Task 7

Mode-bending

To change the semiotic mode of Task 1, I created the above podcast: the audio transmission field notes of Scout 150294, intergalactic explorer visiting Earth in the year 3021. The pandemic’s over by then, surely, but I’m not sure we’re still around, but at least it seems flora and fauna have reclaimed their space.

1000 years into the future, my bag is missing some items of value, but most of them are still there. Scout 150294 describes the objects in the bag in a manner that is somewhat strange but indicates they have some knowledge of Earth’s history, resources, and languages. The field notes are almost purely observational with a bit of interjected comments here and there.

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To create the podcast, I recorded my voice in two takes using Adobe Audition and changed the pitch to create the voice of Scout 150294. I made a grave error in using the year 2021 in the narrative, which meant I had to go back after I had completed everything to fix it so that the recording is set in the future. I then imported the mp3 file into Mac software GarageBand to integrate space transmission/Sci-Fi sound effects into it to add to its authenticity as a futuristic mission to explore the Earth.

The semiotic mode for the original task was an interactive visual with an autobiographical typographic text, and this remix, or semiotic remediation, of the task was a Sci-Fi nonfiction narrative from the perspective of an intergalactic explorer. In my years teaching English Language Learners, I learned the value of asking students to create meaning and demonstrate their understanding of texts by using a mix of mode-bending and genre-bending, which students often did by creating collaborative posters where they drew images, used symbols, and alphabetic text, and through handwritten and digital work creating visual representations of text. Through West Ed’s Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) model, an intense professional development that drove our school’s curriculum and instructional practices, we learned about text re-presentation, or remediation.

When I began my teaching career in 2007, mp3 players were barely iPods, the smartest phones were Blackberries, and we relied on the school computer lab or 2-4 per classroom for students to share. Technology has now become so ubiquitous that most students have access to their own device, more schools have 1:1 device/laptop per student programs, and more than ever students and teachers are well equipped for a new pedagogy that encourages students to transform and remediate text to create meaning and understanding and to have agency over the learning process. (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009). While I think ubiquitous access to today’s technologies affords teachers and students teaching and learning opportunities, access alone does not solve the issue of the digital divide or necessarily lead to more (digitally) literate teachers and students.

Members of the New London Group (1996), Dobson & Willinsky (2009), and others were right to be concerned about the widening of disparities, and what this means for literacy pedagogy, particularly in a new global economy and education landscape shaped by neoliberal capitalist forces, in which technology is seen as a panacea for education and upward economic mobility. I am keen on Warschauer, mentioned in Dobson & Willinsky (2009), his and others’ critical analysis (Warschauer et al., 2011) of 1:1 programs that challenges the ideas of Negroponte (also mentioned in this text) and a digital utopia where the world’s poorest children can pull themselves out of poverty by simply having access to technology. My own ideas about the power of ubiquitous technology and access have been challenged by recent reading of digital education scholars at the University of Edinburgh such as Bayne and Ross (featured in this week as they lay down why we must rethink referring to teachers as digital immigrants and students as digital natives), and others such as Williamson and Knox. Collectively their scholarship confronts ed tech and tech companies and their economic power that has an unduly influence and stronghold on where education is headed and warns of diving headlong and naively into believing more technology in education will increase academic and literacy outcomes.

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As a final reflection on the task, I used Adobe Audition, and I pay a $29.99 USD/month fee for Adobe Creative Cloud. I used GarageBand, which is free for iPhone and Mac users, but I had to download a 10gb pack of sounds to be able to get the sound effects I used. If schools, teachers, and students are on limited data plans and budgets, how feasible would it be to license Adobe Creative Cloud or use those precious gb for access to more sound effects? Teachers and students depend on freeware and the exchange of their data privacy and digital security for access to apps that allow them to unlock their creative potential and use technology to re-mediate texts, but they may be unaware of the hidden costs to themselves and the education system as a whole.

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References

Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (2009). Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4:3, 164-195, DOI:10.1080/15544800903076044

Dobson, T., & Willinsky, J. (2009). Digital Literacy. In D. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, 286-312. Cambridge University Press.

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

Warschauer, M., Cotten, S. R., & Ames, M. G. (2011). One laptop per child Birmingham: Case study of a radical experiment. International Journal of Learning and Media, 3(2), 61-76. http://www.doi.org/10.1162/ijlm_a_00069