Here I look at Cope and Kalantzis' (2017) definitions of multi-modality - and explore how one particular example of multi-modaltiy (the 'gif') might be used in educational settings.

In this video Bill Cope explains how we developed a writing-based information architecture building from sounds to alphabets, words, sentences, paragraphs, headings, contents and indexes and so on so that by the 15th century we had a fairly well-defined knowledge architecture which we call literacy.

While images are later introduced - it is not until more recent times that we have been able to so ubiquitously and easily manipulate text and image in the same medium (i.e. a digital display). But we are no longer limited to text and image - we can now manipulate sound, data sets, moving images, and furthermore:

"With new and evolving technologies on mobile, multipurpose digital devices, multiple modes of knowledge representation and communication can be shared widely, and remixed while people are physcially on the move. (Leander & Vasudevan 2009). Digital-born media are more often than not multimodal, and screens are awash with multimodal media created and consumed by the writer-readers of the Internet (Lessig, 2008; Smith & Hull, 2013; Tierney &Pearson, 1983)" (Kalantzis and Cope, 2017)

Multi-modal creation and consumption are the very life-blood of internet - one place in which this is conspicuously the case is on the link and content sharing website Reddit (the 'front page of the internet' and 7th most visited website in the world)

Several communities (subreddits) are for posting original gifs where users take video clips, remove the sound and add alternative text and use numerous other effects to add content to the original video before turning it into a .gif and posting online.

The current (as of 07/09/17) top post of all time on reddit is a gif. Here is a link to and also a video clip of the most popular post; "Guardians of the Front Page."

Some reasons for this post's popularity may include not only the popularity of the original source material, but also the quality of the execution of the augmentation and the self-referential humour contained in the captions added, (it refers to a complaint of many reddit users - that upvoting reposts of old content pushes them back onto the 'front page'). The posts that are upvoted (whether new or not) are often highly inventive and not only showcase the users' great technical skills - but also often demonstrate sophisticated use of humour including self-referential humour, meta-humour and irony.

How can we harness this in the classroom?

Creating gifs could be used in any number of ways in education. For example if the educational outcomes were to make use of some of the technical skills that are on display in the video above - then creating a gif following some of the submission criteria for posting online, and assessing additional qualitative features using a rubric, could be a great project for students in a Media Studies or Computer Graphics and Design course.

It could go much further than that though. There is in fact a whole subreddit dedicated to educational gifs - here is one recent post on how a rotary engine works. There is a whole world of opportunity for learners to construct knowledge and explain concepts, theories, workings etc. using gifs in place of say a more traditional presentation. Instead of creating a report in Word or a presentation in PowerPoint or Sway or even Prezi in an English, History, Science, or any other class, perhaps the learner could produce an augmented video clip that demonstrated knowledge and understanding of the concept/idea while conveying it in the multi-modal medium of the gif. Or they could use the augmented video clip in the form of a gif embedded in another multi-modal representation such as blog post.

With some thought and imagination the possibilities are endless and demonstrate clearly the need for today's educators to embrace far wider definitions of knowledge construction and representation for today's learners to communicate their understanding of the world.

References:

Cope, William. 2014. e-Learning Affordances 3A Multimodal Meaning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8fLr9CZg4o&index=8&list=PL7xInb_unHtNs1dOgE8KAKZkN_Mz0GFiw accessed 07/09/2017

Kalantzis, M. and Cope, W. 2017 e-Learning Ecologies: Principles for New Learning and Assessment

Guardians of the Front Page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN7pTeLoamI accessed 07/09/2017