William Cope
Adam P Rusch
Jason Berg
Duane Searsmith.png "Rita van Haren")
Rita van Haren
Eric Patnoudes
Maura Rodgers Brand
Jason Williams
Melanie Lamus
Heather A Ochmane-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates
Essential Update #3 – Multimodal meaning || multimodal knowledge representation (visual learning)
In the current digital age almost everything is multimodal. Which means that educators and learners alike can use more than one modality such as text, audio, still images and video’s (and more) with devices as laptops, phones and tablets to find, record, create or present knowledge (Cope & Kalantzis, 378). How can you put all these different modes of meaning together? How do you use these digital ecologies to produce new learners, who are active knowledge makers and effectively use multimodal knowledge representation to produce knowledge that is more readily analyzable by peers or teachers (Cope & Kalantzis, 27)?
A good example of multimodal knowledge representation learners could use is ‘sketchnoting’, which can also be seen as a tool for visual learning. It is a way of visual note-taking and graphic recording. Sketchnoting is a method of multimodal knowledge representation as it uses several modes to give meaning to a subject:
- Audio (the story-teller/maker)
- Text (visual note-taking)
- Images (graphic recording)
- Video
One creates a text or makes notes and sketches images that give meaning to that text. The maker has to think about the structure of the text and therefore the lay-out, before recording. In a way sketchnoting is similar to a ‘semantic editor’ where the maker has to be very explicit about the meaning of a word or phrase and structure of their text. This is defined by Cope and Kalantzis as ‘semantic markup’ what makes a work more readily analyzable. More importantly, it is a method of learning that ‘is deepened as students shift from one mode to another, making their meanings one way, then another complementary way’ (Cope & Kalantzis, 378).
References
The video below shows an introduction video of sketchnoting.
Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2017). Conceptualizing e-learning. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds), e-Learning Ecologies. New York: Routledge.
Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2015). Learning and new media. In D. Scott and E. Hargreaves (Eds.), The sage handbook of learning (pp. 373-387). Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.
