A redesigned sharing of ‘What’s in my bag’
Redesign process
Initially I approached this task thinking that I would try to break up the use of my written text to create a more digital multimodal version. Even in the original Task 1, I think I created a simple multimodal text since I had the linguistic mode (printed written text), visual mode (the formatting of my original text with margins and headings, use of bold to highlight certain key items in my bag, and the picture of my bag above all this text) and spatial mode (the text’s arrangement, the placement of the picture of my bag and its items above the text). I planned to break up my written text, to replace it with audio recordings for parts of my description and to insert more images to play around with the spatial mode. I even recorded a set of five audio files, basically redescribing my original, that I planned to insert within smaller chunk of written text and images, but I realized that the output was not really a new meaning or knowledge despite my changes. I was confused by this aspect of A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: The process of shaping emergent meaning involves re-representation and reconceptualization (p. 75); perhaps because I was caught up with the ‘process of shaping’ somehow creating the re-representation and reconceptualization.
During our class Zoom meeting this afternoon (Oct 23, 2021), I was inspired to try to think beyond the multimodal aspect of rearranging and supplementing my original written description of a picture of items in my running bag, to change the genre, perspective, subjectivity and voice and thus, hopefully truly redesigning the task.
To truly redesign this task, I realized I needed to think through all the various genres I could use to itemize or describe what was in my bag. I had already used a purely descriptive written genre in Task 1 and I knew part of the instructions for Task 7 were for us to deliver using the audio linguistic mode. It took this shift for me to re-represent and reconceptualize the sharing of ‘what is in my bag’. I chose to come at this sharing from the perspective of my bag, narrating how it was used, how how the different items it carries are packed and used. The genre became a sort of narrative recounting of how it is repacked with the different items in my bag after it is washed. I tried to follow a loose ‘recount’ structure with some general background information about ‘who’ it is (a little red bag), where and when (how long I have had it), then produced a narrative where the ‘little red bag’ recounted which items are placed in which pouches, in what sequence and for which purpose. I added comments in the ‘bag’s’ voice to give it (and me) some expression of personal attitude and feeling.
The procedural process to achieve this once I had reconceptualized this recount was for me to write up a sort of script on a Word file, breaking up my original description from Task 1. I decided to write the script from the bag’s first person perspective, referring to myself as the owner of the bag as ‘she’ because I wanted to change the tone of the task completely and give the bag itself agency, so this time I was being described rather than describing something. I recorded my script as an audio recording into my mobile phone in one take, and tried to keep my recording to under 7 minutes because from my experience in creating e-learning resources, I have learned that any audio or lecture style video over 7 minutes is quite taxing for the average person’s working memory.
I used my delivery with my voice and vocabulary to try to demonstrate from the bag’s perspective a more personal, casual, confiding recounting from the bag to the listener. This change in tone, voice and perspective, I think worked well with the audio linguistic mode, combined with the change in genre from a pure written description of an image (with some personal reflection) to a more casual, audio recounting of the ‘personal experience’ of my bag. This change in perspective, voice and genre helped me redesign the initial task into something, I think, completely different, yet still achieves the same goal of sharing what is in my bag.
Potential benefits and challenges of engaging in mode-changing
The change in subject, perspective and genre was an eye-opener for me, especially once I thought about how these aspects could combine within an audio linguistic mode as effectively as possible. As I explained earlier, I was quite confused about where the redesign would occur or change between my two iterations (Task 1 and Task 7), and found some of the New London Group’s explanations led me down the path where I thought space and design could impact the redesign to the extent that a significant change could occur.
I see several benefits to understanding how meaning can change (or stay the same, but be shared from a different subjective, perspective) when engaging in mode-changing. The benefits I particularly appreciated while engaging in this mode-changing task are wrapped up in how different components within a mode (if I’m understanding semiotic mode vs sensory) can be used to harness its affordances. For example, an audio mode allows the person speaking to harness the powers of delivery: stress, intonation, pause, vocal variety, to create a more immediate, personal connection with the listener, and this worked well when combined with a genre like a narrative or personal recounting. If you are able to use vocal/verbal delivery well, you can communicate different perspectives, which are quite different from those that need to be built up and described with word signs in written texts. Even visual images combined with written text can lack the immediacy of a first-person perspective audio recording referring to a visual. But the devil is in the details!
Challenges abound because the nuances with mode-changing need to be learned. When to change genres and discourse patterns, and how they would best suit the mode and task, are not, as the New London Group points out, governed by static rules. The process of understanding that ‘Designing transforms knowledge in producing new constructions and representations of reality’ (p.76) was relatively abstract for me until I was led through the process or had a sort of epiphany moment (I hope). Mode-changing allows humans an expansion in terms of how we can communicate (beyond oral, written, visual), but requires attention to or awareness of the details within the different combinations of modes and language.
This was a deceptively simple task which for me, felt like a great learning moment!
