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Redesigning the first task into a different semiotic mode invited both creative and theoretical reflection on what it means to “compose” in a multimodal environment. The original What’s in your bag task relied heavily on the visual mode, using spatial layout, image, and symbols to construct identity through objects. In this attempt, I reimagined the task through an aural mode, creating a short audio piece composed of ambient sounds and fragments rather than visual description. The focus shifted from seeing to hearing—inviting the listener to infer meaning through tone, rhythm, and pauses. This process required not only a translation of content but also a reorientation of how meaning is perceived, aligning with the New London Group’s (1996) call to consider design as an act of transformation, not replication.

This mode shift highlights the interpretive role of the listener. Without visual cues, sound becomes a tool for conveying atmosphere, emotion, and context. Each sound was an “available design” (New London Group, 1996) or an existing resource recontextualized for a new communicative purpose. For instance, the buzz of notifications and rhythm of the clock replaced the image of a bag and its contents. One challenge in this redesign was the loss of immediate clarity, new listeners struggled at first to connect sounds to specific meanings they weren’t confident in, revealing how we occasionally need visual cues for comprehension. This redesign highlighted how multimodality extends literacy beyond text and image to include embodied, temporal, and sensory dimensions of communication.

When I shared the audio piece with my middle school students, their responses added an unexpected layer to the redesign. While some initially struggled to interpret the sounds, the activity provoked genuine curiosity and engagement as they speculated about each noise’s source. This collective act of listening transformed the exercise into a form of collaborative meaning-making drawing out more from the New London Group’s (1996) notion of literacy as a socially situated design process. The ambiguity of the aural mode, rather than a limitation, became an invitation for interpretive play and inquiry.

In this sense, the act of composing through sound also resonates with Dobson and Willinsky’s (2009) argument that digital literacy is not a radical break from print culture but an evolution of it, a layering of practices that broadens rather than replaces traditional forms of literacy. The process of translating a visual artifact into sound is not a rejection of textual literacy, but an expansion of it, requiring similar cognitive acts of structuring, sequencing, and interpreting. Rather than abandoning writing, I found myself writing with sound, a process that bridges the digital and the literary.

In the context of the so-called “information age,” this redefinition of literacy feels especially relevant. As data and information multiply exponentially, the ability to navigate across modes, to design meaning using the most effective medium for the moment, becomes increasingly vital. The challenge is not simply one of technical skill but of imaginative adaptability, the kind of critical flexibility required for deep understanding in times of informational abundance. In rethinking literacy this way, mode-bending becomes both a creative and critical act—one that reaffirms the learner as an active designer of meaning rather than a passive consumer of information.

References

Dobson, T. M., & Willinsky, J. (2009). Digital literacy. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of literacy (pp. 286–312). Cambridge University Press.

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92.