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Heather A Ochmane-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates
Multimodalities
Multiliteracies
Definition of literacy
“Literacy is the use of socially-, historically-, and culturally-situated practices of creating and interpreting meaning through texts. It entails at least a tacit awareness of the relationships between textual conventions and their contexts of use, and ideally, the ability to reflect critically on these relationships. Because it is purpose-sensitive, literacy is dynamic – not static – and variable across and within discourse communities and cultures. It draws on a wide range of cognitive abilities, on knowledge of written and spoken language, on knowledge of genres, and on cultural knowledge.” (Kern, 2000, p. 16)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNINgNU3eDI
The multiliteracies argument is that “our personal, public and working lives are changing in some dramatic ways, and these changes are transforming our cultures and the ways we communicate. This means that the way we have taught literacy, and what counts for literacy, will also have to change.” https://www.alea.edu.au/documents/item/59
Multiliteracies refers to two aspects of language use:
“(1) The variability of meaning making in different cultural, social or domain-specific contexts
“(2) The multimodality of meaning making, particularly evident today in digital information and communications media.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JNrQnI7oUk
Multimodality is more than just reading and writing. Multiliteracies are the many ways that we engage in these multimodal communications.
“Multimodality refers to the different ways of knowledge representation and meaning making. Complementary and overlapping language modalities: reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing. Use of more than one meaning-making resource: linguistic, visual, aural, gestural, spatial.”
“Multimodal literacies refer to the ability to understand the contributions that various meaning-making modes make to fulfill the social purposes of a text and the ways in which their integration and interaction contribute to discourse.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNINgNU3eDI
This is an interesting lens to critique educational systems. When I was in school there was a standared litercay test to ensure all students met a standard. However, I would argue this testing only proves a very narrow proof of competency. The test was not culturally sensitive and delivered in a very specific classroom evaluation format. It does little to evaluate students in a multimodal way. There could be ways to update such testing to assess technological, digital, social ect. literacies and provide a better picture of students learning.