Lauryn's Reflective Journal Digital Technologies

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Week 3 – Multimodality

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Tuesday 22nd January

The use of multimodality in classrooms is growing increasingly. This week’s session was all about multimodal texts. A multimodal text can be described as a text that combines two or more of the semiotic systems. There are 5 semiotic systems which are Linguistic, Visual, Audio, Gestural and Spatial. An example of a multimodal text could be a children’s book with colours or videos with sounds and pictures. They can be extremely useful for presenting. It makes everything more captivating for pupils. It is also normally interactive which allows children to experience different styles of learning and figure out what is best suited for them. I think that multimodal texts are a good way of interacting with pupils and would be useful in a classroom.

“The multimodality of technology is another reason to use it, as it allows teachers to present an idea in a variety of different ways to help pupils understand it.” (Beauchamp, 2012, p. 8). This quote shows how important multimodality is. It allows pupils and teachers a different platform of learning. It takes away from sitting and listening and involves more doing and interactivity which children find a lot more interesting.

Coming into this session I did not know what to expect. I knew a brief description of what a multimodal text was and had done previous reading about it, however, I did not know all the things you could do with a multimodal text. Our task for the day was to use ActivInspire to create a learning tool. To begin, I did not understand how to use ActivInsipire. There were a lot of different widgets and tools to look at, so it took me a while to get a grip of it. Our task was to be completed in pairs, however both me and my pair started out by having a play around with the tool to get used to it. I soon discovered there were loads of extra gadgets to ActivInspire, for example, a working compass and moving clocks.

When the time came, my partner and I decided to keep the same topic as last week and make an ActivInspire based on time. We wanted to make it as interactive as possible by doing different slides with a range of activities. In the end, we create a useful presentation that involved all aspects of the 12- and 24-hour clock. We focussed on the same CfE outcome as last week which was “I can tell the time using 12-hour clocks, realising there is a link with 24-hour notation” MNU 1-10a . We felt it was a good way of involving pupils and it allowed them to get up and use the board. This will improve on their technology skills. However, the class lasted 4 hours and most of it was spent making this presentation. Despite the amount of time spent we did not complete it. I feel it was extremely time consuming to make and when we trialled what we had it took minutes to complete. For this reason, I do not believe I would make use of ActivInspire and would prefer to find a different form to make these types of presentations on.

This week I feel I am starting to understand how to work my blog properly and the different tools and widgets that I can use to make it unique in its own way. I am increasingly becoming more and more interested in digital technologies and the module as a whole. This week the input was a good learning curve for myself as I realised the positives and the major negatives of using ActivInspire. Next time I would consider trying a different multimodal text to explore the use of interactive games and presentation in class.

References 

Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary School: From Pedagogy to Practice. Pearson.

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