Investiture

As I read the chapters in Hicks’s Crafting Digital Writing; Composing texts across mediums and genres  and Gura’s  Teaching Literacy in the Digital Age; Inspiration for all levels and literacies, my mind continued to revert to the word digital. Digits make me think of math and numbers, not written expression and literacy. So why is literacy outside of the printed realm called digital? The more I thought about this I realized it is all a code; just like learning the alphabetic principal and breaking the code in reading. Students always have to find ways to decipher language as commentary. How they formulate that understanding can vary from printed text, to audio files, or moving imagery, but the ultimate goal is for students to not only investigate but also invest.

A major problem I have witnessed with some of my middle schoolers is a lack of interest in school.  They are trending towards losing motivation to try, and it breaks my heart.  While not only rooted in reading, I do believe that many of these students disinterest comes from the constraints or struggles they have encountered with the printed word.  Either reading was hard to learn or writing “just wasn’t my thing.” Literacy became disjointed at some point.  But, there are “tremendous literacy and life learning opportunities possible through the production of original student media products” (Gura, 2014, p. 185).  Through the use of audio and video, we can tap into students interests as well as teach them how to craft products of expression.  A news broadcast invests students in local affairs in conjunctions with their analysis (Gura, 2014, p. 192).  Production and product are as valued as content creation (Hicks, 2013, p. 96).  These outlets provide occasions for “students [to] be conscious of their writing and thinking” while developing critical means of composition in a way that capitalizes on an investment in the craft (Hicks, 2013, p. 136). 

The following are the major themes that made me invest in incorporating more multimodal forms of expression in my classroom –

·      Audio texts composed in small segments allow students to take risks without the fear of messing the whole piece up.  Through editing and revision students can play around with what works and what doesn’t (Hicks, 2013, p. 98). For me this is analogous to copy and pasting in a word processor. 

·      Crafting audio texts encourages prosody and fluency (Hicks, 2013, p. 91).  Students have to be aware of how they say something.  Translate that into the written word – students have to be thoughtful when composing an email. How will the reader take it?

·      We live in a world where images speak louder than words (Hicks, 2013, p. 104).  Therefore, students, who are already invested in social media, can use pictures and videos to craft a “concise message that critiques an existing” thought, idea, theme, or preconceived notion (Hicks, 2013, 107).

·      Developing video texts can be messy in the same way developing a piece of written expression. But students can practice achieving the same goal, a well-defined, connected texts, in a medium that speaks to their generation (Hicks, 2013, p. 115).

As for a mentor text, I am in love with this 90 second short.  The website http://jameskennedy.com/90-second-newbery/ invites students to create a  video that tells the entire story of a Newberry book.  The one that stuck out to me was about Charlotte's Web.  

Charlotte's Web Video Here

I chose this as a strong mentor text because I feel that it decorates the original text, illustrates a concept and illuminates the viewer on media elements (Hicks, 2013, p. 110).  The costumes and setting used bring the book to life.  The act of summarizing a text is a hard concept for many students let alone in 90 seconds.  But, my favorite thing, is the use of cartoons, humans and the song.  Those elements incorporate the tenants of a strong transformative video text, audio text, and elements critical for written text. 

Visual Perception

"The really cool advance with functional imaging happened when scientists figured out how to make pictures that show not just anatomy but activity where neurons are firing."
-Nancy Kanwisher

In her Ted Talk, Nancy Kanwisher talks about the ability to use functional MRI scans to see internal anatomy.  These brain images allow doctors to determine activity through pictures.  Kanwisher used scans of her own brain to drive her research about the brain's ability to recognize visual stimulus like faces and objects. She proved that the brain has a specialized region of the brain solely for facial recognition.  This means that our brains, the thinking organ as we call it in 6th grade, has developed to include areas that are necessary when asked to identify a visual prompt.  

Not only was her talk highly interesting, but a great example of a multimodal presentation. She used pictures videos, interactive diagrams, audio clips, but no printed text.  "A good presentation is the result of a great deal of writing that never shows up on the slides but become part of the words spoken by the writer" (Hicks, 2013, p. 67).  Kanwisher never "reads" what is written on a slide or references a page in a printed handout.  She focuses "nearly as much on [her] speaking as on the slides" (Hicks, 2013, p. 64).  The slides are used when a image is more powerful than words.  The video of a man responding to changes in the doctor's face is ten times more powerful that if she had described it.  The use of the brain diagram and the various colors used to highlight where specific functions occurred gave the audience the same lens with which she conducted her research.  However, her "judicious use of images, videos…and other effects" engaged the audience without turning them off (Hicks, 2013, p. 77).  

This visualization of data and ideas creates limitless possibilities for student expression.  "While writing is very important, such an assignment only asks students to preform one cognitive skill - summarization" (Gura, 2014, p. 34).  But the world our students live in and the future that they will direct requires more than summary.  It will require critical thinkers to solve global issues and understanding of concepts yet to be created.  Therefore, while in school, we can provide students the opportunity to relate and present information in ways that will develop these skills.  "The 20-Shot Short Story" asks students to analyze literacy through "the language of film, gesture color and material" (Gura, 2014, p. 37).  Students are given a chance to create images that transfer the literary features from print to text.  This meaningful application extends learning not regurgitation (Gura, 2014, p. 40). In similar form, moviemaking taps into the analysis as students have to plan what features are important and what needs to be left out.  (Gura, 2014, p. 44). Recently, I visited a school and sat in on a digital design class.  Students were using various online platforms to present information about key figures in the history of technology.  When asked, a student said the hardest part wasn't the iMovie platform, but deciding what was important.  I asked if she felt the same would have been true if she had been given the option to write an essay. I think her response is very telling.  Paraphrasing, "Oh no! Than creates a whole new set of problems for me because I don't think in words, but in pictures!" (Side note: She was dyslexic like Albert Einstein who stated that he saw in concepts in 3D before ever being able to put them in words!)

Creating a picture! That’s what it is about in neural science and education.