Reflect on the potential benefits and challenges of engaging in mode-changing and describe your own redesign process.

The New London Group showed all the many ways that meaning can be represented. Through this task we are representing the first task of the course where we introduced ourselves to the rest of ETEC 540. What is in our bag shows a lot about us and what we place meaning on in our lives. Instead of reading out the items in my bag, I chose to represent them with a noise for each object. I wish I was a musician who knew how to mash up sounds however I had to resort to recording Youtube clips. Therefore this task took me longer than I would like to admit.

I think the benefits of mode-changing are engagement for students or people who gravitate to different representations of information. This could also be more accessible for certain people with varying backgrounds or difficulties with written texts. However, where I can see a challenge is in how it is interpreted. Especially after my recording, I am not sure people would necessarily be able to interpret exactly what is meant by each sound. Another challenge I see is knowledge of required equipment. I struggled for a few minutes just trying to determine what method of recording I could use. Changing modes is interesting ang engaging but more so if it does not require even more time to prepare.

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