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.