Within this week’s class of Digital Technologies we focused on multimodality, through this I gained a great deal of knowledge about the importance of multimodal presentations. We also worked in pairs to complete an ActivInspire flipchart, the opportunity beforehand of seeing some examples and watching tutorials on how to work it was very beneficial as this was the first time that I had used it.
Although I was first introduced to multimodality in the Literacy module in semester 1, I was glad we got to reiterate our knowledge during the lesson today as I feel as though it is a very important part of teaching. This is backed up by (Beauchamp, 2012, p100) when he states “The ability of ICT to present ideas in a variety of ways can help to structure new experiences but only if you as the teacher have sufficient understanding on the area yourself.” Due to this, I am very pleased that my understanding surrounding multimodality has increased significantly. Multimodal texts include two or more semiotic systems, which include; Linguistic, Visual, Audio, Gestural and Spatial. As a student teacher I see the true importance of multimodal presentations, as they will captivate, engage and motivate children, this ensuring lessons stay memorable. This is something that I am very passionate about, as in future years when teaching I always want the children to remember the lessons that I have carried out, this letting me know that they have got the most out of what I have taught them.
Myself and my partner created an ActivInspire flipchart based around Literacy, which covered the Curriculum for Excellence outcome ‘Throughout the writing process, I can check that my writing makes sense”- LIT 1-23a. I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of this flipchart being child led if it was to be carried out, this meaning the children would learn by doing (Prandstatter, 2014). Our flipchart had a jungle theme and the animals included could be dragged into the middle of the screen and have an adjective wrote about them. After this, the last two pages contained lines where all the children would come up individually and write a sentence about the animals and setting, along with including the adjectives that they had wrote. All the sentences would have to flow to make one story, this meaning children would have to thoroughly check their writing to make sure that what they were saying fitted in well with what others had wrote – this matched with the outcome that we had used perfectly. From creating an ActivInspire flipchart I am now able to identify how much learners benefits from multimodal presentations.
Therefore, I am now aware how important multimodality is within education, and how it can fit into any area within the Curriculum. I am excited for future placements and years of being a teacher to be able to prepare lessons on resources such as ActivInspire as I feel as though it will captivate all learners through the pictures, sounds, text etc that can be used on it. From my last placement I identified how much children like to be in control of their learning through seeing their excitement of writing on the smartboard or the whiteboard. From this I am going to ensure, where appropriate, that a lot of my lessons are child led.
References:
Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary School: From Pedagogy to Practice. Pearson.
Prandstatter, J. (2014) Interactive Displays in Early Years Classes. [Online] Available: http://connectlearningtoday.com/interactive-displays-early-years-classes/ [Accessed 24 January 2017]
