background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(31, 47, 76);">A background note: these materials focus much of the time on K-12 schools, but the issues about text, meaning, and multimodality are universal. Please adapt these ideas to whatever your level of learning or area of interest.

Course Materials

On the new CGScholar: Multiliteracies 2: Meaning in Different Forms. Start with the pinned post at the top of the feed. Please join this community so you can stay connected as the discussion unfolds.
The Literacies book is not available as an e-book in the library, but here is our unco rrected author proof .
The Literacies in the Age of AI book hasn't been published yet, but there is nothing in it we haven't covered in the linked articles.

Weekly Topics

Week 1

Chapter 8 of Literacies (PDF linked above)
Chapter 8 videos start here. Use the arrows to work through these.
Read wider: Saussure, Kress, Barthes, Fairclough, Bakhtin, Froebel. Start here and follow the arrows. And of course, dig deeper and range even wider!
AI implications: read Literacy in the time of Artificial Intelligence and more videos!

For discussion in CyberScholar: How do you view the issue of multimodality, in theory and/or practice? What does it mean for this moment of digital media and artificial intelligence?

Week 2

Chapter 9 of Literacies (PDF linked above)
Chapter 9 related videos start here.
Read wider: Chall, Schoenfeld and Pearson; Stahl, Anderson, Meyer. Start here and follow the arrows.
Why we opted for multiliteracies: see our 2025 update in the Harvard Educational Review.

For discussion in CyberScholar: What is reading?

Week 3

Chapter 10 of Literacies (PDF linked above)
Chapter 10 related videos start here.
Read wider: Chomsky, Halliday and more. Start here and follow the arrows.

For discussion in CyberScholar: What differences to the language paradigms make?

Week 4

Chapters 11-13 of Literacies (PDF linked above)
Chapter 11-13 related videos start here, and here, and here.
Read wider: Kress and Van Leeuwen, Arnheim, Mitchell, McGinn, Sartre and much more. Start here, and here, and here, and follow the arrows.
AI reflections: Our recent thoughts Generative AI as a multimodal meaning machine.

For discussion in CyberScholar: Why have we privileged language? Are we privileging it less in the era of digital media? Or more in the era of AI?

Week 5

Chapter 14 of Literacies (PDF linked above)
Chapter 14 related videos start here.
Read wider: Piaget, Deacon, Vygotsky, and more. Start here and follow the arrows.

For discussion in CyberScholar: How closely is thinking tied to reading, writing, and our other capacities to represent meaning?

Week 6

Chapter 15 of Literacies (PDF linked above)
Chapter 15 related videos start here.
Read wider: Bernstein, Bereiter, Cummins and more. Start here and follow the arrows.
Here is some of our recent thinking on the subject of language learning and AI, and translanguaging.

For discussion in CyberScholar: What can diversity mean in the context of language learning and multimodal meaning?

Week 7

Chapter 16 of Literacies (PDF linked above)
Chapter 16 related videos start here.
Read wider: start here and follow the arrows.

For discussion in CyberScholar: Reverse engineer the assessment paradigms—what are the implications?

Week 8

Getting controversial! Not everyone agrees, then we argue back (paper now in review).

For discussion in CyberScholar: Should such things be political? Or must they be?

Any questions? Ask below, and please respond if you see unanswered questions for which you know the answer.

EPOL 582 New Media and Literacies