Weekly Reading #3

Reflections:
1. What is the main argument presented in  this article?

• Multimodality and 21st century literacies are here and  importanct to literacy and language arts learning, and must be a part of curriculum. Not only must we embrace these aspects of language learning, but we must begin to play with them as students do daily.

2. Why is it imperative that teachers and educational policy makers recognize the role multimodality plays in redefining literacy in the 21st century?

• The world is changing and in light of the diverse student populations that we serve, we need bridge the gap between at home literacies, societal literacies, and school.  We need to prepare are students for life and literacy in the 21st century. Period.

3. What is the fundamental philosophical orientation of educators who engage in multimodal literacy instruction?

• Children (and adults) learn best when engaged in complex, socially constructed, personally relevant, creative composition and interpretation of texts that incorporate a variety of meaningful communicative modes or symbol systems. 

4. What is the rational for engaging children in learning through the arts promoted by educational philosophers like Maine Green and Elliot Eisner? Do you share this philosophical orientation? Why? Why not?

• Elliot Eisner (2003) has championed the arts as developing different forms of thinking, including an ability to see qualitative relationships within and among texts, an understanding that form and content are inextricably linked, an understanding that how something is expressed is only a part of what is meant, and the awareness that not everything knowable can be expressed through written language. The arts, argued Greene, leads to informed or critical talk by positioning learners as active viewers and perceivers while providing more precise and imaginative language to elucidate a deeper perception of the everyday world. 

5. Name three benefits of multimodal reading and writing for students? Be specific and use quotes from the text to support your claims.

• "In creating such texts, the textmaker considers how each of these elements interrelates and how this relationship will inform a viewer’s interpretation." --- Students benefit from thinking of how their words and representation will be interpreted by other viewers.
  
• "Design, the conceptual side of expression (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) and separate from the actual product, refers to how people make use of the materials and resources that are available to them at a particular moment to create their representation."--- Another benefit is that students learn to make use of the materials and resources that are available to represent personal meaning of literacies.


• "...within multimodality inherently lies a critical perspective enacted when examining the textmaker’s choices regarding the materials used," --- Students learn to critically examine own work along with other work. For example, does the song make my point or does it take away from the presentation?

6. Give an example of how blogging supports the  four aspects of multimodal theory proposed by Kress and Jewitt.

• Materiality - When blogging we choose images, fonts, colors, etc. to represent a part of us.
• Framing - As in this blog posts, I decided to give each question a number and parts of the answers bullets to organize the information.
• Design - I use the options available in my text toolbar to create my blogposts.  I might bold or enlarge font that I want to stand out; while doing so, I always keep the viewer in mind: "How will the viewer perceive these font choices?"
• Production - I organize my information and posts. For example, Weekly Reading- I give my input on the reading first, include something personal second, and reference last.  I think of my viewers when organizing the information.

7. What can teachers learn about their students from their image productions? Why is this important?

• Teachers can learn about students' lives, interests, struggles, strengths, weaknesses, etc.  This is important because it can help teachers make culturally responsive decisions in classroom instruction for optimal learning.

8. According to this article, why should teachers use technology in their teaching?

• In order to become successful in the 21st century, our students need to be successful with more than just reading and writing. Technology in education is one way for teachers to provide students with 21st century for success in life (not just the classroom).

9. How does multimodal literacy relate to 21st century literacy?

• Through multimodal literacy, teachers and students create something significantly new, experiment with new technologies, and share innovative learning that moves well beyond the four walls of the classroom.

10. What project described intrigued you the most?

• The “DC Area Literary Map Podcast” interested me where Vasquez aimed to create a project that would (1) help teachers become more resourceful when choosing books for students; (2) move beyond the immediate needs of students; (3) be generative, ongoing, and sustainable  beyond the life of the course; and (4) be accessible to a larger  audience outside of the class. Teachers generated questions around a book that reflected a social issue, found other texts (music, visual, photos of statues, poems, among others) that might accompany this book, and then created a four-minute podcast that addressed their learning about the social issue.
• This interested me because I could imagine how valuable of an experience this could be for students to connect literacies and their own culture.  

11. What challenges to integrating multimodal reading and writing into schools do you most identify with?

• Sometime  technological tools like PowerPoint can be frustrating.  I'll know what I want my transitions and animations to do, but making it happen takes time, research, and patience.  However, the more we familiarize ourselves with any program, the easier it will be to use.

12. Why is mulitmodal literacy essential in preparing students for work, play and democratic participation in the 21st century?

• As stated above, "Through multimodal literacy, teachers and students create something significantly new, experiment with new technologies, and share innovative learning that moves well beyond the four walls of the classroom."

13. Find an embed an image in your blog posting that relates to mulitmodal literacy.

Image Source: http://faculty.uoit.ca/hughes/Contexts/multimodal.gif

Source:
Sanders, Jennifer and Albers, Peggy. Multimodal Literacies: An Introduction. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:ZnRBedCgj_IJ:https://secure.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Books/Sample/32142Intro_x.pdf+are+literacies+and+Discourses+used+interchanably&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjE9pBd2JmN_g_xuDVosAj01ImYkr6u-oyjriG0tREXG8fzwbyeuhcmDw0rrbTA1rug-bgizHwuiUlocJcQwdvcCiPOxZYWVExNgQ8BmulksyeRUcUX4LJmfxLlw7e8UTdG2TuT&sig=AHIEtbSZ7RHTNL_Rfe2bglUQRg9zzCD2JA