“New things require new words. But new things also modify old words, words that have deep-rooted meanings.” (Postman, 1993 – chapter 1)
The task this week was to take our first assignment from week 1 and redesign it. I have chosen to make a video using powerpoint and presented the objects in my bag as characters with a story. In this video, you will hear them speak of their purpose and value to the owner (me). I wasn’t able to upload the video file to the blog site (it was too big), so here is the link to it in my google drive…
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O6tZaseXr-Ngcyx7su8AEkl8d5Ax11Ay/view?usp=sharing
Here is the viewable powerpoint if you prefer…
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12-43LWl845_hC_XOVNl1VOABFTbEHkWL/view?usp=sharing
And here is the pdf transcript of the video in case you have troubles understanding the audio…
The first thing I noticed while doing this task is that one can include much more information in a more compact form when writing with text. A video, although it may be more visually appealing and creative, takes more time and effort to incorporate the same amount of information. If I was to include everything that I said in my first assignment, the video would have been much longer. I had to refine my story so that the essential elements were included, but also needed to be mindful of the attention span and context of my audience to make it as accessible as possible.
Changing modes presents information in a way that allows one to communicate with a wider array of people. We are not a homogenous society, but we are made up of people with a variety of linguistic strengths, cultures, and cognitive abilities. As mentioned in the reading by The New London Group, “Dealing with linguistic differences and cultural differences has now become central to the pragmatics of our working, civic, and private lives…effectively using multiple languages, multiple Englishes, and communication patterns that more frequently cross cultural, community, and national boundaries.”. (The New London Group, 1996). Nowhere is this more evident that in my classroom where students come from a wide variety of backgrounds with a wide variety of linguistic abilities. I have always strived to make my lessons as multi-modal as possible in order to access as many learning styles as possible. When I present a textual document, it is written with my own textual biases and knowledge. When other modes are incorporated, particularly visual, it is more relatable. “…the visual mode of representation may be much more powerful and closely related to language than ‘mere literacy’ would ever be able to allow.” (The New London Group, 1996)
This being said, I still had to use oral language in order to effectively present this assignment. Knowing that my audience (teachers and fellow students in this class) is familiar with English, it wasn’t as difficult to incorporate the linguistic element. However, if I needed to present this only visually (such as the emoji story), it would have been much more difficult. Oral and written language add much more context and deeper understanding to the visuals.
References:
- Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology (1st Vintage Books ed.). Vintage Books.
- The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. (Links to an external site.) Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.