Session Information
06 SES 04, Learning With Media
Paper Session
Contribution
The new digital age and use of new media shows the ways that we read and author digital texts vary from reader to reader. Therefore, it is important that students be able to read and construct texts in multiple genres. New possibilities are offered through digital texts. As educators embrace the pedagogical possibilities of digital media, questions about assessment need to be raised. As UK researchers Johnson and Kress assert, “despite years of debate on the nature of literacy and curriculum and ensuing policy directions, it is assessment—its weighting in the political culture and the means of enforcing that culture, which will guide what is taught and how it is taught” (2003, p.11). We present a case study of adolescent learners engaging in multimodal literacy practices such as storytelling through clay animation, creating digital poems, and comprehension of canon literature represented through visual essays.
Reading or writing a visual essay, digital poem, or representing an original script in clay animation entails new forms of semiotic processing of the combinations of the visual, audio, textual, gestural and spatial (Kress, 2003; Hughes, 2008; Jewitt, 2008). These types of school projects require students to consider elements of design (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Jewitt, 2008; Kress, 2003; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001) as they choose the most appropriate features for effectively communicating their message to an audience. Design choice and multimodal understanding of the communicative ability of how modes work in concert to communicate meaning requires producers to be critical readers in making choices (Bearne, 2003; Jewitt, 2008; Mayer, 2008; Burke & Hammett, 2009).
Our work draws from United Kingdom scholarship that sees reading, authoring and comprehension as a design oriented process (Kress, 2003; Jewitt, 2008; Merchant, 2007; Bearne et al, 2005, 2007). The objective of our school based study was to gain a greater understanding of the ways in which children’s reading and writing are being profoundly changed through the Internet, and how these literate engagements need further understanding on the part of educators. In our presentation, we ask key research questions such as: What does it mean to assess reading through the multimodal composition of texts? What do new digital texts require in the teaching of reading and writing? What does it mean for curriculum to assess such texts?
We examine our data through the lens and scholarship established by the New London Group (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000) and multimodal theory (Kress, 1997; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2003).
Competing discourses in education over issues of accountability of digital texts bring into focus new factors which need to be examined. These factors challenge educators to consider how our curricular approaches need to be redressed. In doing so, digital texts such as visual essays and representations in moving image may be more accepted as valid forms of texts for evaluation.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bearne, E., Ellis, S., Graham, L., Hulme, P., Meiner, J. & Wolstencroft, H. (2005). More than words 2: Creating stories of page and screen. Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and United Kingdom Literacy Association. Burke, A. & Hammett, R. (2009). Assessing New Literacies: Perspectives from the Classroom. New York: Peter Lang. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. London/New York: Routledge/Falmer. Hughes, J. (2008). The “Screen-Size” Art: Using Digital Media to Perform Poetry. English in Education, 42(2), pp. 148-164. Jewitt, C. (2008). Technology, Literacy And Learning: A Multimodal approach. NY: Routledge. Johnson, D., & Kress,. G. ( 2003). Globalization, literacy and Society: Redesigning Pedgagogy and assessment. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice,10 (1),5-14 Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. Kress, G. & Van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. New York: Oxford University Press.
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