Robert Samsel

June 13, 2011

Professional Book Study Reflection: Multimodal Learning in the 21^st Century

Chapter 1

While reading chapter one I focused on things that maybe were new ideas about how to think about literacy and anything that I could possibly implement into my own classroom. The first new learning that I came across was that multimodal literacy which so far just means reading with links to other types of media like video photographs and music. So now, instead of reading from point A to point B there are many ways that a person can link to other information within the text that can enrich what they know about the original text before they even reach the end.

The second paradigm shift that I reached was that the internet takes advantage of social networking sites and people can interact with one another and the text versus just having the information presented in front of then to assimilate into the cerebral cortex independent of how that same text may influence anther person differently although both individuals are reading the same thing.

Finally, since virtually everyone has the same access to the same knowledge at the same time on the internet it is becoming less important for the population to know a set of facts or information on a certain subject and more about how people can create new way to interact with this information (this blog is an example). This makes sense because authentic learning occurs when one has experience with whatever the subject is. For example, one cannot be an author without writing, a chef can only be a chef by cooking and a person can only become experts by doing. In turn, people are looking to be able to interact with others or have more hands on experiences via the internet in order to merge the facts and information with virtual or real experiences with those fact and information making paper only texts insufficient.