Conference is 14th – 15th November in Madrid
Navigating 21st Century Multimodal Textual Environments: A Case Study of Digital Literacy
By:
Dr. Muriel Wells, Damien Lyons Deakin University, Geelong, Australia.
,
Abstract
In the 21st Century young people have the opportunity to create texts that were unimaginable for previous generations. Today’s children live and learn while immersed in a technological world that is fast paced and constantly in a state of change. As technology becomes more and more accessible and specifically marketed to children of the 21st century, educators are challenged to re-consider the literacy skills required to be successfully and safely literate, and the repertoire of literacy pedagogies teacher must have to effectively engage these young people in learning. While there is much evidence to suggest that schools and teachers are not all meeting this challenge, there are some inspiring examples in which schools, communities and teachers are taking up the challenge. This paper presents one case study, which is explored through a 21st century literacy framework that allows us to interpret and analyse the multimodal texts and the processes students use in their creation. Attention is paid to how the case study teacher created meaningful learning experiences and opportunities for them to create and interact within multimodal communications environments, both within and beyond the school.
Keywords: Multimodal Texts, Pedagogy, Digital Literacy, Case Study
Stream: Technologies for Learning
Presentation Type: Virtual Presentation in English
Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.
Dr. Muriel WellsSeniorLecturer, SchoolofEducation, DeakinUniversity
Geelong, Victoria, Australia
Dr Muriel Wells is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Victoria, Australia. Dr Wells teaches in the areas of literacy including digital literacies, eLearning, Media and Technology, new technologies in education and training, strategies to encourage interaction in online learning environments and teacher professional learning. Her primary research interests include: digital literacies across the curriculum, how mobile technologies can enhance literacy learning in primary schools, supporting teachers as researchers, sustainable models of teacher professional learning, learning in an online world and interaction and remixing learning environments. Dr. Wells’ most recent book chapter is Wells, M. 2011, 'Teachers as Researchers: Models of Professional Learning', in I Saleh & M Khine
(eds), Practitioner Research in Teacher Education: Theory and Best Practices
PhDStudent, SchoolofEducation, DeakinUniversity
Cambridge, UK
Damien is a full time PhD student who is research topic is "Literacy skills for the 21st century: How Year 6 teachers in Australian classrooms are enabling students to learn literacy skills for their future." He is currently living in the UK.
Introduction
The ability to successfully engage in literate activities is crucial for social, educational and work lives in the 21st century(Brown & Tryon 2010). While print based texts are still important forms of literacy young people now have the opportunity to create and interact with texts in ways that were unimaginable for previous generations. Today’s children are growing up immersed in a technological world that is fast paced and in a constant state of change(Bruce 1997). As well as hard copy print based texts literacy now encompasses digital texts in a range of forms and visual literacy has become an important facet of the literacy landscape(Simpson 2013, p. 11). This has lead education policy makers to acknowledge the changing nature of literacies in the new Australia Curriculum documents that better reflect what is means to be literate in and for the 21st century.
Enacting literacy learning in and for the 21st century requires informed pedagogical knowledge and skills and contextual understanding of the world children live and learn in. Within this paper, we offer a brief overview of the Australian Curriculum, locating it within 21st century learning discourse. We then introduce and define digital literacy, which is discussed within a broader context of literacy in and for the 21st century. Finally, we present, interpret and analyse one Case of a young student’screation of a digital text in a movie modality.
The Australian Curriculum – Locating curriculum within a 21st century context.
The development of the Australian Curriculum has been guided by the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, adopted by the Ministerial Council in December 2008. The Melbourne Declaration emphasises the importance of knowledge, skills and understandings of learning areas, general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities as the basis for a curriculum designed to support 21st century learning(MCEECDYA 2008).
The Melbourne Declaration
The Melbourne Declaration acknowledges major changes in the world that are placing new demands on Australian education. While this paper does not intend to discuss all the changes the Declaration identifies, we do feel that three changes identified within the Declaration are significant to this paper. Specifically, the Declaration states that:
Rapid and continuing advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) are changing the ways people share, use, develop and process information and technology. In this digital age, young people need to be highly skilled in the use of ICT. While schools already employ these technologies in learning, there is a need to increase their effectiveness significantly over the next decade. [and goes on to say that]Literacy and numeracy and knowledge of key disciplines remain the cornerstone of schooling for young Australians. Schooling should also support the development of skills in areas such as social interaction, crossdisciplinary thinking and the use of digital media, which are essential in all 21st century occupations.(MCEECDYA 2008)
What these two changes identified within the Melbourne Declaration suggest is that teaching and learning in Australian schools must evolve to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world, that is digitally literate. The world our children live and learn in has changed, and will continue to change at rapid pace. The Internet has partly contributed to the facilitation of this rapid change. Children can access and contribute in ways that were simply unimaginable even a decade ago. It is now possible for children to create and publish movies, publish photos, contribute to blogs, access specialised information, ask specific questions. The teacher is no longer the person with all the knowledge. That role has long passed. Teachers have a different role, which sees them still guiding and enabling students, but in different ways.
An Australian Curriculum in and for the 21st century
The Australian Curriculum, which seeks to, in part at least, enact the vision of the Melbourne Declaration demonstrates a desire to transform teaching and learning to better meet the demands of the 21st century. The Australian Curriculum acknowledges teaching and learning is different in the 21st century to what it was in the 20th century.
The Australian Curriculum acknowledges the changing ways in which young people learn suggesting that that successful learners will:
–Develop their capacity to learn and play an active role in their own learning
–Have the essential skills in literacy and numeracy, and are creative and productive users of technology, especially ICT, as a foundation for success in all learning areas
–Are able to think deeply and logically, and obtain and evaluate evidence in a disciplined way as the result of studying fundamental disciplines
(ACARA 2013)
Learning in the 21st century should not be passive. Cervetti, Damico and Pearson suggest that learning should be an active, negotiated, and dynamic process where students can take some ownership of both the content and mode of learning dependingon the purpose and context(2006). Devices now exist which make learning transportable. These devices such as computers, tablets and smartphones are continually increasing in possibilities they offer, and if used purposefully can create learning opportunities for students that are relevant, and meaningful. This has implications for teachers. Understanding and being able to enact meaningful learning for students with a focus on individuality and negotiated purpose is challenging to say the least, however, this is a fundamental of 21st century learning.
Literacy in and for the 21st century – An Australian curriculum perspective
To understand literacy in and for the 21st century does not mean abandoning notions of traditional literacy or conventions of the English language. Arguably, this is a common misconception, and often produces heightened tensions within education and the wider community. Literacy in and for the 21st century is about understanding how we use different mediums to create different versions of meaning. Crockett suggests that:
The skills we learn to read, write and communicate have changed. In the age of multimedia, hypertext, blogs and wikis, reading is no longer just a passive, linear activity that deals only with text. Today, it’s essential that all of our students have a wide range of skills beyond those that were needed in the 20th century, a range that includes the skills needed to function within a rapidly digital society (Crockett, Jukes & Churches 2011 p.17).
Literacy in and for the 21st century is about equipping students with a range of skills and behaviours to interact and create meaning. It is about ensuring criticality is practiced and developed so that students can both understand the world around them, and contribute to it in an informed way.
“Students become literate as they develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions to interpret and use language confidently for learning and communicating in and out of school and for participating effectively in society. Literacy involves students in listening to, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating oral, print, visual and digital texts, and using and modifying language for different purposes in a range of contexts”
(ACARA 2013)
Literacy traditionally referred to reading, writing, speaking, viewing, and listening effectively in a range of contexts. In the 21st century, the definition of literacy has expanded to refer to a flexible, sustainable mastery of a set of capabilities in the use and production of traditional texts and new communications technologies using spoken language, print and multimedia. Students need to be able to adjust and modify their use of language to better meet contextual demands in varying situations.
Texts provide the means for communication. Their forms and conventions have developed to help us communicate effectively with a variety of audiences for a range of purposes. Texts can be written, spoken or multimodal and in print or digital/online forms. Multimodal texts combine language with othersystems for communicating such as print text, visual images, soundtrack andspoken word as in film or computer presentation media. Texts provide opportunities for important learning about aspects of human experience and about aesthetic value. Many of the tasks that students undertake in and out of school involve literary texts, information texts, media texts and everyday texts.
Digital literacy
Digital literacy has changed the way students create meaning by allowing them to convey meaning through sound, image, video, and text to a wide audience.
“The Internet, computer games, digital video, mobile phones and other contemporary technologies provide new ways of mediating and representing the world and of communicating. (Buckingham 2008, p. 74).
Digital literacy is changing not only the way children engage with their world, but also the way they learn and understand their world. As technology becomes more and more accessible in the 21st century, educators are challenged to re-consider the literacy skills required to be successfully and safely literate, and the repertoire of literacy pedagogies teacher must have to meet effectively engage these young people in learning. While there is evidence to suggest that schools and teachers are not all meeting this challenge, there are some inspiring examples in which schools, communities and teachers are taking up the challenge. This paper presents one such example, which we explore through a 21st century literacy lens.
Presenting the Case Study
According to (Metcalfe 2013)
Despite children’s engagement with contemporary communicative practices out of school, research (Burn and Leach, 2004) shows provision and opportunities to work with moving image media in early years classroom is limited (Metcalfe, 2013 p. 25).
In an attempt to address this issue we now present our “inspiring example” in which a grade ½ student created a movie as part of an early years literacy program in a primary school situated in a large regional city. The teachers were involved in a three-year program of professional learning with the goal of“Personalising Learning for Students in the 21st Century”. The program was titled “Supporting Teachers as Action Researcher (STAR)”. Within the overall goal of personalising learning the schools selected to focus on one of three themes each year. The themes were the infusion of ‘higher order thinking process’, ‘formative assessment’ or ‘Information and Communication Technologies’. In their first year in the STAR program our case study school selected the infusion of ICT as their theme (for further information about the STAR professional learning program see Wells (2013).
In this article we focus in on the work carried out by children in grade 1/2 – approximately 7-8 years old. The grade 2 teachers describe their work in the STAR program in the following way.
Our 1/2 area consists of two classes with 24 students in each. As a junior unit we looked at ways of incorporating our inquiry unit titled, “Lights Camera Action!” which fell under the Design and Technology Strand with literacy and building a link with parents. Our aim was to engage students and parents through the use of ICT to assist in providing constructive feedback to enhance literacy and ICT skills. We used an online program called Xtranormal which allows students to design and create their own movies. It provides students with the choice of characters, settings, sound effects, movements, voices and themes. Students type out a script which is transformed into a movie which can then be embedded into a website.
We decided to use Edublogs as our web space provider. It allows teachers and students to upload a variety of media such as images, PowerPoints, movies and sound recordings. Comments can also be posted and monitored by the teacher. It is more like a class webpage with the bonus of supporting interaction through the posting of comments.
Each class designed a rubric which highlighted the skills and strategies needed to make a successful movie. Students filled in a movie contract that placed the responsibility of writing and completing a script in the given timeframe on the students.
The movie
For this article we have selected a movie that was created by one of the grade 2 children. The image below shows the characters who act in this movie.
The movie runs for 1 minute and 43 seconds. The transcript of the movie is presented next.
Setting the scene: A queen and a cowboy are standing inside a room with furniture and paintings on the walls. Grass and what looks like a running track can be seen through the full-length windows. The queen is wearing a crown and the cowboy is wearing a big Texan style cowboy hat.
The movie begins.
Cowboy: Hello Queen, I am here to steal your jewels.
Queen: You are here to what?
Cowboy: Here to steal your jewels.
Queen: My goodness gracious, when do you mean?
Cowboy: I will steal your jewels right now so let me past.
Queen: No I will not let you past to steal my jewels.
Cowboy: Oh yes you will.
Queen: Oh no I won’t.
Cowboy: Oh yes you will.
Queen: Oh no I won’t.
[Queen crosses arms – action/movement selected]
Cowboy: Okay Queen you are the boss.
Queen: Can you get me a drink of water please?
Cowboy: No I will not get you a drink of water, I will put on a dance for you.
[Cowboy completes a sequence of dance movements]
Queen: That will be great.
Queen: I will make an order for you ... one, two, three, four.
Cowboy: Do you want to dance with me?
Queen: What a pleasure to ask. I would love to. Let’s start dancing.
Cowboy: Would you like me to run ballet?
Queen: Yes please. When does it start?
Cowboy: Today.
Queen: Let’s start dancing cowboy.
Cowboy: Play cowboy [music starts].
Queen: You sound rather handsome cowboy.
Cowboy: You sound rather gorgeous yourself.
Cowboy: Do you want to marry me?
Queen: Yes I do, when is our wedding?
Cowboy: Tomorrow is our wedding [gong sounds].
Queen: But I want to marry you now.
Cowboy: Okay I will change the orders.
Queen: Are the orders changed?
Cowboy: Yes they are.
[The sound of a whip cracking and cowboy music end the movie.]
Analysis of the digital text
The analysis of this movie as text draws on, and combines the work of Buckingham(2007), Hill(2012) and Metcalfe (2013) for the 21st century literacy framework. All their work helped inform the design of our 21st century literacy framework for text analysis. In doing this we thought about how the effective teaching of digital literacy must go beyond a skills based approach.Effective understanding of literacy pedagogy must be at the centre of all digital literacy teaching practices.