Check out Deborah’s Task 7 here!

Audio isn’t great. I’m no studio artist! She begins with. But, I have to disagree, this was absolutely incredible! What a fun and engaging way to approach this task.

Deborah chose to create a rap song about the items in her bag for this multimodal presentation of content. I appreciated how she included the quote from Gee (2005) about musical notation and its relationship to literacy. The idea of literacy is an important one to dissect, especially in my line of work in special education, so I appreciated how she included this particular note on what may make someone “literate”.

Deborah chose to use Youtube to create a musical piece with lyrics, whereas I chose to create a “radio show” (more similar to a podcast) on Soundtrap. The use of Youtube allowed for the lyrics to be visually represented/included along with the audio. This multimodality was appreciated as I could follow along with the lyrics (a feature that helps me understand or process information better). I chose to include a transcript for my podcast for similar reasons; accessibility as well as information processing.

The grander idea of literacy (or various forms) as she mentions from the New London Group is important to consider (prose literacy, numerical literacy, digital literacy, health literacy). It reminds me of a recent conversation I had with an educational psychologist about what is more important; reading and writing or understanding. This can be quite the point of contention especially when it comes to individualized education plans but brings light to the topic of literacy.