Above: Audio-only “What’s in my bag?”

Reflection: For this task, I redesigned the original task by providing only an audio recording an itemized list of what’s in my backpack, adding some description of the items and their purpose. I chose to see what it would be like to not have any images to describe the items, but only voice. For me, audio only has less impact. When providing an itemized list, I feel it lacks the ability to fully describe or fully engage. As an audience we want to be entertained, to feel something, to have an emotional reaction, and to understand the importance and relevancy of the information being shared. This reinforces for me the importance for verbal instruction to be entertaining in order to be engaging. Depending on the audience, this audio list could be sung, spoken in rhymes, spoken in different voices, told in story format, etc.

To provide a more authentic engaging assignment that would appeal to more listeners, I could see creating a video that incorporates more multimodals. For example: a video that shows each item, low-volume background music, typed words on the screen for each item, an ASL sign shown for each item, and a voice listing and describing each item. We know as teachers, to fully enrich learning, our goal is to provide lessons and activities that provide a variety of modalities that are suited to the lesson. Obviously, we wouldn’t want all our learning to be through digital media, but we need to consider the value of choosing the most effective mode(s) for any given literacy and pedagogy scenario.

Considering multi-modalities and modes of communication, I see this playing out in my Kindergarten classroom each day. I’m able to, with intention, facilitate a classroom environment where students can participate and engage in many ways, for example, through play-based learning; outdoor and experiential; discussions; listening; social interactions; images through books, visual arts, posters, and technology; gestures through body language; sign language; music, singing, and rhyming; spatial through movement and dance, and providing a variety of environments in which learning occurs.

The New London Group article imparts an understanding of literacy and pedagogy “to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies. And to consider the “variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies” (p. 61). The goal of the 1994 meeting of the authors was to “address the broader issue of the purposes of education, and, in this context, the specific issue of literacy pedagogy” with the main concern being “the question of life changes as it relates to the broader moral and cultural order of literacy pedagogy” (p. 62). The authors developed this chart. (include chart)

The authors express a movement in education away from general and literacy teaching which traditionally focussed on standardized testing and homogenization. (p. 68). Roles of schools has shifted toward cultural and linguistic diversity (p. 68). “Cultural and linguistic diversity is a classroom resource just as powerfully as it is a social resource in the formation of new civic spaces and new notions of citizenship” (p. 69). Authors of “Multiliteracies: New Literacies, New Learning would agree that, “Repetition, replication, stability and uniformity had to be imposed by the old literacy, against the grain of the human-semiotic nature of designing” (Cope & Kalantzis, p. 177).

The New London Group stress the importance of shifting to the “reversal” of what has been the norm in literacy pedagogy. “To be relevant, learning processes need to recruit, rather than attempt to ignore and erase, the different subjectivities – interests, intentions, commitments and purposes – students bring to learning” (p. 72).

To describe forms of meaning, metalanguage is needed. It is described as “a language for talking about language, images, texts, and meaning-making interactions” (p. 76). The metalanguages or semiotic modes (as seen on the list and chart below) are:

  • Linguistic (language, meaning)
  • Visual (images, page layout, format)
  • Audio (music, sound effects)
  • Gestural (body language, sensuality)
  • Spatial (environmental space, architectural space)
  • Multimodal (the interconnection among the 5 modes)

“Transformative curriculum recognizes that the process of designing redesigns the designer. Learning is a process of self-re-creation. Cultural dynamism and diversity are the results” (Cope, p. 184).

References:

Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (2009). Multiliteracies: new literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal. 4:3, 164-195, DOI: 10.1080/1554800903076044

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review. 66, 1; Research Library