Like many, I found this task to be challenging and require a lot of creativity. I am still not quite sure about my end product, mostly because it’s quite a different approach than others may have. At the start of the week, I sat staring at the image from task 1 and the contents of my bag trying to find inspiration. The one thing that kept jumping out at me was how many pieces in my bag today are actually quite abnormal to what I would have had for many years prior to 2020. I noticed how many additional things I carry because of COVID, how many things are missing and how many are just different. I then thought about the essence of the first task in this course and how the contents in our bag represent us and our literacies and give insight into our day-to-day. There’s so much about the last year that has impacted every aspect of our lives! And I really believe it will have (and has) changed us in many ways. So I decided to go on a limb and write a letter to COVID-19 and express the ways in which it has changed life, day-to-day, how it has changed me and how it has changed the contents of my bag over the last year.

I decided to use a combination of audio and visual modes to redesign Task 1. I did not include any text but opted for the curation of videos to bring my narration to life. I also incorporated background music to bring a bit more emotion to the task as well.

Music: Bensound.com

Video clips: pixabay.com

The end product and incorporation of the letter I wrote, the narration, music and video clips turned what was a static image into something meaningful for me. It is probably the first time that I have actually reflected this deeply on the changes in our lives that we’ve experienced over the last year. Putting it together did stir some emotion.

In relation to the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies, the concept of Design, Available Designs and the Redesign can be associated with more than one component of this task. While reading the paper, I felt as though that obvious Available Design was what I had created for Task 1 and the Redesign was what I created for Task 7. However, I also want to point out that, in any instance that we curate, we are also using the Available Design (the video clips and music) to create the Redesign (Task 7). The original design of these media was not for my use and for this particular video clip that I created, but using them for it gives them a new meaning. Basically, when we use anything to design (or create) something of our own, we are giving it a new meaning! I love this concept.

In the vein of Design and Redesign, the New London Group states:

Through thr process of Design, moreover, meaning makers remake themselves. They reconstruct and renegotiate their identities. Not only has The Redesign been actively made, but it is also evidence of the ways in which the active intervention in the world that is Designing has tranformed the designer”

In my own redesign of Task 1, I decided to deliberately speak and use words that directly relate to where I am in the world, Two that stand out most to me that others who don’t live in Montreal may not understand are cinq a sept and opus card. The first is happy hour and the second is the name of our public transit pass. When I first recorded that narration I said the more generic terms but decided to change them the second time around. I felt that because the original task was to explore how the items in our bag represented us, that my language in the narration should also represent me and where I am. I feel that this active intervention if including part of my identity gives the Redesign another layer of meaning.

One of the biggest challenges I experienced was the lack of diversity in choices of royalty-free curated video clips. I used a lot of clips of hands and the majority of the hands I found were white and male, which was disappointing and not intentional. I realize in multiliteracies pedagogy, meaning-making in a real-world context should cater to a diverse community of learner. I felt that the lack of representation of the visual component of my redesign defeated the purpose of creating something that is supposed to be diversified. There were, however, options for more diverse video clips if one were to subscribe and pay for a license to the site. This is something I would consider doing if I were to create something that was more professional.

I hope, nonetheless, that my redesign gave more meaning and life to the original Task 1 by using multimodalities which include audio, linguistic and visual designs. Perhaps your experiences can relate to the things I reflect on in my letter to COVID. With it, you can extract your own reflection and meaning.

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. (Links to an external site.) Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.