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.