated across many different cultures and languages.

• Track 17: The Well-Tempered Clavier – Bach
  • I chose this one because when my children were babies, instead of white noise in their room at night, as parents we played baroque music, on their iPod, for them to fall asleep. This habit continued until they were almost 7 years old.  So, this choice is based on pure memory.

• Track 25: Jaat Kahan Ho – Surshri
  • I picked this song originally because it had a sitar in it, which brought me back to the pharmacy, where we would listen to international music and have small staff dance parties in the back.   Specifically, this music reminded me of Pandit Ravi Shankar.  However, I did some digging about this artist and was fascinated to learn that she was a classical vocalist (Wikipedia contributors, 2021).

• Track 26: Dark was the Night – Blind Willie Johnson
  • Initially I chose this song, as I appreciated the guitar rhythm and no lyrics. When I did a bit more digging into the artist and his life history, I found that very little is known about the artist.  It was also interesting to learn that this artist was a pastor, and this song is his ohmage to Christ’s Crucifixion (Editors Of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2000).

References:

The Editors Of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2000, January 12). Blind Willie Johnson | Biography, Songs, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved October 24, 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Blind-Willie-Johnson

Wikipedia contributors. (2021, September 19). Kesarbai Kerkar. Wikipedia. Retrieved October 24, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesarbai_Kerkar

My storybook:  Task 7 – Mode Bending

When considering how I was going to describe the contents of my bag in this mode-bending manner, I was at a loss of how it would look and how I was going to change it. Finally, I concluded that I was going to create a storybook with a younger audience in mind.  I felt this was the best way to acknowledge the multiliteracies pedagogy mentioned by the London Group (1996). When I considered the layout and content, I thought about my audience’s limited literacy capabilities and thus added audio to each page while maintaining cropped images, from the original page, of each item in my bag.

The intention behind using the same images draws from my experience working with non-verbal students.  Through my past experiences, it was always beneficial to complement language, written or audio, with concrete images of the item or action.  Accordingly, I took one image from Task 1 and cropped each item.

By adding the image to the front of the book and then all cropped images on different pages, I used the concepts of over instruction by scaffolding the learning from Task 1 with the image of my bag contents.  I wanted to include these images as those who may be unfamiliar with the language and its normalizations, that compacts the information with the assumption that everyone understands, does not exclude those who want to participate in the reading of this book (London Group, 1996).

In addition, I have then begun “building on and recruiting what the learner already knows” (London Group, 1996, p.86).  The practice of scaffold learning has been accomplished by cropping and adding each item from the bag and using the direct image ask to master the skill of what each item is and matching it with the name given by the author.  This attempt to seek scaffolded learning and overt instruction has been a manner to consciously ensure that more powerful learning occurs when I integrate conscious mode switching (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009).

The curriculum in my province emphasizes that each student is different, and we have to teach to many different learners. Therefore, the teacher should not forget that so too should design and redesign old materials or units into new ones.

This activity has allowed me to remember why it is essential to include multimodalities in my classroom.

References

Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (2009). Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4:3, 164-195, DOI:10.1080/15544800903076044

The New London Group.  (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures.  Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.