I was unfortunately unable to attend the lesson on multimodality this week due to being unwell but have since read up on the subject and looked over notes that my peer made during class.
Multimodal presentations are great ways for teachers to present an idea in many different forms to help pupils grasp the concept and engage in the topic (Beauchamp, 2012, p.8). The Curriculum for Excellence believe that today literacy and the English language are developed more through multimodal texts, digital communication, social networking and other forms of communication that children encounter (Curriculum for Excellence – Literacy and English Principles and Practice paper). A multimodal text is combined with two or more semiotic systems which are:
- Linguistic
- Visual
- Audio
- Gestural
- Spatial
Children are more engaged in learning when they understand exactly what it is they are being taught. The ability that ICT has in allowing children to understand something is phenomenal, of course, as long as their teacher has a strong understanding (Beauchamp, 2012, p.100). Such use of ICT through multimodal presentations bring captivation, motivation, interactivity, personalisation, dynamics, memorisation and engagement.
“ActiveInspire” is a tool that I became familiar with during my time on placement in November. The tool helps teacher’s make lessons more fun by allowing interaction and for children to use their imagination on interactive whiteboards. During placement, my class were set the task of creating a scary story and each group used their imagination to come up with a scene, eventually joining everyone’s ideas together as a whole class.
I loved using “ActiveInspire” during placement and feel confident working with multimodal to engage children’s learning and understanding.
References
Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary School: From Pedagogy to Practice. Pearson.
Education Scotland https://education.gov.scot
