This week, I think I struggled a little bit more with the prompt. I believe that my biggest issue was the idea of changing the semiotic mode. I kept debating if I should change the whole process entirely, and that perhaps I should choose a topic that is not “what’s in your bag,” but something that could reflect people’s growth more clearly. However, I decided to take Week 1’s idea and challenge myself to change the mode, or should I say “literacy,” to be understood in another form

I designed a little game where you need to guess what items I have in my backpack by listening to different sounds. It might be the click of a pen, the zipper opening, or the clicks of my laptop. I wanted this to focus on the sense of hearing and on building meaning through sound rather than visuals or words. It made me think about how listening can be just as powerful a literacy as reading or writing, especially for English language learners.

The readings this week helped me see that literacy is not just about words on a page. Dobson and Willinsky (2010) explain that digital literacy expands traditional literacy by transforming how meaning is created, shared, and experienced through new technologies. They describe how literacy now exists across digital spaces that invite interaction, creativity, and collaboration. Thinking about this helped me understand that my sound guessing activity is also a form of literacy, because it asks listeners to interpret and make meaning from sound cues in order to understand a story about me. The participants are “reading” through their ears, piecing together information from sound waves and context rather than text or images. 

The New London Group (1996) also deepens this idea through their discussion of multiliteracies which focuses on how people communicate and learn through a range of modes, including linguistic, visual, spatial, gestural, and aural. My activity fits within the aural mode, and I realized that it invites a different kind of engagement. Instead of simply seeing the items in my bag, listeners need to imagine and infer. This process aligns with the idea of design, where learners actively construct meaning using the resources available to them. The act of guessing each sound becomes a creative and interpretive task that connects sound to experience. I also used a little bit of linguistics and visuals for the video aspect. I found it hard not to include any linguistic and visual, though I could have just made it an audio file, but I feel like the more modes you can use, the more accessible it can be.

In creating this activity, I found myself reflecting on how literacy can be an act of attention and curiosity. The small sounds that might seem ordinary became meaningful once they were isolated and shared. This made me think about how I can help my English language learners listen more intentionally and recognize that understanding sound is also part of being literate in today’s multimodal world.

Changing the semiotic mode felt uncomfortable at first, but it helped me think about how I can design more multimodal learning experiences. Maybe literacy really is about listening as much as it is about reading. I also couldn’t help thinking that I was creating ASMR, yet it also emphasizes why trends like ASMR have become more viral as they connect to a mode that others may feel more comfortable with.

References:
Dobson, T. M., & Willinsky, J. (2010). Digital literacy. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of literacy (p. 286–295). Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-literacy/digital-literacy/219EED91FE30D9370DC76816FEACDCE8
New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92. https://newarcproject.pbworks.com/f/Pedagogy%2Bof%2BMultiliteracies_New%2BLondon%2BGroup.pdf