Task 7: Mode Bending

Please Click Here to View My “What’s in My Bag” Video

If I were to say this idea came to me right away, I’d be lying. Truthfully, I questioned how I was going to complete this assignment in an exciting and clever way. I browsed through Powtoon, Prezi, Google Slides, and finally, IMovie. IMovie allowed me to manipulate the visual and audio perspective of my design. However, while looking through the different options, I was able to identify things I’d use in the future for teaching, learning, and mode-bending.

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

Benefits:

The benefits, in my opinion, out weigh the challenges. Mode-changing takes teachers from their standard practice to a whole new world of possibilities. My goal as an educator is to engage and entice my students, to offer them different ways to learn and process information. The New London Group (1996) highlight the idea that those who will actually learn must be motivated and intrigued. Therefore, I believe teachers need to teach in a way that motivates them to stay innovative and dynamic. Our energy is projected and students learn upon that, if we stay strictly in one mode (ie: textual), students may lose focus, engagement, and overall motivation. Additionally, Cope and Kalantzis (2009) state how those who teach don’t just take information and regurgitate it, that isn’t the goal. The goal is to take information and make it accessible and innovative so people can learn. Cope and Kalantzis (2009) also mention how people are supposed to make meaningful work and that involved accessing their creative side which ultimately enhances their pedagogy. Furthermore, as educator, I have learned to understand that we all learn differently. Some students learn through text where others may learn through visuals and text combined. Cope and Kalantzis (2009) speak on how teaching literacy has pushed past the traditional forms of written language and engaged in more mixed styles of teaching/learning. For example, The BC Curriculum focuses heavily on the different modes students should be able to learn and represent information such as; oral, visual, auditory, and written. The benefits have surpassed the challenges as;

Challenges: 

After reading through The New London Group’s (1996) and Cope and Kalantzis (2009) ideas on multiliteracies insight, it seems to be that meaningful multimodal representation is important. As educators, are focus should still remain on the goal for students to learn and process information, however, all while staying engaged and motivated. Cope and Kalantzis (2009) highlight the key importance of understanding that the meaning can never be replaced, that is we don’t use different modes to replace meaning, we use different modes to represent a different idea of that meaning. For example, “meaning expressed in one mode cannot be directly and completely translated into another” (Cope and Kalantzis, 2009, p. 180). Therefore, the main challenge is focusing on the HOW and the WHY of mode-bending:

• How are you planning on redesigning the learning outcome through different modes?
• Why are different modes helpful in this process of sharing this piece of information?

My Redesign Process: 

“Design has become central to workplace innovations, as well as to school reforms for the contemporary world” (The New London Group, 1996, p. 73). Therefore, having the opportunity to redesign this task lead me to an innovative and creative idea.

My main goal was to create an exciting and suspenseful way of redesigning my “what’s in my bag” task, which is how I finally got to the idea of a movie trailer. I took a look back at my original post and wondered whether or not I’d be interested in reading it if I were to come across my blog as an outsider. My answer: not really. I am a visual and auditory learner, I need things changing and moving to become engaged. Textual representations of information don’t necessarily catch my attention, for example, I’d choose to read a graphic novel over a written novel.

The four modes I used within my redesign were:

• Audio:
  • I included both music and sound effects to display my design. I wanted to entice my audience and allow them to understand the theme and mood of my video. Therefore, my goal was to provide meaning to the context of my video.
• Visual:
  • I included both moving pictures and still pictures (however still moving in the video itself). I wanted my audience to see what was in my bag and understand the purpose of the pictures.
• Gestural:
  • I included a short video of me smiling to the camera. I wanted to project the expressions of my face (smiling) and allow my audience to experience their own sense of happiness while watching my video.
• Textual (Written Language):
  • I included headings to help guide the meaning of the video, for example, including the title of “what’s in my bag” as the fake title of the movie.

References:

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

The New London Group.  (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. (Links to an external site.)  Harvard Educational Review66(1), 60-92.