Proposal

Target group • Building links between the classroom and our wider community and how these links benefit children’s learning

• Professional development modules formulated for teachers to assist with a multimedia approach in their classroom

• Early childhood teachers

Framework
Relevance of knowledge
ICT software
• Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives linked with creative higher order thinking.

• Socio-cultural theorists: Kalantzis & Cope, Vygotsky’s theory of learning and development

• Lankshear & Nobel, Hill, Kalantzis & Cope.

• Theorists linked to high order thinking capacity found in young children in this frame of learning.

• Mp3 devises, video, email, photography, web browser and sites Inc.



Learning objectives

Cognitive targets • For teachers to use learning modules appropriately and assist them in being able to confidently induct multi literacy texts to their programming and link learning experiences with children’s wider communities.

Sub-topics
Interconnecting, digital, communicative literacy's
(modules 1-4)
 • How to: teaching ICT mechanics

• Operation: text meaning – blog, email, web sites, interactive communications

• Selection of critical text tools for a task – appropriate selection depending on design elements

• Transforming what has been learnt – new learning ways formed from the basics

 Design features

• Teachers need to gain the knowledge of many different literate tools (digital modes) to link their classrooms with a variety of texts being used in everyday lives of their students, and evaluate ways of extending their learning abilities through these texts.

5 design elements

 • Visual – video, photography, interactive web sites

• Audio – mp3, interactive web sites, video

• Linguistic – interactive web sites, video, email, blogs, pod casts

• Gestural – behavioral interest to the ICT texts

• Spatial – class room layout of multi modal areas, web designs

Children in the early years of schooling have always used construction, drawing, movement and sound to represent a way of communicating. Adding new multi modal technologies is simply an extension to their media choice to represent new ideas for a range of texts. Basic reading and writing skills are still critical in the new learning paradigm, they are just extended further. In their community (homes, local business, and neighboring schools) digital text communications can be linked or adapted to the classroom learning environment to encourage new ways of learning within the class and their home.

The paradigm behind this project includes:

 Promote independence in children’s use of ICT through resources such as digital cameras and computer exploration.

 Explore the nature of creativity through ICT, using it to support the more traditional areas of music, dance and writing.

 Using ICT to enhance the physical and sensory aspects of outdoor learning experiences.

 Acknowledge the potential of ICT in reaching children with different learning needs and difficulties.

 Value home experience with ICT and build on these and share knowledge with peers.

 Work with parents to develop children’s ICT capacity.

By teaching multi modal texts to our early learners, we’re preparing them for the technology of the 21st Century. “The predicted future of the Internet is to provide information as more and more people turn to it as the quickest way to verify ideas, news and knowledge.” (Hill, 2009 p. 322)

In a review of research into early childhood multi modal learning capacities, Lankshear and Knobel (2003), found that much of this new learning was occurring out of school rather than in the classroom setting. Another research by Durrant and Green (2000) found that the technical skills were over abundant in the curriculum and not balanced constructivist pedagogy. They developed a frame work known as the “3D” of new literacy learning. It incorporated operational, cultural and critical dimensions. When this was mixed together it enabled a holistic pedagogy. (Hill, 2009 p. 324) With these two varying researchers in mind, another research project was undertaken – Mapping Multiliteracies (Hill, 2005). This research looked at the level of multi literacy being used in children aged 4-8 years in their home environment. In most cases the children had access to more technology tools than found in their classroom. With this information already learnt, it is possible to program new multi modal lines of thinking for areas including the arts, physical and sensory experiences, facilitate children with learning difficulties and build on home ICT knowledge. The reality in our classrooms is quite simply that most students already know a lot of ICT sites and are already familiar with the technology we are going to teach.

For many families, the way they interpret the meaning of a learning experience can be very different from the learning techniques at school, by increasing our multi modal capacity in the classroom, in which written linguistic modes of meaning interface with visual, aural, gestural and spatial patterns we will be able to offer a diverse range of learning experiences and share knowledge with other class students and their educators. (Kalantzis, 2003) New technologies bring with it new educational responses to learning. At the recent Consortium for School Networking Conference a discussion into “The Digital World of Young Children”, released by the Pearson Foundation, describes how literacy skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing are sculptured by digital media. The paper was designed to initiate discussions and further investigate the affordance of growing up in technology “rich” environments. It looked at the impact of culture and the accessibility of learning with new devices. Raising questions as to whether children in developing countries will have access to newer, more adaptive sources of information. The result will no doubt be an even greater gap on the educational opportunities between poverty struck and developed countries. This is a huge area that needs attention, but our first concern needs to be with preventing this in our own society. With a program full of media experiences accessible to all students, the hope is to elevate major disadvantages amongst students.

When looking at the views of socio-cultural theorists such as Cope and Kalantzis and earlier Vygotsky, they provide a theoretical underpinning for effective practice in the belief that the key to real learning was not simply the specific knowledge and skills, but the development of children’s learning and their capacity to think clearly and creatively. They theorized that by offering a variety of tools, students could communicate their understanding for a task in several differing ways. For Vygotsky it was in the way of charts, music, symbols, numbers, pictures, language and so on. In today’s way of new learning it’s not about forgetting these original learning techniques, but building on them to show other ways of experimenting with new 21st Century tools. (Doyla, 2009)

Children need to feel safe and welcome to move about their environment and to learn to find their place in the world. If there is no connection between the home and school environment, the students can become detached and the learning progress may be negatively altered. Through ICT tools, it’s possible to reach diverse interests and make a connection with these from their home to the school. This can then be taken a step further by involving other members of the class into the learning experiences. By sharing knowledge of ICT tools the class will become more connected in their learning capacities and higher order thinking capabilities.

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (BRT), offers a theoretical framework to help accentuate children’s learning to a higher order of thinking. When we look at the basics of teaching that are described as the “back to basics” of reading, writing and arithmetic, it’s clear that “back” is the operative word, teaching is now looked at from a “rich” technologically advanced frame. “It has become evident that digital literacy's and print based literacy are not oppositional concepts, both are required for effective functioning in the 21st Century.” (Hill 2009) Our basics are still important, but in different ways, we can use alternate modes of text to engage a learning activity and with a mode and topic of interest to the student, they will hopefully take this knowledge to a higher level of creativity. At the same time, ICT can also be completely trans formative, and does not have to be about doing the same techniques in different ways, but also the ability to learn completely different techniques. Educators are able to use BRT’s planning framework to clearly understand their student’s levels of thinking with different modes of texts. The Mapping Multiliteracies (Hill, 2005) research discovered that new ways of building on the skills and interests from home emerged when teachers engaged some children as coaches or mentors in the classroom and capitalized on children’s funds of knowledge by using software similar to that used by those children at home. They also found that children excelled and enjoyed on making new multi modal texts and this led to a need for understanding the principals of multi literacy. (Hill, 2005)

The San Francisco State University defines design for playing and learning as a universal design with activities that make learning goals achievable by individuals with wide differences in their abilities to see, hear, speak, move, read, write, attend, organize, engage and remember. This is achievable with a flexible curriculum with materials and activities that provide alternatives for students with differing abilities, many of which may be learnt in the home. Most young children can easily scroll through web sites effortlessly, changing genres, interpreting, predicting and scanning important information. With this knowledge comes the reality that although reading, writing and listening are important steps to learning, today’s’ students must be able to do more. They will be asked to decipher, use code breaking techniques and express the meaning of tasks through a range of media that incorporates design, layout, colour, graphics and animation.

In our wider community, we are surrounded by images, logos and symbols; and children are not exempt from this. They see advertisement from many familiar companies that will use a range of media texts to display their advertisement. A research at The University of Wollongong has found that approximately four million children are using the Internet world wide, and this is likely to increase dramatically over the next couple of years. Although advertisement is not the ideal teaching environment, it does engage children in processing information and classifying. Children are quickly able to locate information. A study has also shown that children as young as 5 can recognize logos, even though they cannot read the words. “Multimedia or new media is changing the way society communicates in the virtual and real world.” (Riesland, 2005) Children interpret different logos and signs to make sense of their world, they are able to make connections between products and quickly learn what they mean before they can read or even talk. A typical example is the “Golden Arches”. One teachers view on how to engage the children in her class, is to use video games and television, the students connect to this media and are able to build a bridge to new learning.

5 Design Elements of Multi literacy for Social and Individual Development

The professional development modules for linking children’s multi modal techniques with ones they are taught in their classroom will incorporate the 5 design elements. (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) Each module will share a variation and overlapping of the design elements. The question is asked, how can we develop skills and knowledge with our students so they develop their understandings of the design elements in today’s world? (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009) It is only once we as educators are able to grasp the theory behind multi literacy development for enhancing our higher order of thinking that we are able to teach this to our students.

The design elements will allow for personal creativity amongst the students, as a way of preparing for the new generation of web 3.0 that is being framed as a semantic web. The ICT modules developed from this proposal will incorporate resources that relate to this context.

Visual: video, photography, interactive web sites

Audio: mp3 devices, interactive web sites, video

Linguistic: interactive web sites, video, email, blogs, key board skills

Gestural: behavioral interest to the ICT texts

Spatial: classroom layout of multi modal areas, web design.

Children in the early years of schooling can be asked a variety of questions regarding the design elements of multi modal experiences offered. These questions can be used for bridging known knowledge with new knowledge.

Visual

How are the characters portrayed?
How are the genders represented?
Where does the film take place? How is colour used?
What images are powerful?

Audio

A discussion can begin on the way sound is used and influences our everyday lives and when combined with visual the effect can be made even stronger.
Questions can be related to the effect sound has on – pace, action, emotion, mood and silence.

Linguistic

By adapting different texts and different media such as newsletters, differing genres, power point presentation, video and web sites, they can begin to understand the language used in today’s world.

Gestural

The children can be taught to make links between their own experiences to express their point of view with what is already known, by looking at:
Cultural differences
Mood and emotions shown through expressions
Gestures being used in the text : Facial expressions and movement that suggest a particular feeling

Spatial

This is defined by the space and the place, and can incorporate relationships, cultures and different societies.
How is space used?
What places are seen?
What is the focal point?
What is in the background?
Do you gather knew information from what you see?

Educators and their students are able to use this information (from the suggested line of questioning) to redesign and create new texts. This information can be taken out of the school grounds and developed further in everyday situations.

The objectives set out in the proposal of the professional development modules are to better understand the learning of the future for our children and offer an educational base that can extend their knowledge to a creative level of thinking. The texts used in diverse families can offer different experiences for fellow students and at the same time create a familiar environment for a student who may have knowledge that would normally remain unknown by educators. By making our students feel more comfortable in their learning environment they can extend their learning capacity. The professional development learning modules will be able to offer learning opportunities, different ideas for presenting text and information on literacy for the 21st Century that embraces cultures and diverse individuals as our nation.

Understanding the family systems and structures of our diverse populations is one of the most important tasks of professionals in education. Children learn from their family, School and community. They learn from their experiences by observing, talking and interacting with their environment. Parents play a pivotal role in the education of their children, and creating a school-home educational relationship is crucial to the needs of the child, enabling them to build a foundation for academic and life success.