For this task we were asked to change the semiotic mode of the first task, “What’s in your bag.” The objective of Task 1 was to take a picture of an array of items from a bag we commonly carry and explain why we choose to transport such items. This was an ice breaker activity and an opportunity for us to introduce ourselves.
For Task 7, I decided to resign this activity to make it more auditory rather than visual. If I were to use this, I would ask participants to create a sound clip using effects that describe parts of their day. Their peers would have to decipher the activity each sound represents and try to piece together a typical day.
The sounds in my day: I wake up, go for a run, drive to work, enjoy a cup of coffee, teach, drive home, eat dinner, watch some television, get sleepy, head to bed.
For me this redesign reflects the New London Group’s ideology of trying to use a more holistic approach to meaning making (NLG, 1996). Meaning is becoming increasingly multimodal in the real world and I think that it is important that other literacies, such as oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile, and spatial are represented in education. As educators, we need to feel comfortable and confident in engaging in non dominant literacies. “As designers of meaning, we are designers of social futures, workplace futures, public futures, and community futures” (p.65). If different literacies are incorporated regularly in education, then we are empowering diversity and reaching all learners.
Reference:
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.
Sarah,
I really appreciated the way in which you redesigned this task, not only switching the mode to fully auditory, but also in outlining “a day in the life” rather than choosing to rehash what’s in your bag. After listening to your audio file, I was inspired to go more “outside the bag” myself (I made a video looking at the apps on my phone). Additionally, I was left contemplating how similar of an audio file I would create if I were to follow your lead and stitch together a soundtrack for my day. I wonder how easy it would be to guess certain people’s professions just be listening to similar audio tracks outlining their days, or in the case of my own task, by looking at their phones and the apps the use.
This was such a creative idea Sarah! It reminded me of that radio contest they held when I was younger where you had to guess the noise in order to win a cash prize. Just from hearing the audio, I had a clear picture of what your daily life is like which was the purpose of the original assignment. Besides the “go for a run” part, our days sound pretty similar. I wonder how similar or different other people’s sound clips would be after completing this project?