Make an update of 300 words or more: Analyze an example of a curriculum resource or practice that connects audio and/or oral meanings to reading or writing. Use this example to explain the dimensions of multimodal literacies pedagogy.

As a physics teacher I am going to explain about a class on “Echo and Reverberation”. Let me tell you how it is relevant to the question asked here as these views are absolutely my views and experiences:

Merely, telling the definition of echo as a distinct delayed version of sound will not suffice. Perhaps, it will lead to monotony. The critical difference between echo and reverberation cannot be taught in a traditional classroom. A traditional classroom is filled with desks, benches, table, objects and humans. Some classroom may be acoustically treated too if the school administrator is rich. Such classrooms will dampen reflected sounds. A teacher may artificially create the effect (MEANING) orally but it will be boring, students may laugh and the seriousness and purpose of the class may be lost . The liveliness will not be there. The best alternate then is to take the students to a large empty room that can echo or take them to a large church hall with raised ceilings to make them experience (Meaning obtained in spatial & audio mode) the reverberation. Teaching in classroom gives oral meaning where definition is given by teacher's lecture and text book writing. After experiencing the echo audio, the student will conceptualize, and reflect on the concept. When the student READS the text book once again, he/she will get indepth meaning through experiential learning.

Church hall Acoustics

Alternately, the simulated audio of echo and reverberation can be played for the students using computer playbacks and math behind the two types of delayed audio effects can be shown on blackboard. After listening to the echo/reverb AUDIO, when the child reads the textbook, the written content will be lot more meaningful. Perhaps, it will give layers of new meanings.

When such simulated sounds are played, a video of a church hall or concert hall can be shown along with the sound that could create synaesthesia involving (oral, audio, image, writings in image). Additionally, the waveforms of the direct original sound and the echo sound can be plotted graphically. The NCERT textbooks for class VIII and IX of India do not have even such pictures.

ECHO Graph (Writing on Image overlap)

The visual mode overlaps written mode. Teacher could also make gestures of how loud the sound was or how delayed the sound was when the original dry sound and delayed sound are played. When a complete multi-modal suite is introduced in a blended learning environment, there will be more response from students expressing in multiple ways. Many students could log onto the LMS (learning management suite) and post their views (multiple ways of expression - podcast, discussion by writing, oral) on echo and reverberation. This way the teacher can do learning analytics too. If the had to just rely on text book to read and explain this concept it will be difficult for the teacher in transporting the concept to the student and the student not being able to get the meaning in depth. Explaining the textbook content alone via oral didactic learning could be a tough job to do.

Bibliography:

NCERT,. (2015), Class IX Science text book

NCERT,. (2015). Class VIII Science textbook