Multimodal Journey: Week 6-10

Most of my learning in this digital literacy exploration happen during my picture taking experience and after through the editing process. The process of setting up a classroom using stop motion photography and two Barbie dolls was not a process that I was able to undertake on my own and therefore recruited a helping hand with holding the dolls as it could become quite the balancing act at times. My first picture in my series was the structure of my classroom; 3 walls and the floor. This represented where my digital literacy learning was starting, there was some structure present, but many details were required and needed to be explored. I could have had a classroom set up already and explored ways of using stop motion photography in my piece, but I wanted to be able to represent the process of learning. I began this by incorporating the typical tile and carpet areas of a classroom that we are all so familiar with. Throughout the development of my classroom I wanted to challenge the boundaries of the typical classroom.

The song that I choose to open up my video is a very influential piece. It was collaboratively written by my bachelor of education class. We had a guest artist come in that works for the York Region District School board. He visits classrooms and writes music with the students. He did a similar activity with us and I was very inspired with it as I find music one of the more difficult arts to incorporate into my teaching practice, even though I am a musician. Our first task was to brainstorm some important world issues like hunger, poverty, equal opportunities, sexism, racism, peace, and the list goes on. As a class we voted on a topic and we went with war and peace. We then formed groups and started to develop one line lyrics that we thought would be appropriate. The opening line of this song was actually one that I wrote. It goes “my grandfather was on the news last night; four more soldiers lost the fight”. My grandfather had in fact been interviewed when four bodies of fallen soldiers had returned down the Highway of Heroes. As a class we wrote the rest of this stanza to finish the story and connect it back to the idea of peace. I found a strong connection between the word ‘peace’ and anti-bullying so I worked to have these messages coincide with one another in my presentation. This whole process of song writing was a very engaging activity to explore literacy in a new and non traditional way. Allowing students to work in groups to collaboratively write lyrics can help facilitate a place for everyone’s ideas, regardless of confidence in academic abilities.
Once the walls and carpet had been set up, I introduced the characters for my learning journey. I decided to primarily use two Barbie dolls to set up the classroom because I have always viewed learning as a collaborative practice. It is something that we need others to support us through. I also wanted to consider my piece from a socio-cultural lens so I chose to use dolls from different ethnicities. This also helps represent my strong values of an equitable learning environment for all, regardless of differences, whether it is cultural or learning differences. These two dolls meeting each other and shaking hands symbolizes the excitement that meeting new friends, reacquainting with old, and embarking on new learning journeys that I have encountered every year in my own schooling journey.

The first item to be put on the walls is a Smartboard. I decided to hang this before the chalkboard because like we have explored so much in this course, we are not using the resources available to the best of our abilities. The Smartboard encompasses the idea of new technologies that should be implemented into every classroom. I felt it was important to keep the chalkboard as part of my classroom because it represents where we are coming from and helps show the transition that technology has facilitated and will continue to facilitate.
The next object to be added to my classroom was the teacher’s desk. There is a certain symbolism that comes with a teacher’s desk and this represents my childhood connections with my teachers, my inspiration for learning and my journey that led me into this wonderful profession. The two teachers work together to put some standard items on the desk. Upon reflection through my own childhood and my practicum, there were always certain items that were on the teacher’s desk. The ones that stood out the most to me were a box of tissues, books, a plant, a coffee mug, a picture of the family and a day planner. These items were all included in my video although it is hard to get a clear picture of what they were. When I original took my photos for this section, I did not have a clear understanding on how to use Windows Movie Maker so I took a bunch of pictures of the items that I wanted to focus on. Once I added my pictures to Windows Movie Maker I learned about some of the features in video creation that at the time I was unaware of. These will later be discussed.

The next item that gets incorporated into my video is the bulletin boards, another standard to our traditional classrooms. They are a great way to explore students work as well as to post important information. The blackboards in my classroom are use to display words that have become influential within my teaching practice. The first bulletin board that is displayed around the top of the classroom is an anti-bullying poster and when I went back to edit this video, I ensured that the bullying sign was completely in sync with the word ‘peace’. Again, when I first started taking pictures of this, I took many pictures from the exact same position assuming that I would have to repeat them to allow the slide to be shown for a longer time period. I was able to explore this concept further through my editing process.

The next bulletin board that I focused on is one of Albert Einstein by a chalkboard that says “Can you imagine teaching digital literacy with a chalkboard like this?” and this quote speaks volumes as to the changes that need to be implemented into our educational system to better engage and prepare our students for tomorrow. When taking pictures for this section, I took the approach of zooming in on the bulletin board. This shows the digression from having some understanding of the topic and concept, to a much fuller perspective over time. This type of reflection can be shown more effectively through a digital literacy as you can have time elapse and represent the progression of knowledge becoming more focused.

The next bulletin board I show is a picture of two old people parting ways while in the background their shadows are interacting with one another. I carefully edited my video so that this coincided with the lyrics “my next door neighbour want talk to me today” followed by “they won’t even glance my way”. I tried to symbolize the resistance that many teachers have to using digital technologies in their classrooms through the picture of the two people and the unfocused attention on the Digital Literacy poser displayer beside it. Teachers turn their back on technology quite often because of a lack of understanding on how to use it. Students today are growing up in an environment where online activities and digital technologies are every day practices. Our challenge now becomes to get other colleagues on board to wanting to use these types of literacies and how to do it effectively.

Next, the two Barbie dolls work together to set up a computer. I chose to only put one computer in the computer centre because many times we often only see a couple computers designated to a classroom. This is of course not how I envision a classroom should be, but more along the lines of one laptop per child. Hopefully as administrators become more aware of the benefits of technology, they can fight for the proceeds needed to make this a reality in our schools. I also chose to show both Barbie dolls working on this together to show that moving towards a digital age in the classroom requires a collaborative effort to be the most effective for our students.

The next station that the teachers set up is what I would call a literacy station. It is comprised of a bookshelf, with some hard copy books, and most importantly a collection of digital cameras! This is to represent the learning that I have gone through in creating this presentation as well as my desire to implement projects involving literacy, the arts and technology into the classroom. Before embarking on this project, I did not see how strong photography and stop motion photography could be in the aspect of storytelling. Many students do not have the desire to sit down and write a story but by providing them alternative methods to story tell, hopefully we can engage them in new ways. It gives students alternative methods to show the knowledge that they have on a given subject. The cameras could be use to take short video clips that could also be edited together to tell a larger story. Too often in classrooms we neglect to engage students who strengths lie within the non-traditional multiple intelligences. Too often we focus on literacy or mathematical strengths and forget those such as kinaesthetic, musical, and visual/special intelligences. Using alternative activities like this in the classroom gives students whose strengths fall into these areas a better chance at being successful.

In the next section I introduce two new characters into my stop motion photography photo story, the male teachers. They have come by to lend a hand to put up the remaining bulletin boards which have key words to my beliefs in arts integration and digital literacies. The words on the bulletin boards include, digital literacy, multi modal, music, drama, language arts, visual arts, writing, and we finish at the word dance. From the dance bulletin board I decided to fade into a piece that I did with my grade eight practicum class that integrated many of these different concepts together. The music for Lady Gaga’s hit song ‘Just Dance’ is cued. This recording that has been integrated into my learning journey story is a result of the activity “I Am From” that incorporated language arts, music, drama, and dance together. I took a big risk in my own learning to do this activity with this class as it could very easily have failed. However, in the end it was one of my most successful moments in my practicum teaching experience and I learned a lot through the process of putting this together. Students had to build the activity from the micro to the macro level and it was great to see the interactions that went on and how they worked their way through each process of the creation of their class dance. In many ways, I feel the success of this activity can be contributed to the idea that all students were involved and their ideas were incorporated into this work, much like the song that I wrote with my colleagues in my bachelor of education program.

I chose the use ‘Just Dance’ because our bachelor of education group did an activity with a dance instructor using this song. This arts based learning class was held at a point during the term where everything was hectic and very busy. I had also been dealing with a lot of personal issues so some days, things would become very tough and I would wonder how I was going to get through the day. When this got back during this year, I would put on ‘Just Dance’ and it became my theme song to life. Music can be such a strong influence on helping people and getting them through situations that challenge their own thinking and beliefs. Allowing students to use digital music in the classroom is a great way to facilitate the use of materials which they already enjoy and can help foster a new appreciation for learning as music can say so much without saying a thing.

The conclusion of my grade eight’s performing their “I Am From” dance leads into the four Barbie teachers examining their work around the classroom. I decided to play around with the pictures in this section and experiment a bit which resulted in the dolls appearing as though they’re dancing. I incorporated a high five between the female teachers and the male teachers to show the appreciation for the assistance in the classroom as well as to celebrate the collaboration in the process of learning. I also showed everyone working together to remove the ladder from the classroom showing that it is perfectly acceptable to ask for help and to share ideas and tasks to better facilitate a well balanced classroom.

I included another transition of music at this point in my piece to show that we need to keep progressing in our teaching practices by incorporating digital technologies into our curriculum, otherwise we are not providing our students with the most beneficial opportunities. I selected K’naan’s song ‘ABC’. The lyrics in the chorus of this piece are “They don't teach us the ABCs, We play on the hard concrete, All we got is life on the streets, All we got is life on the streets”. These words are very powerful and represent the problems that we are creating for students by not providing them with opportunities to use digital technologies in their work. We are not teaching them the ABC’s of the twenty-first century if we are not teaching them about and through technology. By shying away from technology, we are preventing our students from reaching the potentials that technology and the learning of new digital literacies can provide them. We then begin to contribute to a new form of illiteracy; digital illiteracy.

The next focal point of my journey of learning is a focus on the benefits of arts integration in learning. The caption for the picture reads “Expose Yourself to Art” and there is a man in a trench coat that appears to be exposing himself to a statue. I am an avid believer in arts integration into all subject areas for the aforementioned reasons. This picture in many ways mirrors what I enjoyed learning and school and how I learned to use it in my own teaching practice. I continue this exploration of art by displaying some artwork that would have been created in a classroom situation. Again I showed the collaboration between the two Barbie dolls to hang these pictures up.

While editing my pictures and incorporating my music, I wanted the pictures to switch in this section as the beat of the music changed. It took a lot of careful planning and timing but I was able to make this happen by having certain slides show for a longer time period than others. I was also able to look at the physical properties of the sound waves created to physically see where I would need to place my next picture to correspond with the change in music. When the music wavelength would change, I would line up the next slide with this change. Learning how to do this required a lot of trial and error. When I was first viewing my piece I was zoomed out as far as possible which made any editing very difficult. Once I zoomed in to the maximum possibility, I was able to identify where the key parts of the sound wave were to move my pictures to. When you play this back, it moves very quickly so one technique I found was helpful was to listen to the music a few times to visually see where my key wavelength changes were. This would be a great activity to be able to provide students with the chance to do so that they can see the physical properties of a wavelength.

The next station that my Barbie doll teachers set up is the music centre, again one of the arts that I am closely connected with that I feel should be implemented into the classroom more than it is, especially in the older grades. I chose to put the music centre beside the computer table. This is so that students can be provided with the opportunity to use computer based music software to create their own pieces and to incorporate this into their own digital stories to share with others. I included more than just a keyboard to represent the wealth of instruments that are available for a computer with the proper midi tools and controllers. I have been fortunate enough to have programs like this in my high school and was able to find an alternative means to express myself. As a teenager I was always writing music but never had the ability to commit what I wrote to paper due to a lack of training. The midi based programs on my high school’s computers opened up a whole new world of learning for me where I could commit my ideas to paper, in the proper format, and share them with others. With the changes that have happened in these last ten years, I can only begin to imagine the possibilities that we can provide our students with. I keep challenging my own thinking and coming up with creative ways of how I will use these in my own classroom when I am fortunate enough to have one. Hopefully by the time this happens, I will have enough tools to facilitate the best digital learning environments possible and an administration that supports and fosters this type of creativity in their school.



The next idea I explore in my learning journey is how my stop motion photography can be used in a classroom. I chose to explore the growth of a seed into a plant as the ‘students’ used stop motion photography to record the weekly progress. Using photography on its own can provide a wealth of learning opportunities for students in a classroom. One activity may be to give them a word and have them try to take some pictures that show the meaning of that word. Some preliminary work would need to be done to teaching about perspective and the various camera angles that are possible. You can show the students how to make something look big, or small, or to be the focal point of a picture by using different angles. Many students enjoy watching movies and are excited to be able to make movies of their own. Using stop motion photography would provide students with an engaging way to work multimodally. If the pictures were shown for a longer time period, than you could have a narrated story and could use less images or even take pictures of students work to use. This would save a lot of time when putting these pieces together.

The last section of my piece is what inspired me to create a multimodal piece and explore story telling. We had another guest artist come in to our bachelor of education program to show us a bit about stop motion photography. He had worked on a few popular children’s television shows doing Claymation, so the focus of our work was to be Claymation but he wanted to challenge our thinking and foster group cooperation, so he integrated in some other art mediums including drawing, and construction paper cut out art. Together as a group we had to pick a topic that we could convince our audience was important, perhaps to initiate change in one’s own thinking or daily routines. It was a challenge to create a storyboard and make sure that we used all of the materials provided. It was interesting to see how everyone’s childhood instincts came back as we all wanted to use the plastercine in our part of the work. Just like the teacher would have suggested, we all took turns playing with the plastercine.

Providing our students with opportunities to work multimodally is crucial in society. As Vincent states in Children Writing: Multimodality and Assessment in the Writing Classroom “Today’s children pass through childhood receiving information multimodally through television, through multimodal books, through the computer screen and through electronic games. Although conventional printed books still play a major part in the lives of many children, increasingly these rely on a combination of images, colours and words.” (Vincent 2006) Students need to be provided with opportunities to work multimodally as it is so important to their lives. It can provide students with alternative methods for students to share their learning. It allows students whose strengths are in multiple intelligences other than “linguistic intelligence” or “logical-mathematical intelligence” an opportunity to be successful. Working multimodally creates a learning environment that is engage for reluctant students as learning becomes ‘fun’. Students are able to better evaluation and make connections between image, text and music. When given a chance to work multimodally, students are able to develop their media literacy skills and can use different semiotic processes than they are typically do when working monomodally. It is important that we teach students how effectively choose design elements to convey meaning and to show them how texts are constructed or work together to convey meaning. This is something that is so often neglected when teaching media literacy. Students need to be shown how to make meaning from texts that may be unrelated and this helps them to realize the multiple texts in contemporary society. Our goal than is to have students be able to synthesize information from a variety of texts to communicate new knowledge.

Photography in the classroom can be used in a variety of ways to be incorporated into multimodal pieces and does not necessarily have to be used as stop motion photography. Programs like PhotoStory may work more freely to use pictures for a longer time period with narration. Photos can also be used to retell stories or to show a progression of events, whether it be the telling of history or the development of a plant. Stop motion photography provides a great way to show how something changes over the course of time. Pictures and photos can be used in visual essays and incorporated into multimodal pieces that include video, text and audio. Students can use photos and multimodal pieces to write their own personal life journals or to write poetry.

This project has helped solidify my beliefs that it is important for students to work multimodally and we need to provide them with these opportunities. Students that are unsuccessful working monomodally and who struggle with verbal expression then have an alternative pathway to learning. These alternative learning methods can be exciting but the appropriate time must be spent experimenting for the best possible results to be obtained. It may be beneficial to provide students with an assignment that allows them to experiment with the different options available for tools such as effects and transitions and to discuss the elements of design. They need to understand what fading in and out can mean or how to show other emotions through the use of the tools. This needs to be taught and is not just a phenomenon that happens. This type of work can benefit students that struggle with face to face communication as they are able to share their ideas without sharing their voice aloud.
To implement a program like Windows Movie Maker in the classroom, from a pedagogical perspective, it would be the most successful that as a teacher, you explore the capabilities of the program first. The most effective way to teach a program like this is to learn how to use all of the available features and to be able to discuss with your students how best to use them when they create their own pieces. Some key components to explore would be how do you fade in or fade out images and music. Why would you want to do this and to talk about the effects that it has. You can discuss with students what these different effects can represent with respect to design features.

One difficult task with working multimodally is the difficulties that arise when determining how to best assess the practice. I would suggest providing students with a multimodal piece to look at with them while developing a rubric together. I would start the rubric with setting out key expectations from the curriculum that I wanted to assess but incorporate some of their ideas as well. Once a finalized rubric were completed, I would again assess a multimodal piece together with my students to make sure they all understood what was expected to them. When developing my rubric I would ensure that there was space allowed to creativity and to maintain the attitude of expecting the unexpected and to incorporate this idea into my rubric. I would also provide students with an opportunity for self and peer assessment so students have an opportunity to reflect on their own work as well as their peer’s work. Reflection is an important part of the learning process. After each multimodal project I gave my students I would reflect back on the rubric and the work that was performed and re-evaluate how to assess this work the next time. I would add or take away expectations on my rubric based on the needs of the next assignment and the results of the current one.
Using Windows Movie Maker in class to tell stories through stop motion photography would be very beneficial for the students. This type of work would best be done in groups so that students can help each other out with taking pictures and setting up there scenes, whatever they may be. To create one of these pieces it would require a lot of time from students so it would be beneficial for students to work on it either as they go along or all at the end, it would depend on space available in the classroom and what type of pictures you were taking. Doing the pictures over the course of a few days would help to organize the logistics of memory cards and batteries and computer lab availability. Sharing this type of work can make students feel very vulnerable so it is best to discuss how to respect everybody’s work and to show appreciation. Working in this type of multimodal way can provide students a way to share their work with others online. It would be so beneficial to students to have online pen pals in another part of the world and to share this type of work with one another. It could create a global awareness for students that far exceed having a discussion about it.

Multimodal Journey: Week 5: Week of February 11th

This week I started to put together all of the items that I will incorporate into the building of my classroom. I explored my dollhouse from childhood and collected pieces that were applicable to have in a classroom setting. I wanted to incorporate these items because they were very special to me as a child. My grandfather had actually built me my own dollhouse when I was very young. Both my mother and grandfather have both made furniture and accessories to decorate my dollhouse with. I have also gathered items that my sisters and I had for our Barbie dolls that are appropriate for my classroom. Any additional items that were of significance I have made such as books, an apple for the teacher’s desk, miscellaneous musical instruments, books, bulletin boards and the window. The window was made using a class picture from a trip to the zoo when I was in kindergarten.

While collecting all of these items I was reminded of making dioramas in public school, just as a larger scale version. The process of recreating something requires a deep understanding of whatever is to be represented. This alone can be a great learning opportunity for students and it gives them a unique way to demonstrate their understanding. It can lead us from traditional teaching methods and practices into a new age of teaching that incorporates digital technology. This technology piece may help to engage students who are otherwise reluctant to participate in school. The idea of putting something together piece by piece would be very applicable for students to demonstrate their understanding of a process. Students could use stop motion photography to build whatever they are learning about and create a multimodal piece out of it instead of simply writing a set of instructions. They could narrate their videos using programs like Photo Story. Working multimodally can allow students who are not always successful with writing, a new and engaging way to express their ideas.
Through my experience, I have found that students who are normally disengaged from learning enjoy activities that incorporate the arts and are less focused on writing and mathematics.

Multimodal Journey: Week 4: Week of February 4th

I have started to put together a storyline for my educational journey through my Bachelor of Education and my Masters of Education thus far. I have decided to use Barbie dollars with stop motion photography because they are a toy from my childhood that I loved to play with and I still have some accessories that I would like to incorporate into my storyline. I will be using two dolls with different racial profiles to represent the inclusion and equity that all classrooms should have. I am going to use masonite to create the structure of my classroom using two 4 foot by 2 foot pieces and two 2 foot by 2 foot pieces. The board will be held together using duct tape and I will use wooden doweling to suspend the Barbie dollars from while I take the necessary pictures. I will start with my classroom completely bare and empty. This will show my limited knowledge of teaching as I entered into my Bachelor of Education. The dolls will work together to set the classroom up together as learning in most classrooms happens in a collaborative process. I will set up a teacher’s desk with some typical materials on it.

I will have a computer set up which will represent the digital technology that is so important in the classroom. If it were possible, I would have a computer for every student but this one computer will represent the technology that should be in the classrooms of today. Near the computer centre, I will include a keyboard representing the digital music that is possible with midi programs. The keyboard will also represent that midi technology provides the opportunity for students to create using any instrument, not just piano. I feel that every student should be provided with an opportunity to explore their own musical creation using midi based programs. Most classrooms that I have been in lack the tools that are able to support these types of literacies in the classroom or they are restricted to a set time period each week. I am also going to include some other instruments that could be used to create music in the classroom. I plan to line the classroom with bulletin boards containing key factors in my educational philosophy with respect to the arts and technology. I want to zoom into these bulletin boards and use them as a lead in to my videos that I have taken during my placement experience as these are strongly connected to multimodal work and integrating the arts and technology.

I also want to be able to show the collaboration of learning in my multimodal piece. The nature of education has always had an element of collaboration to it but as technology becomes more integrated in our classrooms, it is possible that this trend will increase. The integration of technology can assist students to collaboratively work together on projects, especially if working multimodally.

As I plan out all of the different items that I want to incorporate into my ‘typical’ classroom of today, the more I realize it goes against the principles that I fight for in learning. The items I am including represent the bigger ideas of what classrooms today should be working towards. One computer per classroom is simply not enough when we are living in a digital age. Every student should be provided with access to a computer at all times and hopefully as the education system grows, this will become a reality. To truly prepare the future generations of tomorrow, students must be computer literate. Computer literacy incorporates more than just the basic use and operation of a computer. It goes beyond this to include how to use online information effectively.

Multimodal Journey: Week 3: Week of January 28th

Another key piece that I worked on in my Bachelor of Education that I want to incorporate into my learning journey is actually multimodal, although I did not know the term for this at the time. I plan to incorporate this into my learning journey piece as it was very influential in my drive to integrate technology into my teaching practice. An artist came in to our class to show us some of the work that we can do with students incorporating different types of art mediums with photography. Due to time restraints, we never had an opportunity to put together our own pieces into stop motion photography. The instructor had simply taken the pictures and artwork that we had produced and put it together himself. Each group had to pick a cause that they wanted to fight for. Our group had chosen to fight for the integration of arts in education. We were required to use construction paper cut-outs, plastercine, and to create a flip book. Our first task was to create a storyboard to narrow down what messages we wanted to have in our short film, and then we had to plan out what construction materials we would use for each frame and to decide who was going to work with which medium. This activity required a lot of cooperation from all group members and we had a very short time period in which to get everything completed.

I was disappointed that this instructor did not have something set up so that we could actually put our story together how we wanted to. I would have learned more by experiencing this first hand, instead of just receiving a final product to view. This is part of my motivation for wanting to further explore stop motion photography with storytelling. After seeing the final product of our work and experiencing the development of our story I could see the benefits of using this medium in my own classroom.

Multimodal Journey: Week 2: Week of January 21st

After exploring Windows Movie Maker and Photo Story I have decided that I am going to use Windows Movie Maker to show my own learning journey through my Bachelor of Education and my Masters of Education thus far. During my Bachelor of Education, I had many key learning moments that have been recorded digitally and I would like to bring these into my exploration of multimodal work. These pieces have helped form and enhance my own personal learning journey. They will add another layer to this piece which will help enhance my learning experience with Windows Movie Maker.

I plan to incorporate a video of my grade 8’s and the dance that we created through a drama activity. The idea for this activity came from a dance instructor did a workshop with my Bachelor of Education class. For this exercise, I asked students to find a partner that they would not normally work with as we were going to learn something new about our classmates. Once students had found an appropriate partner, one of the partners was selected to leave the room (with another teacher) for a moment so I could provide instructions to the remaining students. The students who remained were given a sheet of paper and instructed to write down their partner’s body movements when they answered the questions I was going to ask them when they returned. The partners in the hallway, for simplicity we will call them Group A, were under the understanding that their partners in the gym, Group B, would be writing down their answers to my questions. After both groups were explained their roles, Group A re-entered the gymnasium. I told Group A that they were to answer the questions that I asked to their partner. I had five questions for this group to respond to. Each question began with “I Am From...” and finished with “my favourite food”, “my best family memory”, “something I pass on the way to school”, “my favourite family saying” and “my favourite thing to do”. Group A was shocked to learn that Group B was writing down their body movements and that we were going to create a dance based on what they recorded. I then asked Group B to share with their partners the body movements that they recorded and to select two movements that they wanted to turn into a dance move. I gave the students some time to work through this and provided them with music. Each partnership was given the opportunity to perform their movements for their peers. After this, each partnership joined another partnership and they were asked to put the moves together to create a new ‘dance’. This continued until we had a full class dance which was inclusive of all students one dance move. Initially I was slight hesitant to do this activity with grade eight students because dance was not necessarily a dance unit that all students were enthusiastic about. By the end of it, I was pleasantly surprised with the results, especially with a few of the male students, and how they took up this activity. Some of them were so inspired that they started a break dancing club at recess and asked for me to come watch them.

I have a short clip of the dance instructor working with some students in my program. I may decide to incorporate this into my learning journey, but I am not too pleased with my filming job. I had turned the camera to get another angle not realizing that when I filmed it would ruin what I was trying to show. This was a technological learning moment for me with digital photography!

I am going to have to see what formats I need to have my pictures and videos in so that I can incorporate them into Windows Movie Maker. There are certain videos that I think will work best if I use certain sections of them. I will have to explore Movie Maker to see if I am able to do this type editing here, or if I will need to search for external programs in order to splice specific parts to use.

Multimodal Journey: Week 1: Week of January 14th

The idea of exploring a new literacy is very appealing. I have so many ideas at this point but am not completely sure the particulars of what I would like to explore. Unfortunately, I am not teaching in a classroom and my workplace is very restricting as far as what I am able to do and not do. I think for this project I will explore my own learning journey through a multimodal piece. Coming from an arts background I am challenging myself to incorporate art into my new literacy as I have seen firsthand the benefits of providing these opportunities to students. I am strongly connected to the ideas presented by Cornett and Smithrim that are as follows:

1. The arts are fundamental components of all cultures and time periods.
2. The arts teach us that all we think or feel cannot be reduced to words.
3. When students engage in the arts they have the opportunity to “be smart in different ways.”
4. The arts develop the brain.
5. The arts provide avenues of achievement for students who might otherwise not be successful.
6. The arts develop a value for perseverance and hard work.
7. The arts are a necessary part of life.
8. There is a strong positive relationship between the arts and academic success.
9. The arts offer alternative forms of assessment and evaluation.
10. The arts can be a “feel good” alternative for students who turn to drugs and other destructive means to “get high”.
11. The National Symposium on Arts Education of Canada calls for arts education for all children.

At this point I am considering incorporating photography in my new literacy as it is an art form that I do not have a lot of experience with personally. I do have a digital camera but do not use it for more than every day pictures, usually at special events. I would like to explore the possibility of PhotoStory or Windows Movie Maker. I know that I have Windows Movie Maker installed on my computer so I will have to look into PhotoStory to see if I have the appropriate requirements. My goal for this week is to play around with both of the programs and select one to explore for this project. I am also considering putting all of my notes up on a blog once I am done so that others can view it at a later date. I have been fascinated with the idea of blogging but have never explored the creation of one for myself. My blogging experience comes from reading others blogs so I would also like to explore the learning potential of creating my own blog. When I eventually have my own class I would like to be able to implement programs like Windows Movie Maker or PhotoStory into my teaching practice and blogging. These applications can provide students with other ways to demonstrate their learning. I think blogging could create a sense of community in the classroom where students could write at home and connect with one another. It could provide students with a collaborative learning opportunity that traditional classrooms lack.