For this assignment, I decided to redesign the assignment by firstly, arranging the items in the order in which I pack them when going to work each day. This was important for me because it gives more context into what I find essential and why I pack the items in the way that I do.
Secondly, I decided to play a sort of word association game but, in this case, more of an item or picture association. I showed what each item in my bag reminds me of, particularly in the context of what I would imagine someone who had any given item to look like.
The New London Group (1996) discuss particularly how multi-modal meaning has become and with this assignment and the item association I did, help to ascribe more meaning to the products I carry with me to work each day. This task and thinking of redesigning it made me think about the many ways, as educators, we have to be flexible in our delivery of content and instruction, “the process of shaping emergent meaning involves re-presentation and recontextualization” (New London Group, 1996, p. 75). For many learners in classrooms, the traditional way of instruction is not suitable. In my classroom in particular, I try to incorporate a variety of teaching methods in terms of delivering instruction (digital presentations by me, reading, researching, etc.) as well as multiple modes of assessment to gauge student learning. If as educators, we are expecting students to be prepared for an ever-changing world, we must start in the classroom, by allowing them the ability to learn in a variety of different formats and contexts.
References
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review 66 (1), 60-92.
Hello!
I loved how you used the association of items in your mode bending assignment. I am sure we all did this in the first assignment as we looked into each others personal bags and made our own judgement (some true, but many untrue).
I too made a connection to the traditional way of delivering information to our students. It reminded me of the multi intelligences (article here: https://www.scholastic.com/parents/family-life/creativity-and-critical-thinking/learning-skills-for-kids/how-your-child-smart.html.) In the many different way students learn. I also appreciate the way you have highlighted the way we assess students. Traditional test taking is not always the way and finding other way allow for more success amongst out students. I am curious, what multimodes of assessments you have utilized I your classroom?
Thank you for your post.
🙂 Dana
Sonia,
I really loved how to interpreted this assignment. I chose to do a video as well but our videos turned out totally different! That was probably one of my favourite parts of this assignment, how different everyone’s final product was. I appreciate that you used visuals to show different connections and to deepen meaning as well as using a voice over for explanation.
It definitely took me stepping outside of my comfort zone to create a vlog but I am glad that I did it. It showed me the behind the scenes of how complicated video production can be and how meaning making using video can be powerful.
Jessie