Multimodal Learning Through Media: What the Research Says

By Metiri Group – Commissioned by Cisco

Here is where I demonstrate how smart I am or how will my higher order thinking skills process complex information. Yeah, right. What I understand is that the authors began their research by questioning the following assertions:

We remember…

10% of what we read

20% of what we hear

30% of what we see

50% of what we see and hear

70% of what we say

90% of what we say and do

Research into the origins of these assertions has shown that not only are they based upon a misinterpretation of original theory, they also are patently untrue. In other words it is a myth that we remember 90% of what we do.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy and our brains were that simple. The authors go on to describe in more detail how the brain works, how the different aspects of memory function together and how multimedia can improve learning outcomes. I will quote the following to contextualize my response to this reading:

In general, multimodal learning has been shown to be more effective than traditional, unimodal earning. Adding visuals to verbal (text and/or auditory) learning can result in significant gains in basic and higher-order learning.

Many authors speculate that unless students have been trained to interpret visuals, the impact of multimedia will be minimal.

These assertions bear directly upon the rationale for the ENGL 7741 course. The days of being a written text-based English language arts teacher are pedagogically over. Essentially, teachers who ignore the advances in technology and the opportunities they present for learning and demonstrating learning are doing a disservice to their students. Not only are our students “wired” to plug into the read/write web better than older generations, but older generations are too. Perhaps this explains the decline in reading across all demographics. As a new teacher, I have to think about these different modalities of learning both for my students and for myself. The reason why we have been creating wikis and blogs and examining pictures and videos and websites and logos and sculptures is really to help us access the visual cortex, learning to recognize that written text is not the only medium through which ideas are communicated. I don’t think this article is refuting the received value of written text. I think that it is through language that we can articulate ideas no matter how they are represented. It is through language that we are able to contextualize new ideas. Language is the primary referent for ideas. Otherwise a visual like a photograph would be no more than a collection of colors and shapes that we couldn’t talk about. But I understand that the value for student learning of multimedia is something to be examined, and is something that can be added to, through classroom activities, and by extension through digital media and literacy. Clearly, being able to talk about visuals is better than talking about ideas that could be represented by visuals alone. Point taken.

Space to Imagine: Digital Storytelling

Lisa C. Miller

It’s kind of odd, but my reading for this course is now crashing into the assignments and projects I am rushing to finish before the beginning of the next week. We are having to create a digital “movie” as part of the class and I have just now read Miller’s description of the process of creating digital movies for storytelling in the classroom. Of course, I already understood the context of this activity, the making of a movie for my ENGL 7741 class. I recognize that the instructor is trying to lure some of us out of our written text focused minds into the digital realm where so many of our students dwell. My own children have grown up with things like YouTube, so the value of digital film is perhaps more taken for granted by them than by me.

Miller’s trials and tribulations with technology make  her own story seem a little dated. I can’t imagine anything but my own personal limitations preventing me from completing my own assignment, paltry as it is, and certainly not any limitations of either the technology available to me. The rationale for utilizing creative multimedia in the classroom is completely convincing. I understand, at an intellectual level, that this is something of value which could create opportunities for planning from lesson to lesson, building an artifact that could exist in an online portfolio of work from which a teacher could both assess product, process, performance, and improvement over time. Immensely valuable stuff. And based on my experience in the ENGL 7735, Teaching Writing class, I can make a strong connection between the kind of writing/storytelling that our instructor has engaged us in the ideas advanced by Miller, and I can now acknowledge the utility of integrating the methods of teaching writing ;earned in that class and the methods of producing a text/product to be shared learned in this class. Finally, at the end of the semester, ideas are kind of flowing together and making sense and I am beginning to realize that the ideas I hold about writing are not incompatible with the ideas that have been posited in ENGL 7741.

Indeed, I recall that one of my students last semester presented one of her projects in digital format, which at the time was quite astonishing to me. There is however, one reservation that I continue to hold about the integration of digital media and the teaching of English language arts, and it speaks more about me than it does about the technology. I am extremely averse to uploading anything online. I am very against putting myself out there in the read/write web. I hate the idea of sharing like that. I am an immensely private person, even posting this log on my blog is a “painful” experience. I don’t want to share these “ramblings.” If I am to put something out there it needs to be done with far more care and deliberation than the process or time has allowed for this course. My first instinct for my own digital film, once it has been graded, is to go online and remove it. Scrub it out of existence. I don’t want it out there. I hate the idea of it being viewed by anyone other than my instructor. At the same time, I am trying to get some of my own writing published in the traditional manner. It might seem like a contradiction but it comes down to my own values. I still value the written word above all other forms of expression. But I recognize that these are my values, and that they are unlikely to be the values of my students. And that is the rationale behind this course, and why our instructor is pressing us to open our minds and consider the unthinkable: joining the kids in the virtual world.

Transforming the Group Paper with Collaborative Online Writing

Peter Kittle and Troy Hicks

Kittle and Hicks take a high-brow look at how collaborative online writing can bring new dimensions to group writing.  They raise questions about roles and authorship in collaboration which have sent me scurrying to my own group’s wiki, and has me reappraising some of the group work we have done in class.

We recently had to discourse upon a photograph and present our “findings” on a Google Doc: I recall that in class, the practicality and immediacy of collaboration resulted in one person typing and their partner “assisting” by suggesting further lines or ideas. The result, I recall well, was a text that strongly characterized the voice of only one individual. Thus David  and I produced a text that a familiar reader would have described as “my writing” not David’s, and the partnership next to us produced a text that had Harry written all over it. Obviously, working with a partner beside you is not true online collaboration. Different texts with different voices might be more likely to be produced when partners are working independently on the same text, in which the text itself becomes the voice of collaboration.

This, indeed, was the case with our wiki collaborative projects, first the video lesson and now, most recently, with our ongoing third assignment in which we are analyzing, describing and presenting findings related to a building on campus. As each of us revisits the pages to see how the assignment is progressing, we each edit or revise the extant text and comment and question using the discussion board. The report steadily grows and becomes a blend of the voices of the three collaborators. But there is a problem with this for an instructor.

When it becomes time to review the collective work, say on a wiki, it is not readily apparent that all participants created the work equally. It is easy for one member of the group to ride on the coattails of the other contributors and receive equal credit where credit is not due. The only way to assess the individual contributions is to view the history page, itself a challenging task. If a text has undergone a great deal of editing, the question that presents itself is how to place value on individual contributions. Do we tally the number of edits per individual? Do we assess the kind of contribution made in a particular edit in relation to other kinds of edits made by others? Or other kinds of contributions altogether, such as research? Or do we assume total group responsibility and ignore the history altogether? Complaints of partners not pulling their own weight have long been a part of group projects.

It’s an interesting ethical question and one that is not easy to answer. To be fair to all group participants requires the instructor to become far more involved in the process of text creation than is often feasible, but to focus purely on product can introduce inequities that might build resentments. Authorship indeed becomes a difficult question to posit.  It is a question that I will continue to consider as we move forward with our own group project.

The Facebook Generation: Homework as Social Networking

The Facebook Generation: Homework as Social Networking

Stacy M. Kitsis

I am starting to think a little differently. It’s taken the whole semester, but using the wiki for this third group assignment and then reading this article by Kitsis has started putting some clear context for using the read/write web in place for me. My problem with Richardson is that he is so exuberant and keeps throwing paint around, splashing up all the walls in the new color that I found him and his ideas off-putting, even a little threatening. Then reading the push-back text, The Dumbest Generation, just started putting the whole read/write web idea back into its box for me.

Now, however, with her thoughtful, carefully articulated report of how she used email and blogs (and intends to use wikis) to shift responsibility for homework discussion back to the students, I am beginning to reconsider. I was impressed by how her students felt excited to be in control of the learning process, as collaborators, with their peers, and how the role of teacher shifted to that of facilitator, the technology started to seem less of a barrier to learning and more of a tool. Obviously, and Kitsis noted this, access to technology is paramount, and students have to be able to work on homework in their own time—class time is too precious to let laggards make up posts in class—and opportunities to make posts would have to be provided for students who don’t have access to computers or the internet at home (in my school, definitely).

Something that Kitsis said in her article: “I bathe in pleasure and relief: When meaningful feedback is no longer my sole domain, the whole class shares interpretive authority,” really struck me as a good result for the teacher in this. As a new teacher I am worried about so many things, procedural, pedagogical, etc., that this course has seemed a little overwhelming in its import. Editing Wikipedia, setting up blogs (when I don’t feel we have had the time to blog or even that I have anything I would want to blog about) has sometimes seemed a little irrelevant to my immediate concerns. It hasn’t helped having to rush through so much of the course. Taking the time to slow down and think and consider what someone like Kitsis has to say, has helped. Now, I’m wondering how something like this could be set up: the practical nuts and bolts of it interest me. Even playing with the wiki for the third assignment has been more interesting. So, yes: this was a useful article to read. I’m glad I did.

C. Richard King: Envisioning Justice

Envisioning Justice: Racial Metaphors, Political Movements, and Critical Pedagogy

C. Richard King

King’s article on the appropriation (or misappropriation) of racial symbols to advance unconnected messages makes some interesting points, some of which I agree with, some not.

Let’s begin with a big “not.” King argues that the visual rhetoric of PETA’s media campaigns is “conflicted and context dependent,” and that “they may have little lasting significance.” He makes these point in the context of PETA’s use of Holocaust imagery to equate animal suffering with human suffering, and finds himself “troubled” by the organization’s tactics. I think that in this example King expresses perfectly his own biases to deny that animal rights and human rights are exactly equivalent, otherwise known as a human-centric view of the world. King doesn’t consider that perhaps PETA seriously intends their images to be taken at face value, because after all, human consumption of meat is purely habit, not necessity and there is no moral reason to believe that animals don’t suffer just as much as humans. It is exactly the same mechanism of depersonalization at work in the modern abattoirs as occurred in the death camps. I doubt that a single “normal” dog or cat owner in the U.S. would accept the procedures used to turn cattle into burgers if it were their own pet being served up on the plate. So, at a very basic level, I reject King’s argument that PETA’s appropriation of Holocaust imagery is in any way inappropriate.

The whole argument about the use of racial symbols in media (like Native American mascots) stems from a position that questions ownership. The implication of King and those who oppose the use of such symbolism is that ownership resides exclusively with those groups whose stereotypes are being depicted. I disagree that the ownership and appropriateness  of such imagery is exclusive. I think that racial images and stereotypes belong in the public domain because it is in the context of the public domain that they are understood. They may not be understood in the same way by different groups and that is the point. It is a from this mistaken sense of ownership that challenges to things like Native American mascots arise. If a photographer takes an image of me I do not own the way the image depicts me any more than someone else who might see it later. The image depicts me, and either correctly or incorrectly the later viewer is obligated to interpret the image according to the schema that they, not I , possess. I’m not arguing that Native American mascots are not insensitive and shouldn’t be replaced: I merely suggest that such arguments stand outside the true representations of these images, that is that they are universally owned by any who see them and interpret them. There is no universal truth to symbolic imagery.

The PETA ads make a point. Nothing more. The Native American mascots serve a purpose. Nothing else. These points and purposes might be better served by different imagery, or not. But if PETA intends to shock, it can only do so by utilizing the available imagery in the historical canon of images. And it is because the imagery is drawn from the canon (which is limited) that multiple perspectives are implied and understood within each context. But no one interpretation is necessarily better or more correct than any other. I don’t believe that PETA’s use of Holocaust imagery cheapens or harms other interpretations of the Holocaust at all. It is nothing more than the juxtaposition of ideas, in this case, a fresh metaphor for animal suffering that is perhaps more understandable because of the juxtaposition. I am always suspicious when one group’s ideas or one interpretation of something in the public domain is asserted as the “dominant” or “correct” interpretation, or when “ownership” of any interpretation is asserted. I think that the dialogue that results from differences of opinion is more valuable than received wisdom.

Jerving's 13 ways

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black and White Photograph

Ryan Jerving

Jerving’s dense and sometimes overly obfuscating prose articulates what has been taken for granted for a long while: the messages, implicit and explicit represented by photography. Jorge Luis Borges once wrote (in Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius) that mirrors were “abominable” because they multiplied mankind, addressing a paradox that photography too, represents. Just as reality is framed by a mirrors edges, unreal space lying unseen unless the viewer shifts their position, so does photography create illusion, reproducing images of only so much of mankind, leaving the viewer in the unenviable position of viewing a static, unchanging image: no matter whether the viewer shifts to the left or the right, the image remains the same, the window into the reality that a photograph purports to express is as illusory as the left-right-handedness of a reflection in a mirror.

Jerving’s polemic makes sense of this problem, reducing its disparate elements to thirteen distinct points of analysis, taking back, in a way, control over what we see in a photograph. In a metaphorical manner, his ways of looking help us to lift the camera from the photographer’s hand and cast around with it ourselves as we try to return a photographic image to its original context, not its originally intended representation, whether conscious or unconscious, of artifice. In some ways Jerving suggests more: his arguments could be no less than call to begin looking at the world in a new way, too.

We examined the implications of Jerving’s thirteen ways in class and I’m not sure that this blog is the place to look at an image and demonstrate that I can bring the same critical eye to bear upon a photograph of my choosing. However, for practice: I will briefly describe one of the most iconic photographs of my youth and perhaps in modern exploration, the photograph of Robert Scott’s party at the south pole.

Image from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scottgroup.jpg

The photograph is quite simple, taken by a string attached to the shutter, showing the five explorers posed in a group to document their arrival at the pole as a form of proof and a demonstration of accomplishment. To this extent, then, the photograph serves a purpose beyond itself: it is intended from the outset to convey a particular message, capturing a staged moment. It is tightly framed, showing only what it must: the explorers against a background of white. There is no suggestion that the frame is cropped but the interesting and ironic point to be made is that the photograph is famous because of where it was taken and what happened afterwards, not because it positions the subjects within a recognizable location. The fact that they are at the south pole at all is only borne out by their haggard and exhausted expressions. The photograph could have been taken anywhere with snow and cloud. The men are also framed purposefully, in a very ordered manner, three standing behind two seated almost creating a “W” shape with their bodies. There is nothing special about this pose, nor does it suggest any particularity about the relationships of the five men to each other. The shutter was pulled more than once, however, and in other photographs the positions of the men are slightly different: it must have been difficult to hold a pose at the south pole in 1912, for many reasons.

Scott wrote in his diary, upon discovering that his party had been beaten to the pole “Great God! This is an awful place.” In this respect, the photograph places the men directly in their historical context. There is no sense of camaraderie in the photo; each man is essentially alone, dealing with loss, exhaustion, and cold in the traditional uncomplaining stoic manner. Their situation is emphasized by their costumes, full winter clothing so thick as to render their bodies shapeless, their hats pulled down as close to their eyes as possible. Some of them smile slightly, although none had anything to feel happy about: they were over 800 miles from safety. Perhaps by design, perhaps not, the figures of the men fill the frame, with flags fluttering around them. It is a close up of the men that pays no attention to their context outside the frame. Again, what is being documented is their hardship and heroism.

The camera angle is level, the standing figures do not tower over those sitting, and the lighting is, of course, natural. The camera is very much a narrator. The men smile for it and regard it equally, aware that it is serving as a witness to their achievement, however pyrrhic. At it was taken, photograph served as a portrait of a group of men who came together to attempt the unknown. But the men knew they were filling their diaries and taking pictures for posterity and would have had concerns, not yet fears, for their safety.

It is perhaps because they died that the photograph has attained its status as an iconic image, in a line of iconic images of hardship taken by people who did not know whether they would live to share it: Shackleton’s ship encased in the ice, Mallory and Irvine setting off to climb Everest, the Uruguayan rugby players stranded in the Andes, and more, images that tell more because of the history they represent and the extraordinary reality they captured. I don’t know. Jerving’s thirteen points are a start for this kind of analysis and perhaps I picked a difficult image to which to apply such a method. But, point taken. There is a lot to talk about in almost every photograph.

Richardson Final

I have now finished ready Will Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts. I am playing catch up. No matter. What I really want is to read each of the push back books because I’m a Luddite and I don’t believe anything Richardson says. That’s not quite true. I admire his excitement for all things about the Read/Write Web. I agree that that is probably where most of my students are, or will be soon. I’m not there. I don’t like it and I don’t care for it. I hate social networking because it’s no substitute for real relationships. I hate email because it’s short, and fast, and convenient and thoughtless and it ties you down and allows idiots to defer decision-making to others more competent. I want to browse where my eye fancies and reduce the volume of information I am forced to receive. But I am living in the past and I have to help my students join the present, and so I will try to work up a little bit of enthusiasm for Richardson. But I’m not there, yet.

RSS and the Social Web

I’ve known about RSS for ages but I’ve never tried it. No curiosity. But I understand its utility to aggregate more stuff than I would know what to do with and so with that thought, I might consider trying it in a very limited way. At first. I can imagine that it would be useful to obtain numerous POVs for a single subject of interest in one place, but having said that I don’t think that most folks are genuinely interested in multiple POVs anymore. I recognize that RSS and some of the functions of the social web, such as cloud bookmarking have a utility that is unique to the online world. Their efficacy lies in their ability to draw down content, filter it, package it and present it for ever more efficient consumption. That’s a cool thing to have. But I harbor deep suspicions about the educational efficacy of such facilities. I tried to explain what I found troubling about RSS and social networking in class but I think there was either a disconnect or else I don’t understand both or my arguments were not clear. So, to clarify. I love the news. I love being able to know what is going on in the world. I do not watch the news on TV anymore (too short, too shallow, to simplified). For years now, I have turned to the internet for news. I have, five general news websites bookmarked, and one tech news site. I don’t subscribe to any of them. I checked each of them everyday, sometimes twice or three times daily. The sites are: BBC news, The Guardian, The New York Times, NPR National Public Radio, and Stuff.co.nz (New Zealand news online aggregator). Sometimes I go looking for what I am interested in. Sometimes I will follow a story across all five sites. But a lot of the time I browse. That’s what my browser is for, right. It’s like all five sources are delivered to my door and I’ll sit at the table on a Sunday with all the sections spread out before me, enjoying what I might learn or discover: Because a lot of the time I don’t know which story, will quicken my pulse. I browse because I want to find what I don’t know about. I look for stuff which I would never have found through RSS because I didn’t know it existed.

I took a look at my bookmarks: a lot of them are articles that struck me in a particular way and I wanted to be able to go back and read them again later, or because they set off a useful train of thought. In a way they are stories that discovered me. I couldn’t have found them without the leisure of browsing. And just because they attracted me once doesn’t mean I would want them to lead others “like” them to me. One of the reasons I still buy books in a brick and mortar store is because of the opportunity it affords me to hold something unexpected in my hand. Amazon doesn’t do that. It shows me what I’m looking for, or what others bought eventually, or what others like. Amazon doesn’t get in my brain and figure out that I am an eclectic reader.

I like Richardson’s enthusiasm but I don’t believe it is healthy. I think about how many of my colleagues in the class have never edited Wikipedia or posted on a blog, or collaborated on a wiki: and we function just fine. Better than average if any of the push back texts speak a modicum of truth. I have seen what high schoolers are like. I recognize that most of them never read even one percent of what I did at their age. I could write poems in chalk around them while they saunter to the café. I just don’t think that anything that Richardson advocates will benefit them as much as he says, especially when their lack of reading, their content knowledge ignorance and their lack of intellectual curiosity leaves them clutching at straws when they have to string more than two sentences together. Blogs, wikis, and so on are cool tools. They bring the world outside of the classroom in, in a uniquely immediate way, but they are still tools. I don’t see how anything posted online by students is of any value to anyone, even themselves. I view these tools as no more than mirrors to their vanity, occasionally a healthy thing to peer into, but just not nearly opaque enough for them to see inside themselves and figure out just how much they don’t know and how important it is for them to read about things they would not have found alone. As a language arts teacher, I view my job in a traditional sense. Richardson might argue that I will lose the kids. If they can’t connect to the language that we have inherited, then, to a great extent, they are already lost. And it’s therefore my job to find them again. Blogs and wikis may help that some, but certainly no more than a coffee-stained, dog-eared, second-hand, 1984 edition of Lord of the Flies would. (Push back text influenced post)(The Dumbest Generation).