Multimodality: I like! #6

The Idea of Multimodality

            Technology has always been a scary thing to embrace particularity because of the complexities of the unknown. Its capabilities are so enormous that it’s hard to imagine what will happen next. People felt the same imminent threat during the early 1950’s when television first appeared. They were naïve of its capabilities and therefore worry what it might do to people especially children. Similarly, there is fear about computer technology. The fact that computer is evolving ever so rapidly; it’s even harder to appreciate one aspect of its enormity before being thrust into another dimension. Many people, especially the older generations, have just begun leaning basic computer skills when they are suddenly being exposed to vast computer technologies especially social media and they are forced to embrace it if they care to see their grandchildren grow before their eyes.

            As technologies continue to change rapidly and with exponential growth, it suddenly incorporates every aspect of our lives, leaving us no choice but to grab on and take flight. Therefore, the way we do business yesterday must change to facilitate the ideas of today. The same can be said for composition writing. Over the years, teachers of composition writing have become comfortable with the way digital composition has been taught. There is a prescribed way of doing it and everyone knows it and adheres to the formula. Today, however, according to Takayoshi and Selfe “ Thinking about Multimodality”, “the digital composing environments are challenging writing, writing instruction and basic understandings of the different components of the rhetorical situation (writers, readers, texts) to change” (p.1).  They must change because composition writing has been shifted into the digital realm and in order to remain relevant, texts must also change to convey the new media.

            Many instructors fear this change in inexplicable ways because for more than a century they have become comfortable and have been effective in teaching the formulated pedagogy of composition literacy. Therefore to embrace this new genre of writing is fearful and inhibiting. Takayoshi and Selfe argue that its time for instructors to reach beyond the limits of alphabetic writing and embrace the multimodal aspects of writing that is available today through digital media.  If they don’t, they argue, “teachers of composition writing will realize the inadequacy of texts because texts must be able to carry meaning across geo-political, linguistic and cultural borders, and so texts must take advantage of multiple semiotic channels”.(p2) This video gives credit to what I mentioned above.

          
What I find interesting is that students are not the ones fearful of embracing new media texts, but instructors that have been most apprehensive of the embrace. What instructors need to recognize, according to Takayoshi and Selfe is that a vast majority of students entering classes today already have significant experiences with multimodal composition that can deem beneficial to instructors.  Therefore, instructors should be able to use this knowledge base to push students beyond the prescribed limits of composition and realize that literacy goes beyond the expectations of both the student and the instructor.

            Jody Shipka in her essay on “A multimodal Task-Based Framework for composing” made a very interesting note that “students have a much richer imagination for what we might accomplish with the visual than our journals have yet to address” (p 278). To her, “visual communication provides a point of entry for rethinking the course’s semiotic and productive potentials”.  We see where the creativity and the effectiveness of visual communication can alter ones thought processes of doing things differently – outside the box (no pun intended).

            Personally, I embrace the ideas that Jody presented in her piece, where she uses the composition course to give “students the opportunity to structure the occasions for, as well as the reception and delivery of the work they produce” (p279).  Similar to what we are being asked to do in this class. I embrace the idea of how much clearer I was able to use visual media to articulate in my presentation the ‘OED’ meaning of Political Correctness (PC) through videos, photos and media texts. If I were to write a 5-page essay on the said topic, I realize that would accomplish a less desirable task, because, the black and white version would only lead me to imagine what PC is. However, the visual explicitly illustrates what PC is through a series of multimodal tenets (emotional movements, audio, visual aids and media texts). As I began to think along those lines I realized how creative I could become presenting the piece and infiltrating the same notions in my other classes. During the creation of my assignment I learned so many aspects of media texts that I became fascinated and much more eager to explore… this made me also wonder how much more effective I could become in my composition writing had I taken this class first.  

            And so it is with teachers to “reflect on their pedagogical assumptions about writing instructions generally” (Takayoshi and Selfe, p6) and develop a competency for engaging and using these systems of development, so that their “overly prescriptive assignments do not militate against intellectual “Mystery” (Shipka p284).