Images, audio, and video are all common characteristics of multimodal text. All are included in the text help give the reader a deeper connection to the text and build a better understanding. In the 21st century, teachers are called to incorporate multimodal texts and learning into the classroom. Many of the Common Core Standards reflect the push towards multimodal learning.
Images
- Flickr - students and teachers can look for images on Flickr by search words. The text used a term "folksonomy" that I had not heard of before. The search terms for Flickr images were created by users as opposed to an outside source.
- Google - google is a great resource for students and teachers to find online images by using search words.
Copyright
Copyrighted images can be used as long as it fits with the "fair use" provisions. Criticism, comment, news reporting, and teaching all apply under the fair use provisions. It is important to teach our students about copyright and citing sources. Each website has its own copyright rules. Flickr has specific usage rules for each user. Users may require permission or even payment to use their images. Flickr has a section called "Creative commons copyright" that means that students do not have to ask for permission before using these images.
- Images - need to be used in good faith
- Text - brief quotations used to make a point
- Audio - brief clips 30 seconds or less can be used
Image Creation
The smartphone or a tablet can be a great classroom tool for the students to be able to create their own images. Teachers can create a classroom Instagram or snapchat account for students to upload their images for classroom use or assignments.
One interesting online tool I want to try out is VoiceThread. Students can import an image that they found online and add audio or written comments. Other students, teachers, or even parents can then comment their own thoughts on the VoiceThread and start an educational conversation.
Haiku Deck is a good tool for presentations. Many times research presentations can turn into reading off a powerpoint. Haiku Deck encourages students to use more images to convey their information than a bunch of words.
High school students used photography to create web-based autobiographies. They wanted the images to be highly intentional and personal.
Responding to Images
It is true that images can be worth a thousand words. Students need to be able to form an opinion about images and describe what they think and feel. We also should encourage them to think about the photographer and the intended purpose for the image.
Questions -
1. Image copyright is not something I think about often. I guess it is different because we use quotation marks and have specific citation rules for texts. How do you teach copyright rules? As a general lesson or tied to a specific lesson/project? Maybe this lesson could be tied with internet safety?
2. What age should kids start learning about copyright?
3. Have you ever asked kids to do a photography project? This interests me. I think it turn into a good writing project if students write about why they chose to take that photo and what they think about it.
Analyzing Digital Design
We need to get our kids think about how design of a text affects their understanding. A good activity to do this is giving kids a bunch of different sites to visit with various levels of design complexity. It is good to have a discussion about design, particularly the multimodal features of a text, and how they help our hurt comprehension. Analysis of digital texts is important before kids create their own digital texts because it lets them know how to design the text to suit their readers.
Process - print vs digital
When we read a digital text, we usually have a purpose for visiting the website. We may want to find out about movie times or find a new coat for the winter. Many times with print text, we are just reading to learn. Our eyes move left to right on the page. With a digital text, our eyes may go to the prominent feature(s) or the specific area of the website they need. If websites are too cluttered or the reader cannot find the information he/she needs, the reader may give up or go to a different site.
Questions -
1. Do you think digital texts (and digital design) encourage our culture of skim reading? I feel that sometimes this is harmful because students do not want to read other than to find an answer.
Dalton article - Level Up - Multimodal Composition in Social Studies
This article taught me a new term! Level up means to improve in the gaming world. The author wanted to "level up" his multimodal composition skills. Working with his students, he found that his students were highly engaged and motivated to participate in writing these multimodal compositions. Dalton actually teamed up with a fourth grade teacher who taught mostly bilingual students. The kids composed the compositions using an iPad during social studies. Dalton introduced the lessons by showing them various digital designs to get them thinking about how design affects comprehension. The students' project was to be to create a digital poem with using an e-book. Dalton showed the students how to do this in small groups in the hallway throughout the week. Students were involved in the entire process of creation - from writing the poem, to typing it in (or voice to text), to finding images/videos to accompany their poem, to recording the audio for their book. Some students became "expert recorders" and helped students one-on-one with their e-book and recording. It took several composing sessions for each student to complete an electronic book page, but it was a learning process for all. Multimodal composition in elementary schools is a practice that is pretty new and will require more work than other text composition, but is worth it for the students.
Questions -
1. I know I need to "level up" on my multimodal composition skills as well! Have you had a multimodal composition project in your classroom?
Answer a question or two and provide some information about the sections you read :). Thanks!
BABR 8- Audio
ReplyDeleteStudents can use audio as they records speeches, interviews, essays, podcasts, or radio shows. Recording audio integrates writing into the process as students write, revise, and edit sripts. As students record, they are focused on the “sound” of their words. This encourages fluency as students experiment with phrasing, expression, and reading rate.
BABR 9- Creating eBooks
Students and teachers can work together to create multimodal digital text through eBooks. Some platforms that can be used to create eBooks include iBooks Author, Adobe Reader PDF Files, Srivner, and Calibre. After the writing process is over, eBooks can be self-published through Amazon, Apple, or Smashbooks.
eBooks Article
This article describes Book Builder, which is a free resource teachers and students can use to make and read ebooks. The library currently has over 4, 000 books. Book Builder is unique because it incorporates research on reading comprehension and universal design for learning into its features. It has options to support students of all needs and abilities, including text to speech tool, audio recording capabilities, a multimodal glossary, and three leveled reading “coaches” that ask students comprehension questions.
1. Do you think digital texts (and digital design) encourage our culture of skim reading?
ReplyDeleteYears ago I read an article about how we often skim digital text because our brains are wired to "navigate" the internet through hyperlinks. I couldn't find the article, but here is a similar one that discusses how the nature of screens and digital text are inherently distracting to readers, what design choices can affect a 2.0 reader's attention, and how readers can retrain their brains to focus: http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/being-a-better-online-reader
I skimmed it haha.
DeleteThat is so interesting!!! I definitely know from personal experience that I don't think I comprehend as well on screen as I do on paper, so I know this article has a lot of truth to it. This is why that although I know that our world is in general moving more digital, I still believe in using paper sometimes.
DeleteThis is so interesting!!! I feel like my skimming has gotten so methodical and purposeful, that I hardly read anything sentence-to-sentence, front-to-back anymore. There is definitely a method to the madness when skimming, I believe. So do you guys think that this notion of digital texts causing a culture of skimming, a good or bad thing? Is it useful to be an expert skimmer? Are there benefits to being able to skim and pick out useful information? This is so interesting to me....lol!
DeleteBreanna, I think it can absolutely be a good thing! Our kids have a habit of skimming already, whereas I had to practice and form that habit with much more effort later on in life. Skimming can be detrimental and can hurt reading comprehension, but I think there are definitely contexts when it's necessary (such as perusing several articles for relevant research for a college assignment). It is, however, our responsibility to teach them how to skim properly--look for repeated/key words, look at topic sentences, etc.
DeleteI think you hit it Angela! Teach them when the appropriate instances are to skim and what to look at when you do skim. I think I teach this when I ask my students to pre-read and make predictions, but we definitely need to teach our kids why and when we skim.
DeleteThank you for the response Neka! Books Builder sounds so interesting!! Are the 4,000 books all ones created by students and teachers, or are they published children's books? I think it could be so powerful for students to be able to read books created by kids their own age. I also love how it sounds so easy to be able to create the books and sound like it encourages students to think creatively and work collaboratively.
ReplyDeleteDr. Beach's classes have been my first time to create something for an eBook. Have y'all ever tried creating something for an eBook in the classroom?
BABR Ch. 8 (video notes): Students can use video for inquiry research, as long as they have learned the skill of purposeful searching - knowing what words to search and in what domain. Videos can provide so much information in a few short minutes, so students can use videonot.es to slow down and annotate portions of videos. VideoANT is also a source for doing this, but a tad less user-friendly. These tools also seem more likely to be useful for secondary students.
ReplyDeleteBABR 9 (writing): Students should receive valuable feedback on digital writing through rubrics, comments, and reflections. Evernote, blog comments and google forms can be used to do this,
Digital Storytelling article: Bethany is a fifth grade teacher who was scared of technology until a grant was awarded to her class, and she was 'forced' to implement it all. Her students completed an inquiry-based project that involved research, note-taking, outlining, digital storytelling, and deeper diving into information learned. The biggest takeaway I had from this article was Bethany's commentary towards the end - she said that the component of the entire project that led to her students' successful use and implementation of new literacy tools was the support and professional development around the use of the tools. That's something we currently lack in my district and I think more teachers would be willing to take a chance on new tools if they felt confident in the various ways to use them, and felt they could successfuly model their use to students in an activity.
I think it is very true that more teachers would be willing to implement technology if they had more knowledge and training. I know that it takes a lot to keep up with new technology and apps... I feel like I'm learning of a cool new educational app or website everyday, especially with the research and reading we do for classes. And then after we discover the cool resource we still have to learn how to use it and train ourselves so we can use all of the features. Planned professional development is so important, because many times teachers don't feel like they have time to do the research and learning themselves.
DeleteTangentially related to your first point: You know, I think that it's important for us to teach "purposeful searching" at all levels. I used to think that my kids knew how to use key words because they Google stuff all the time, but that's definitely not the case. It's a skill that most of them need to learn or refine. For instance, a student today searched "what is the definition of _____" instead of using Google's "define _____" feature to pull up the definition. He also used way too many words in his search and clearly didn't really know how to best use a search engine.
DeleteWe talk a lot about copyright and plagiarism because we focus a lot on research and proper citation, since they're in high school. We haven't talked much about copyright of images, but I think the knowledge would transfer well. I think you could introduce the idea of copyright at a pretty young age, at least in terms of letting them know that you can't just use other people's ideas and images willy nilly.
ReplyDeleteI think digital texts definitely encourage skim reading. I see it in my students when they read print texts, and they glance through something and miss major parts in ways that don't seem to be due to reading comprehension issues. I didn't really develop a habit of skimming until late high school, which kind of hurt me when I needed to read large swaths of books and articles in college. I think we can utilize their skimming habits for good, though. Skimming can be a great preview technique for all types of texts, and we can teach them how to skim properly so as to be more efficient readers when they need to be.
I have done multimodal projects in college and grad school personally, and I regularly my students create smaller multimodal projects. I have yet to have them make a digital multimodal project, though, and I would be excited to get ahold of some laptops and see what cool things they can do to demonstrate their learning multimodally in a digital space.
I definitely think that copyright and plagiarism is something that can be addressed in primary. For example, in 2nd grade, when my teacher-librarian had the kids use an online source she would have them cut and paste a citation strip onto their work.
DeleteNeka I like that idea of the teacher giving the student the citation for their work. Still teaching them the importance, but not making them go through the process of creating the citation. I think that's a good way to introduce it.
DeleteOh wow! That proves that it is doable in the primary grades - I was thinking there wasn't a way to teach that below like 4th grade. That's so awesome your media specialist does lessons with the kids like that Neka!
DeleteIn regards to the photography section/question, I think having kids interpret a photograph through writing is a very creative and engaging activity for students. Sometimes I will provide just a photograph prompt and have students come up with their own stories using the image as a starting point. This is great for creative writing, story writing, or even when having students come up with questions for an inquiry-based project.
ReplyDelete