The picture is starting to take shape

Reading the two articles assigned for this week, I am beginning to see digital literacy and its relevance taking shape in my mind. I recall having so many questions some weeks back and I am glad that I am starting to find answers to those questions.

With the use of actual examples in both articles, the concepts, such as how resemiotization is played out in the example of parents moving from iconic to symbolic significance, become easy to understand. Indeed, with the aid of both images and text, the concepts come across clearer than if it had been explained in words alone.

I also noticed that some of the earlier discussions we had in class are presented in the readings this week. Some of which are as follow;

Paige Ware's article
- she said, "...individuals must be able to do much more than decode and encode language..." (p.39) Decode and encode are what I had learnt in my Uni days and it is also what we still teach! It's time to change.

- we did an article about powerpoint at the beginning of this course but the drawback presented here is slightly different and it is definitely something that I see in my students' work. They are doing mere cut and paste, sometimes to the extent that there is a lack of good organisation of thoughts between slides. In Ware's words, this is "information-retrieval learning." I recall sharing this observation in my students previously too.

-on pg 38, she said that "..not all youth participate in the types of literacy-rich, out-of school digital worlds documented in current research, and they therefore have not yet developed a rich base of experience with digital literacy." Some of my classmates raised this point several times in the past weeks.

- on pg 42, she said, "Values in these in-class uses of multimedia presentations were completion, correctness, and coherence. For a typical assessment rubric,..." and on pg 47, "...there is a great deal of pressure to move students through the curriculum swiftly enough to leave time to practice for high-stakes exam." This is about assessment and the society's perception which were raised by Joshua and team during their presentation

Paige Ware's article confirmed the concerns and reservations that I have about ICT as I have experienced it myself in my teaching. At the same time, it sheds lights on how these challenges may be overcome(Discussion and conclusion in the article). "Multimedia exploration does not have to be mutually exclusive with activities that draw explicit attention to linguistics aspects of texts." (p. 49)

Dr Nelson's article
It was a good thing that we discussed some of the terms and concepts raised in this article before the break. Without it, words like heterogeneity, hybridity, transformation, transduction, synaesthesia, and epistomological commitments would have been difficult for me to understand.

- the first line in the introduction reminds me of the outdated encode-decode concept

- on pg 57, Dr Nelson said, "...we do speak and write in re-combinations of the words and ideas of others." This reminds me of Leo Burnett, an advertiser who started his advertising agency in the 60s and whose agency is now one of the largest in the world, said, "The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships." Perhaps this new relationship in today's context lies in multimodality.

- on the same pg, Dr Nelson shared "...the growing salience of non-linguistic forms of communication...is perhaps best exemplified by the ubiquity of the Internet..." This same point was raised when we discussed the New London Group article

- on pg 59, Dr Nelson shared that synaesthesia "refers to a process of emergence, where meanings presented in two or more co-present semiotic modes, e.g. visual/pictorial and oral/linguistics, combine in such as way that new forms of meaning may obtain, in the (loosely) gestalt sense of a whole that is irreducible to and represents more than the sum of its parts." I recall this was pointed out to us when Su and team showed a collage that had a sun and accompanying text

- through the example of Emma and Bonnie, I can now see how transduction helped authors to make certain realisations and understanding, and how students may benefit through the use of ICT in their learning (pg 66 and 67). I also see the possible benefits of "noticeability factor." I am now much more convinced that "...our students and ourselves, need the highest level of understanding of the semiotic workings and affordances of language, as well as of other modes, in order to enact and facilitate powerful personal expression."(p 72)

However, I wonder if I could be as conscious and intentional in creating my own digital story. Can I "recombine these communication resources so as to bend them to her/his expressive will" as Dr Nelson puts it on pg 72?

Was it Ohler who shared that we as educators need to support and facilitate this learning through the use of ICT? Now that I am convinced of this need, my next question is how do I play this role within the limitations that have been raised?