New Media, New Rules

I would like to start off this post by saying that I love Ken Robinson.  His TED Talk is my favorite of all time.  Of. All. Time. Here’s a link: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

            If you took the time to actually watch this twenty-minute video or if you’ve seen it already, you’re likely to infer that I’m all about creative lesson plans.  I have always believed in using technology in the classroom, but I’ve never experienced a teacher who’s done it correctly.  Most teachers were more like Carol from Bailey’s article when she was first starting out with a multimodal curriculum.  Teachers would use a multimodal curriculum as an addendum to a traditional curriculum.  These teachers were always easily my favorites, but if I had a teacher who implemented an entirely multimodal curriculum, I don’t think I would be able to contain my enthusiasm about school.  These articles have therefore already changed my view on multimodal education.  I always thought that what my teachers were doing was the beginning and the end of using technology in the classroom, but if I can become an effective enough educator to use a multimodal model at all times, I’ll not only be adding to a basic curriculum, but changing it into a new, better (in my opinion) media one.

            As mentioned in the video on Henry Jenkins’s post and in Bailey’s post, “students engage in far more sophisticated literacy practices outside of schools than inside”.  I think this is one of the most important statements from the articles.  Just because students don’t want to learn in school doesn’t mean they don’t want to learn in other areas of life.  In fact, they are learning in other areas.  That’s why it’s our job as teachers to make learning interesting for these modern-day readers.

            In the same stream, it is touched upon in the Jenkins interview that in today’s world, writers of media are expected to be not renaissance men, but experts in one or a few areas with everyone contributing to a common, shared knowledge.  This basis is supported in the Herrington and Moran piece when they talk about using blogs as an alternate form of writing.  This method seems a sustainable way to modify a classic essay, as it allows for interaction with others.  If we are going to teach a multimodal curriculum as a social curriculum, we must allow students to interact with varying viewpoints and opinions.  If each student believes in the power of their knowledge, they will gain confidence in their knowledge. 

            One issue that I grappled most with was the connection that students have to text.  We’ve talked about the Common Core standards limiting the amount of self to text reflection.  Although I understand that this does not mean the end of material students can connect to, I think it’s important to analyze this standard within the confines of a multimodal curriculum.  It can’t be all about an individual student’s connections to a certain song and why that is important to them, they must be able to draw important criticisms from the music, as stated in Bailey.  Obviously, higher forms of learning need that support from the text, but how do different texts affect the strength of the evidence? How do I get students to draw support from movies, television shows, and magazines when I’ve never had this experience myself and how do students keep their connections with such texts out of the conversation?