Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

“Multiliteracies, E-literature, and English Teaching”

July 7th, 2014 · 1 Comment

In this article, Len Unsworth discusses how teachers who are entering the workfield need to have an understanding of the literary forms that are emerging online, and must try to incorporate these new literary forms in their teaching. Unsworth uses one example of video games in his article. As Gee states, in Unsworth’s article, “video games are a new form of art. They will not replace books; they will sit beside them, interact with them, and change them and their role in society in various ways” (63). New literary forms are not trying to replace traditional forms in Unsworth’s perspective; they are meant to be supplemental to traditional forms and have the ability to work side by side to strengthen student engagement, resulting in new ways of learning.

In detail, Unsworth discusses three frameworks that work to develop e-literature and online literary resources in classrooms. The first is an organisational framework, which describes the articulation of book and computer-based literary narratives. The interpretive framework addresses the correlation of images and text to construct meaning. The last framework is pedagogic and concerns itself with e-literature and classroom literary learning.

After explaining each framework in much detail, Unsworth goes on to state that teachers feel unconfident in their abilities when it comes to using new literary forms in their classrooms. By using teachers’ knowledge on content and students’ knowledge on new literary forms, Unsworth believes that teachers and students can merge together to share the enjoyment of learning, where each side is benefitting. As Unsworth discusses, “On the basis of students’ greater familiarity with systematic knowledge of the topic, the teacher then moves to emphasise more critical framing to provoke critical questioning by students and a shift towards transformative knowledge” (71). The classroom will become much more student-centered as students are able to take on a more hands-on approach while teachers give the students the autonomy to work.

As a future teacher, I feel like it is quite impossible for teachers to use all types of new online literary forms in the classroom. Not all students would benefit from using e-literature; to this day, I prefer reading a book in hard copy than reading it online, and I’m sure many others feel the same as well. Of course, teachers must keep up with mainstream culture to help students create links between schooling and their lives. But where do we draw the line?

 

References

Unsworth, L. (2008). “Multiliteracies, e-literature and English teaching.” Language and Education, 22(1), 62-75.

 

 

Nabila Jessa

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1 response so far ↓

  • macraild // Jul 8th 2014 at 9:56 pm

    Nabila,

    I found the questions that you end your post with to be provocative ones. Sometimes I think that it is my age that informs the resistance I feel to the advent of techno-evangelism that seems to be the reality of contemporary education (“the infantilism of cyberhype” as Virilio has put it somewhere.) I think you might be a good deal younger than me, and, as such, you have probably “grown up” with platforms and devices that I adopted relatively late.

    This leads into a point that I think is a very important one: the push to incorporate digital technologies is represented *by educators* as a necessary response to the realities of young people’s habits and needs. Are students looking at text printed on paper with befuddlement? Are they explicitly asking for these new technologies? Anecdotally, I have found that “digital natives” have an awareness that the payoffs promised by the digital revolutions are essentially superficial ones.

    Another point to consider in creating “links between schooling and [students’] lives”, as you put it, is the fact that the way that teachers attempt to incorporate technologies can vitiate the pleasure that these technologies bring to students in their private lives. If a student likes to blog or write fanfic, does that then mean that the natural way to encourage that student’s writing is to make those interests curricular?

    To be frank, I found Ulmsworth’s piece vague and aspirational in terms of articulating the possibilities for E-literature in English teaching. The latter quality is to be lauded, the former not. I thought of Ernesto’s comments regarding “visual literacy”: people use the term with only a nebulous understanding of what it means, even as it is a lynchpin to their arguments. Ulmsworth describes his “interpretive framework” broadly as a need for educators and theorists of literacy to recognize the way in which images constitute an aspect of literacy that is “increasingly integrative” (64) with text. He supports his point by quoting several educational and literacy theorists that make bland claims to the same effect. I am quite sure he’s right and I have no dog in any fight to discredit him, but the implications of the claim are curiously undeveloped. Images *do* have the capacity to enrich text and different technologies and platforms *do* offer cool new looks for teachers to try out in their classrooms. I just think there are some perfectly good babies in with the deluge of bathwater that has been emptied out to make room for technologies and approaches that, to me, still have the appearance of novelty items. We want to exploit what students know and we want them to be interested in what we have to offer them–it is their process of learning, after all–but is there good evidence that they are learning more or more profoundly with use of electronic media? I believe there are even some early indicators that it may be an impediment (e.g. recent studies on the illusoriness of multitasking, the sort of content covered in Carr’s *The Shallows*, etc.)

    References

    Unsworth, L. (2008). “Multiliteracies, e-literature and English teaching.” Language and Education, 22(1), 62-75.

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