For this week’s task I wanted to examine the impact of taking the What’s In Your Bag assignment and adding a variety of multimedia layers. I included audio by screen casting my PowerPoint, describing the visuals and hyperlinks to share some insights about the items in my bag, and how they reflect who I am.
Click on the link here to view my assignment.
When comparing the original assignment, which was image and text based, with this version, which includes these multimedia components, it became apparent that technology can be used to support creativity in a variety of ways. I also thought the various links support the idea that hypermedia “extends in significant ways our notions of textuality and literacy” (Dobson & Willinsky, 2009, p.5). In some ways the various links and different modes of communication (visual, textual verbal) help to bring the content alive. Even so I feel there was a fair bit of depth in the original text-based version. This reminds me of Ernesto’s comments on my first version of this task… “it makes more sense to question the oral/written dichotomy than to try to fit out epistemological realities within one of these two.” I didn’t really understand exactly what he was referring to at the time, but I now see how it connects to the notion of an essentialist argument and how it can limit one’s perception. Rather than looking at the differences between modes of communication, it can be more revealing to analyze how they can build on each other.
References:
Dobson, T. and John Willinsky (2009). Digital literacy. In D. Olson and N. Torrance (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook on Literacy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.