William Cope
Abylai Aidarov
Lavine LimaMultimodal Literacies MOOC’s Updates
Storytelling: An ancient and modern multimodal approach for students to learning about Indigenous Australian Dreamtime stories
Warning. Australian Stories may contain the names and images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people now deceased. Australian Stories also contain links to sites that may use images of Aboriginal and Islander people now deceased.
Storytelling: An ancient and modern multimodal approach for students to learning about Indigenous Australian Dreamtime stories
Indigenous Australian Dreamtime stories could be said to have an intricacy of multimodality built in to their fibre and this is one of the reasons it is such an important multimodality site for me.
The combining of ancient and modern multimodality is something that can be difficult to enunciate, but can be blended to a vital learning opportunity for our students.
As a Library Technician in a Primary School in Australia (ages 4 to 12), I have been able to support students by creating a number of sessions that provides a foundation of Indigenous Australian dreamtime stories.
The website ‘Indigenous Australia’ describes Dreamtime Stories as: ‘The Dreaming tells of the journey and the actions of Ancestral Beings who created the natural world...Dreaming stories carry the truth from the past, together with the code for the Law, which operates in the present. Each story belongs to a long complex story. Some Dreaming stories discuss consequences and our future being’
Multimodal analysis approach to learning sessions are as multifaceted as I believe to be useful.
Utilising, sight, sound and creating an atmosphere of being outside in nature, the light in our Library is dimmed, students lie down, we imagine that we are lying around the campfire at night, what sounds can we hear, what stars in the night sky can we find, what can we smell while we imagine listening to an Elder tell a creation story of Bunjil?
A telling of Bunjil the creator, being told by Elder Murindindi can be seen at this link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_bLxmCmHJo
Audio and gestural meanings come in to play by creating this mood. As the Elder Murindindi illustrates by using body movement to create visual and gestural meaning in the manner of an Emu.
As David McNeil states: ‘Gestures and speech develop together in children. Children’s first gestures are concrete pointing and certain kinds of iconics. Much later they add other kinds of iconics, beats, metaphorics and, last of all, abstract pointing. In general, this progression follows the same path as the development of speech. As children’s speech development moves from a largely referential focus, through descriptive elaboration, and finally to the ability to structure discourse, so their gestures develop from a largely concrete deictic emphasis, through various kinds of iconic gestures, and finally to the discourse-referring gestures-metaphors, abstract pointing, and beats. Beats do not appear at all in children much younger than 5 years and are not abundant until 11 years; yet, considered as movements, beats are the simplest of motions—just flicks of the hand. It is the discourse structure that determines that these flicks have meaning, and the development of this structure is late and the beat gesture itself thus doesn’t occur’.
The storytelling moves into visual imagery – icons are explored, images that that were used to tell stories via cave drawings, markings in the earth and on the body (it could be said a tactile meaning as well as visual).
[Image result for indigenous symbols and their meanings]
(http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/culture/symbols.php)
Spatial meaning is imparted, when we move outside to the school grounds and students find meaning in the landscape, what symbols can they create to tell a story? Sharing this with the class we create a mural of different symbol stories.
The traditional notions of literacy of reading and written text are used sparingly in ancient Indigenous Dreamtime stories, however, multimodal disciplines were used and can be used today to within their framework to create complex visual, tactile and gestural meaning, along with reading and written text.
References:
http://www.indigenousaustralia.info/the-dreaming.html
accessed: 17 January 2017
www.aboriginalpainting.com
(http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/culture/symbols.php)
Accessed: 17 January 2017
McNeill, David (1992). Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 10, 23-24. || Amazon || WorldCat
One of the major rules for a great storytelling are to make people root for you,have a few go-to stories at the ready,stories are about you felt therefore the “plot” of the story is almost irrelevant when it comes to making a connection with your audience,it must be universal to a point that the story needs to framed inclusively; there has to be something your audience identifies with.These are some main steps any teacher can abide by for a good storytelling,but maybe there are other rules i forget to mention.
I totally agree that storytelling requires multimodal strategies and the stories will definetily be more meaningful to the kids if somehow incorporated by them. It´s very common to take kids to storytelling events, but we must think of ways on how to make the experience more meaningful in order to raise the kids´ interest. I live in Brazil and we also have a very sad history of the indians. Kids learn about the indians at school, they celebrate the Indians´ day, but for them it´s just another school activity. I srongly believe that by incorporating experiences(even with tiny experiences), we learn better and become more literate. Maybe by having a handcraft day, where kids could manipulate tools and try to build things the way indians do, trying to light a fire, preparing food. When stories only come from books they are too abstract and it requires more energy make the story meaningfull and bring it closer to the student. It therefore demands more energy from the teachers if the students are uninterested.