I love this week, this class.
A few years ago, when I began visual note-taking and exercising compositional agency in my daily life, it felt like every part of my brain struck alight, like a match. I was on fire. Suddenly, my words had places to go, my hands had things to do, my scribbles shaped themselves from half-hazard and scratchy and in-the-way to extensions of my thinking and my active process of meaning-making. I was free from being forced to divorce these two things that felt intrinsically linked: my brain's way of processing imagery alongside alphabetic information.
When I took Currins547 for the first time, I remember reading about mutimodality (as more than just project-based learning) for the first time, and wondering out loud to the rest of the undergrads, dumbfounded, 'Wait... that's allowed?' This resulted in one of my first polished zines as a project for class-- a call-to-action encouraging my audience (peers) to engage in scribbling in their daily lives, during classes, and notes (attached here-- when I figure out how to upload it). Since then, I have developed my digital composition skills and worked with high school students in the ELA classroom to facilitate diverse compositional skills through, but not limited to, zines. With my students, I have cocreated murals, PSA's, book trailers, scripts, and websites. Each offered an opportunity to intrigue another young reader or writer with a new form of engagement.
As I (re)read Comics, Collage, and Crayons by Jessi Thomson, I remember that my original reaction (that's allowed?) was elicited from the immediate, almost dizzying, drop of restrictions and limitations I had been previously held to. I was given immediate, unending agency over how I chose to represent and compose information. In an academic context, value was added to the pathways that my brain already utilized daily, which have since turned into roads or super-highways. I am back at grad school to explore these very ideas, and to advance my understanding of how to utilize writing as a creative, generative, and recursive process of meaning-making that is unstandardizable and idiosyncratic. To explore how facets of student identity can be emboldened and uncovered through self as composition and self and composition. And to emphasize that these neurological pathways can only be developed through strong relationships of allyship and empowerment.
Students read the room every time they walk in it, they read the look on my face when they're acting reckless, and they can absolutely read visual and graphic imagery. We each write every day in capacities that extend far beyond alphabetical literacies, often breaking rules and redefining standards to do so. By engaging with the course material through multiple means of engagement, we honor students' ways of knowing and develop the capacity for rigorous engagement through many styles, modalities, and purposes of writing.
Hi Greta! I agree that we are lucky to have this class and that both of us were able to experience it as preservice teachers to bring the power of multimodal composing into our future classrooms. I have also had some realizations upon this week's readings; however, unlike you, who did not experience the joys of multimodal composition until graduating from K-12 schooling, I have realized that one of my teachers was well versed in using multimodal literacies. In high school, I was lucky enough to have the same Spanish teacher for my junior and senior year as I reached the higher levels of studying the language, and Profe Geboy-Helfenstein was a master of incorporating many modes of expression into our learning. I remember several big projects from those classes that were multimodal, including creating personal scrapbooks in Spanish and scripting and recording our own telenovelas.
ReplyDeleteI also questioned if these different forms of multimodal compositions were allowed because I never really was able to be this creative in any of the classes I've ever taken. With that being said, I absolutely love everything about it! It allows someone like me, (who doesn't like to raise their hand in class), to be able to feel free and to put my own personality and interests in these different forms of composition, such as these blog posts themselves. I think multimodal compositions are great ways for every student to get involved. Even the quiet kids, like me, who love to participate with activities and everything in class, but hate when teachers mark them down a grade just because they don't raise their hands that often.
ReplyDeleteHey Greta,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog post and the way you discuss communication, creativity, and multimodality. One thing that stood out to me was how you show that communication today often goes beyond just written words. In many digital spaces, people combine visuals, layout, and text to make their message clearer and more engaging. This connects to the concept of multimodality, which refers to using multiple forms of communication such as images, sound, spatial design, and written language to create meaning. Your post made me think about how these different modes allow creators to design messages more intentionally for their audience. For example, visuals or design choices can emphasize certain ideas or emotions that might be harder to convey with text alone. Multimodal communication can also make messages more accessible and engaging for different types of learners or audiences. I also liked how your post highlights the creative side of communication. It shows that when people use different modes together, they are not just sharing information but actively shaping how others experience their message. Your blog really helped me think more about how creativity and communication work together in digital environments.
Hello Greta! I looooooove a good "that's allowed'?! moment. The rush of relief that flows over me when I feel that is so freeing. When working on really complex engineering or programming problems, sometimes it is so much easier to explain my thought process to myself through drawings or flow charts mostly coming out as scribbled messes but the process isn't necessarily what is on the paper, rather how the act of sketching it helps my brain unravel the problem and find a solution. Learning that this worked was one of those moments for me. Not everything that is created as part of the process of creating has to make sense to anyone else if it eases some of the internal load. Once I've been able to work through the problem, I can create documentation that is able to be shared with others that makes more sense. I teach this strategy to my students and I can sense the same kind of relief in them when they have the go ahead to get messy. I think multimodal learning is a great way to unload a lot of that pressure many of our students feel and allow them to utilize their creativity to demonstrate their learning in new and engaging ways.
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