Sara Williams
Multimodal Learning for the 21st Century
Pages 1-29 (Chapter 1)

Our book study group just jumped in with both feet - agreeing to read the first chapter of the book and participate in a "Last Word" discussion on the content. As a reader, I typically take some time to situate myself with a text before delving in, but it was refreshing to have a group that just went with it!

Being a book nerd, I first skimmed the book to familiarize myself with how it is organized. This text seems intuitive - each chapter begins with a classroom vignette to allow the reader to make connections and consider how some of the topics addressed reveal themselves in our lives and in our classrooms. There will undoubtedly be many "tier III" words used in this text, as it deals with content-specific topics. A helpful feature of the text is the "terminology" box found when a concept is introduced. I found myself glancing over the quick definition before beginning the section where the concept was discussed at length. Also included for each concept is the requisite "recommended reading" list so I know where to go to get more information. Finally, there are examples of classroom practices using the multimodal resources outlined in each chapter - a must for busy educators who want to see what the theory looks like in practice.

The author argues that "books, novels, magazines and newspapers - artifacts of past generations" are largely becoming obsolete because of online media. This is a key point our group struggled with. We all agreed that it is critical that we embrace and utilize these new technologies, as they are ubiquitous. However, until our high-stakes end products (CSAP, ACT, etc.) look like these online mediums, we are still responsible for teaching the "old way" of doing things through print. When considering the print v. online debate, it's important to remember that some skills are transferable. For example, it is relatively easy to pick up a book and determine whether or not it was published by a reputable source. Knowing what to look for to determine a source's validity and credibility is essentially the same between print and online mediums, you just need to look in different places. Accepting one doesn't mean rejecting the other.

Another issue we discussed was the tendency for multimedia products to be "all sizzle, no steak." Many students focus so much on what a finished product looks like that they don't have time or energy to revise what it is actually communicating. While I agree with the author when he asserts that "attractive things work better - their attractiveness produces positive emotions, causing mental processes to be more creative, more tolerant of minor difficulties," I still demand that what I'm looking at also have some depth. Sometimes we're blown away by the bells and whistles because we're unfamiliar with the technology. By learning the tech ourselves, we can also learn to be less dazzled by the special effects and smooth usage and get to the heart of the student learning demonstrated.

Another interesting discussion point that came about in our group stemmed from the quote, "In the new forms of reading, knowledge is not necessarily set out in such an ordered, sequential manner, but is frequently shaped by the reader in the act of determining/constructing/imposing such order by the new reader." We welcomed this change, as this non-linear meaning-making seemed to allow for richer and more thorough understandings of a concept. We did agree that this more fluid way of thinking and learning is inherent in our students way of processing knowledge, less so with our own. We must strive to be more flexible with ways of making meaning and not expect all of our students to arrive at an endpoint in the same way. Who cares HOW they learn it, as long as they do?

Finally, the author's discussion of the use of visuals in multimodal texts is thought-provoking. Bean argues that "the the screen is now the dominant site of texts; it is the site which shapes the imagination of the current generation around communication. The screen is the site of the visual, of the image. This does not mean that writing cannot appear on the screen, but when it does, it will be appearing there SUBORDINATED to the logic of the visual." This is antithetical to what I've always thought or believed, that visuals are there to support the text, rather than the opposite. I wonder where this will end - will we be a civilization where the sign is everything and words are no longer necessary? Are these visuals just fancier cave drawings? It seems like a step back in some ways...wonder if prominent brows and knuckle-dragging are just a few thousand years away as well.