E-learning 3: Multimodal conceptual project planning

You’ve guessed it!!….I’ve yet to concretise what I plan to do for my DST. I have some ideas but I guess this e-learning task kind of forces me to sit and place the plan on paper. I didn’t know what story I wanted to tell, but after reading Ohler’s book, several things stood out for me. According to him, stories help us make sense out of the chaos of life and they provide a powerful framework and set of practical processes for resolving issues, educating ourselves and pursuing our goals. Thus I’ve decided to share my story as I try to figure and make sense of my future plans.

Planning it down conceptually wasn’t easy for me. Initially, I even thought of using the storyboarding template suggested by Ohler. In the end, I decided to just go ahead and get it all down on paper first or rather on this blog first and to work on the technical aspects of it later.

General Storyline – to share my experience as a research staff, what is involved in the work, to change general perceptions about research work being dull or boring, to show how different it is from teaching, to convince teachers that it can be a possible avenue or route for a professional development opportunity, how it has affected me professionally

Title – I’ve yet to figure this out but I was thinking along the lines of - a whole new world, a different life, a different world, a new beginning, etc. (Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated here)

Genre – it’s a narrative, part recount (?) of what I’ve been doing in the past, teaching vs. what I’m doing now

Target audience – fellow educators, other teachers in MOE schools

Purpose – to provide a different perspective, to inform and be aware of possibility for a career change or another avenue for attachment as part of professional development

Modalities – Still images, music, written text, movement and transitions. I’m still considering if I will use spoken words to tell the story as I’m not confident of narrating it well *.

As I was trying to piece my ideas together, I used Labov’s (1997) model of natural narrative to look at it at a more macro level.

Abstract : I’ll start off with a title page with written text of the title on it. Followed by a short summarizing statement that this story I’m sharing is about what I’m doing now and how it has impacted my life. I think this should be narrated. (but see * point above)

Orientation: To help my audience identify place and activity, I would be showing still images of where my office is, images of typical research work. The images would serve as icons (Pierce, 1992).

Complicating action and Resolution: Share the information that I used to teach in school before becoming a research staff, still images of school, teacher, teaching here. Compare it with research work, show images of that to create a contrast. The research work is not permanent. I would have to go back to schools, back to teaching. For this part, I’m thinking about showing an image that could index non-permanence, temporariness, I’ve yet to find that! (Suggestions?) I also plan to include and maybe to suggest the urgency in issue of time, maybe a still image of clock ticking as an index.

Evaluation: That the opportunity to engage in research work has widened my horizons, offer me an alternative career path to consider, the friendship I’ve made along the way. Still images to be used here will be an image to portray research work (icon) that fades off to show a still image of the horizon (as index) and another image that could index friendship.

Coda: The ending will be how I’ve grown by going through this experience. It is an opportunity which affected my professional development. I will use a still image that could symbolize this concept. (I’m still searching for this.)

Music – I’m still searching – Help!!!!

I’m not sure if this plan for my DST will work and I really hope to get some feedback and suggestions from all. So do let me know what you think.

Wk8: Researching DL1 - semiotic awareness, authorship & implications

I'm not sure if upon the completion of the DST assignment, I would be able to concur whole-heartedly that engaging in DST would be beneficial for L2 learners. After reading the 2 articles for this week, Nelson and Ware, I am able to see that DST has the potential to tap into areas where traditional writing assignments may not be able to.

Both articles acknowledged that DST may have certain 'thorns' - using Dr T's term in his PPT slides - especially in terms of time (Dr Nelson's took 17 weeks (!!)). But I do agree that engaging in multimodal texts, gives the authors opportunities to express themselves more creatively especially when their language proficiency could be a hindrance in expressive writing in the traditional sense. The integration of other modes to communicate messages would allow the 'writing product' to be more meaningful in delivering its intent or message. Initially I felt that this could also be a reason why we have integrated project work (IPW) in schools, to acknowledge that some students who may not be very good in writing can also showcase their ability in presentation, IT skills, etc. But after reading Ware, I realised that the use of PPT in her case study school is actually quite similar to what is happening in our Singapore classrooms too!

Like what Dr Nelson concluded, we may not be cheerleaders of ICT but we cannot negate the fact that technological presence have "changed the landscape of communication" (Bearne & Kress, 2001). Because of the shift in the roles of image and writing in many domains, it is crucial that we acknowledge this shift as there are implications to teaching and learning. New kinds of identity are also being formed for students and teachers. The access to technology has enabled our students to be 'authors'. Kress (2007) (I'm intrigued by his work, or perhaps it's the beard...lol) posits that a new curriculum and pedagogy that acknowledges and values the semiotic work of students should be in place, so that it will be in tandem with the changes in communication. But how ready are we for that?

My concern is still in the area of assessment. How do we then assess these multimodal works of our students? Are we ready to allow their 'authorial voices' to be heard?

Reflection on e-learning task 2

I was reading other articles from Kress and I realised that I commented in my earlier post that prior knowledge would affect the way we make meanings of the stories. I think I agree with what Kress had to say about the various meanings which can be derived from various readers/viewers.

Kress (2004) stated that:

Signs have the potential of becoming signifiers with meaning and the sign makers original meaning can be changed through interpretation by the listener, reader, viewer of the sign.

In relating to Pierce's work (sign as icon, index, symbol), Kress also noted that 'the reader, speaker, viewer can change the content of the meaning according to the changing local context in which the sign is encountered. Social conventions can never determine meaning in an absolute sense.'

Further, Kress stated that: "The social in social semiotics draws attention to the fact that meanings always relate to specific societies and their cultures, and to the meanings of the members of those cultures."

Therefore, the same story viewed by viewers of different races, cultural background will impact the meanings they make. I'm glad that I could find a reason to explain why I didn't get the meanings of some 'signs' when I viewed some of the stories online. I didn't think my mind was that shallow :(

Wk7: E-learning task 2 What’s so Good about a Good multimodal text?

I do not have access to Adobe Premiere so I could not attempt to do a timeline analysis. I managed to capture still images of parts of the story and use them to help me explain my analysis but my first attempt of posting it resulted in blank boxes where the images were supposed to be. So I decided to remove them.

To start, I did a random select at the vidlit.com site. I was initially brought to a video on a sports-related story. I decided to skip that as I wasn’t interested much in that topic. Another random search brought me to this video story. It attracted me to view it because perhaps I could relate well to the title, being a woman and I was curious to know what place they were talking about though I could pretty much guess from the image what it was referring to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzoBJDFvyKE&feature=player_embedded

I think this video is supposed to be like a ‘sneak preview’ of what the book is about. The book is available for sale online. From the website, there is a link to bring you straight to place an order for the book. The clip was very short. It lasted about 1.22 minutes. The different modalities in this story are speech, writing, image and sound. Flash animation was used for the images presented. Three of the images were repeatedly shown. Writing was mainly type written words. Speech was in the form of a voice-over narration. Sound came from background jazz music and sound effects such as a bell being hit and something like a clock tick-tocking were used.

1) When I saw the first image, I thought the title of the story was “A great place for every woman”. This was the text presented on top of a smaller image. In this first image, I did not get the meaning or the purpose of “5 SPOT” at the top left side.

2) This first image quickly enlarged into the second image which was actually the smaller image on the first one but it was magnified to fit the whole screen this time. The image shows people, men and women, in a bar. Although it looks more like there is only 1 man in the bar and the rest are women. I can’t be sure of that. This image was not a still one. The people in the image were animated and moving about. I think as an icon (Pierce, 1992) it just stands for a bar a social place. But as an index, I thought it highlight the vibrancy of what was happening at that place. The general or social perception of what a ‘bar’ is supposed to be like – a place to hang out, a place to drink and make merry, a place to meet other people. So the purpose could be to also link to the initial title of a ‘great place for woman’ perhaps because women get to meet others and socialize in that place. I think here the images serve to set the orientation of the story, who is involved, where it takes place (Labov, 1997).

The use of the background jazz music was for associative reasons. I think that is the usual kind of music played in a bar. This created the mood for the orientation mentioned above. The jazz music continued on and slowly became softer when image 4 came on and the voice-over narration took over.

3) Image 2 was darkened and a smaller image appeared and was superimposed on it. I relied on my prior knowledge to come to the conclusion that it was a book cover because of the text that accompanied it. I interpreted the text ‘Ex and The single girl by Lani Diane Rich’ as a title of a book and the image next to it as the book cover. As I interpreted it as being a book, I also see the information that would be presented as being someone’s personal opinions/ideas on the topic. Thus, it could be sharing subjective information. I think the introduction of the book cover, title and author seems to set a different orientation for this story. Initially I thought the orientation was about people or women in a bar. This image seems to serve as an abstract to signify the start of the story (Labov, 1997)

The next image focused on the book cover. The narration actually started here. The narrator read out the title and author of the book. I thought the narration was effective to signal or to act as a cue for some readers who wants to read along or those who are slow would be able to know that they need to pick up speed if they want to follow the pace of the story. Otherwise they could just listen to the narration. The sound of the clock tick-tocking was also used as the background. This could be because the information about to be presented in sequence: 1, 2, 3 … like counting up/down. There are also 2 other sound effects used: before the narration of numbers and after narrating the excuse. The sequence is as follows:

· Sound: ‘Ting!’ This sound is usually used to signal the start of a new round in a wrestling match.

· Narration: 1, It’s not you. It’s me.

· Sound: ‘Thed!’ This sound is usually used in a game show when you have given a wrong answer.

I think the use of those sound effects is significant. I interpreted them as signals.

4) I also noticed here that the first image of the bar is minimized and placed at the top left corner. I’m not sure what the meaning or the purpose was but this was repeated throughout the whole story.

5) The next image shows a cover of another book. I could tell this as I can see the sides of a book. I think it is also probably trying to tell us that it is a rather thick book. I interpreted this as a dictionary – very thick with meanings of lots of words also partly because of the text on the cover of the book. What was interesting was this text ‘English to English’. I take it to mean that the dictionary provides meanings of words in English into English that could be easier to understand.

6) There was an animation effect that followed the next image. The book was actually flipped open to reveal a page – the next image of text. Unfortunately, here I do not know the significance of why the text was presented in that form of ‘word art’. As the text suggests ‘Top 5’, I anticipated that I would be presented with 5 different images of text.

7) I did not expect to see just the number ‘1’ to take up a whole page of image. I was expecting ‘1’ to be accompanied with text. I think the purpose of this was to create greater impact. Perhaps the text used earlier ‘excuses’ had other social connotations to it, like it is not really a valid or acceptable reason by societal standards. Thus to use large numbers was perhaps to signify the effects they have on the writer/creator. The use of numbers also is aligned to what is being shared ‘top 5 excuses’. So I think this was a clever use of numbers to do like a counting down/counting up effect.

8) Again, the animation of a page being flipped over was used and this effect was used throughout the story as well. The next page reveals a text within inverted commas, using knowledge of language this would mean someone’s speech.

9) The next image shows the text - Definition: “it’s you.” Here we know that our interpretation of the book being a dictionary is confirmed by the word ‘definition’. The dictionary would provide readers with a definition of what the words mean. Again, the meaning of the words is shown within inverted commas, it represents someone’s speech.

The story continues to reveal the other 4 excuses. The same sequence was applied to present this information. First the ‘number’, the text within inverted commas of the ‘excuse’ and followed by the text showing the ‘definition’ within inverted commas, too. I think this effect basically gives a lasting impression on the story reader/viewer. This consistency in format of presentation will also help to reinforce the message being communicated. (If you want to know what the other top 4 excuses are, go check out the attached link J)

10) After the 5 excuses have been presented, the book was actually closed. This was presented through the animation effect of the book being closed. The closed book gradually decreased in size to show the image of the cover of the book again. I think this is important as it indicates the end of the ‘book reading’ or the story telling.

11) Remember the image of the bar at the top left side of all images shown? This quickly expands itself out and took the size of the whole page. It is then darkened and a repeat of the image shown earlier was presented again. Then as for the ending, we are presented with the image of the bar with animated people in the bar with the background music of some jazz piece being played on a saxophone.

See if you catch this. I managed to capture in slow motion the image of a book cover of another story book by another author. It will zoom past very quickly. If you were to watch the video you may not have realised that image was somehow embedded into the transition. I don’t quite understand why this was done. I thought maybe it was an error in the program or could it be a marketing stunt or something?

The story ended with the last image fading into a blank white screen. I thought this created a dramatic impact. I interpreted the blank white page as an opportunity for the reader/viewer to now form their own opinions, conclusions or make a decision if the book is worth buying or not. But the coda for the story for me would be when the last image was shown, the book cover with title and author. This image has been repeatedly shown a few times throughout the story but acting as a coda it is appropriate as it helps to signal that the story has ended and brings us, the reader/viewer back to the point at which we entered the story.

The digital story maybe quite short but I felt that it was effective in serving its purpose. There wasn’t variety in images shown but the content of information shared was funny and it is easy for anyone to relate to it and see the funny side of it. I think the purpose of this story is mainly to entertain and provide a light-hearted introduction of what the book would be like.

There wasn’t much information about the interests and purposes of the authors. I checked the credits for the production of the video. The story consisted of original artwork by Emily Alexander and the score and sound design was orginal creations by Paca Thomas. I followed a link to check the book information and to find out more about the author, Lani Diane Rich. She has written a series of romantic comedy books. So I think this story sets out to get you to buy the book by giving you a brief yet entertaining review of it.

From this exercise, I also realised that to be able to understand and review a story, contextual knowledge plays a part too. As a reader/viewer, I also tend to select stories of topics which interest me and which I could easily relate to. So I’m now wondering how and what else can we do to ensure that our story reaches its targeted audience. Ideas anyone?

Wk 6: Creating digital info 1

Yes, I agree that we cannot ignore cultural and linguistic diversities in the classrooms or treat them as incidental to the core business of education. Having read Tan & McWilliam’s case study of the 2 Australian schools, I do wonder how much different is that from the real situation in Singapore schools? I think MOE and schools have the commitment – time, effort and pedagogical skills - to implement this ‘new’ framework but how much of a fundamental cultural shift in traditional school settings have we made? I think our IT masterplan caters to the educational objectives as spelled out in Tan & McWilliam’s paper too but somehow I can relate very closely to the first school where technology is put in place more to supplement and support learning. I think our Singapore culture has yet to ‘let go’ of its high emphasis and value on academic performance and achievement. How then can teachers and students fully use digital technologies in the school context? If I have to make a choice, like the Australian students who are fully aware of what CAN contribute to their life success, I too would make the same choice they did!! What about you?

Wk 5: Evaluating digital information

The e-learning task has given me an opportunity to read and look at other criterias for evaluating digital resources, namely Internet websites. The framework in Susser & Robb was so detailed that I thought it was quite hard to look at so many modules at one time to do the evaluation. As for the criterias spelled out in Towndrow, i remember we had a chance to practise using it during the previous lesson. So i thought of using the one suggested by MOE's Edumall site. i realised that most of these criterias are quite similar and there are overlaps here and there. What i also found out was that going through the websites, you need to have patience to really go through a few links to know and learn more about the particular site. Of course what was most important was not forgetting what we have learned in earlier lessons, to be aware and more careful of sources and types of information available on the net :)

Wk 4: DN vs DI

From our readings and presentation, I think the implication is that DI teachers are to acknowledge the difference in capabilities of their DN students and to tap on that. It is also important that we as teachers see the DNs as unique and that they come with different technological capabilities. Also like what Dr Towndrow said it's not just a matter of using new technology with the old mindset!!!

I think the DN-DI divide is just to create an awareness and the metaphor is to make a distinction between those with ICT skills and those without but as Lyna put it to us during the presentation, it is not a clear cut line as there are still some so-called DN students who display non-ICT skills.

Recently, Prensky (2009) proposed the concept of 'digital wisdom'. According to Prensky, this wisdom comes from and in the use of technology. It is not confined to certain generations and he quoted President Obama as an example of a DI who has digital wisdom. (I guess this came about with his use of IT in his campaign and all.)

So the next question would be how to link or bridge this divide so that the DIs could move along this learning continuum to get to where the DNs are and perhaps achieve digital wisdom along the way........What say the rest of my fellow DIs out there?