What is Multimodal literacy?
Multimodal literacy is all the different ways in which meaning can be created and communicated in the world today. Silverton P S, Catalyst team, (2008).
I am a literate person because I can understand how to access different information from many different sources to construct and reconstruct my own meaning to communicate effectively to be a participating and valued member in society. Being literate is having skills in information management and information technologies. Ania Lian (2014). I converse with many different people on a daily basses and decipher what is relevant to myself and what is not.
I am an artist and for a living I am employed as a sign-writer, I have been in this profession for the past twenty three years since I completed my apprenticeship. Through this experience I am aware of how important visual literacy is. Part of my profession is not only producing signs for my clients, but also communicating effectively and interpreting what it is they are actually asking for, and what message they in turn are trying to convey to their customers. This makes me literate. In my profession I also have to work with fonts, font size, colour, background and digital layouts and many forms of technology emails, artwork and layouts. This also makes me a literate person.
Through my experiences in my life and profession I have learnt to communicate with a diverse range of people and customers. From Orthodontists wanting digital prints on surgery windows to Bikies wanting skulls airbrushed on their Harleys. I am able to read my surroundings and adapt to be able to converse with many different people without stereotyping or prejudice. This makes me culturally and socially literate. We read the street, we read peoples faces, we read situations. You can't read a situation until you have seen many of them, otherwise it is a blur. Ania Lian, (2014).
Nothing is totally new, we have tools to make sense of texts, everything that has meaning is a text, not always linguistic, clothing, faces, scenery. Ania Lian, internal lecture, week four, CDU, (2014).
Before I came to university a year ago I could hardly cut and paste on a computer let alone make a web site, which I obviously need a bit more practice in, this in no way meant I was illiterate just a bit technically challenged. I did not know how to write a word document or construct a Power Point Presentation, I never needed to. Now I have my own laptop and find myself delving right in and giving anything a go, where prior I would have been scared I would break the computer or stuff something up. Challenge leads to expansion. Ania Lian, internal lecture, week five, CDU, (2014). Through attending lectures and asking questions, listening, asking my peers, and trial and error I can now undertake most of these tasks. I have no problems conversing with my peers or lecturers to source information. This makes me literate. Through the other, I learn more about myself. Ania lian, (2014). As I want to pass university to get my degree and change my career, I have to surround myself with many diverse people, this took me out of my comfort zone of a trade environment and forced me to interact and undertake tasks I would in my other profession never have dreamed of . I now confidently converse with academic people I would probably never have met. To successfully change my career was the motivation I needed to expand my own little corner of the world. Another way to say this is. The motivation I needed to break out of one loop and create another. We all create loops, loops are the patterns our brain creates to follow certain situations, we need to have motivation to break out of one loop and create another. Ania Lian (2014). I believe I am successfully doing this and that is what makes me literate.
I chose three You Tube clips to show you, and I will briefly explain why I chose the ones I did and the meaning I take away from each.
The first clip I liked because I am an artist and as mentioned above am a sign-writer by trade, so I am aware of the importance of visuals.
To me this clip conveys, amongst other things, a message of diversity, plusI liked the music, this also proves the importance of audio. In my opinion this clip demonstrates how we are all different and perceive things differently, what we may see or believe may not be how our students or others see things. We all construct our own meaning from what we experience and what we feel and know. What we see and experience stirs different emotions in different people therefore, different meanings and understandings in ourselves. Emotions are the primary motivator of everything. Ania Lian, (2014). We should work with children's perceptions and not assume that they see what we see. Ania Lian, (2013).
I chose this second You Tube clip because to me it exhibits a lot of the different forms of literacy technologies we and our students use, and are exposed to every day. I believe this clip may have been designed to encourage some teachers who may be a little apprehensive to explore technology as a learning tool in their classrooms to give it a go. The meaning I take away from this clip is.
We as teachers need to be literate in different technologies not afraid of it, and we must expose our students to all forms to allow them to experience explore, and construct their own meanings. Embrace technology and change.Give them the tools.
We as teachers need to be literate in different technologies not afraid of it, and we must expose our students to all forms to allow them to experience explore, and construct their own meanings. Embrace technology and change.Give them the tools.
Finally, I chose this clip because although its long in comparison to the other two clips it explains how important visual learning is from a students perspective. The meaning I take away from this clip is that as educators some of us are failing our students because we are stuck in an archaic teaching pedagogy of read this and do a test or write an assignment. Don't misunderstand me, reading and writing are of paramount importance, I'm just saying we as educators need to keep up with the times and find new and exiting ways to facilitate the learning process of our students. We need to explore and listen to what our students are doing and saying if we are going to keep up with them and deliver exciting educational opportunities from which they can construct and reconstruct their own meaning. Success is always synergistic with our environment, Sir Ken Robbins.(2010). The environment our students are in now days is completely different to ten years ago. Therefore as teachers we should not teach the way we were taught, because the world has changed and is continuing to change. Just like education. We need to give them a reason to leave one loop and jump to another. Ania Lian, (2014). We need to hold their interest to make education relevant to them to be effective as a teacher. Thank you.