Thursday, February 2, 2017

Multimodal Pedagogies- Blogging




Lankshear and Knobel (2013) note that “portable technologies and increased wireless connectivity enable greater variation in what is composed, where and when composing happens, and reasons for composing” (p.25).  Students, and adolescents in particular, are engaged, more than ever with their portable and “smart” devices.  In addition, they have a multitude of means of engagement at their fingertips, as they navigate through their daily endeavors.  They use their portable devices to socialize, communicate, research, do homework, be entertained, and organize their lives.  Information consumption and learning is taking place “on the fly” and via a variety of channels.  Why not incorporate these multimodalities in the classroom?

Lankshear and Knobel (2013) state that bringing multimodal means of literacy “can be generative of meaningful literacy practices and teaching and learning relationships” (p.25).  A high school English teacher from Brooklyn, N.Y. has reconfigured her traditional pedagogical methods to engage and support the needs of her students.  By introducing the use of blogs in the classroom, this teacher was able to not only get the opportunity to know her students better, but to also be a better advisor to them.  As she read and assessed their blog entries, she could then follow up with them digitally and in person, along with being able to relate to them and support them in their literacy development (Lankshear and Knobel, 2013).

Taking into consideration Bill Green’s model of literacy (2013), the operational dimension of blogging allows for reading and writing in a different context, while being able to show competence and comprehension of a particular subject matter.  From the cultural dimension, blogging is a social practice and portrays the bloggers ability to make and grasp meanings appropriately.  Finally, from the critical dimension, blogging allows for an open dialogue that allows students to interact with and renovate literacy, not just achieve it (Green and Beavis, 2013).

I have been keenly interested in the concept of blogging for quite some time.  I read and follow blogs; last semester, I created a blog site and dappled in blogging; this semester, blogging is a weekly venture; it only seems logical in this progression to incorporate it into my classroom.



References

Green, B. & Beavis, C. (2013). Literacy in 3D: An integrated perspective in theory and practice. Australian
           Journal of Language and Literacy
, 36(3).
Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2013). A New Literacies Reader: Educational Perspectives.  New York, NY: