Rationale for my choices on digital portfolio

The topic of my portfolio is breaking the window and exploring multimodal literacies. Before taking EDUC 714, I thought that literacy is a novel, an advertisement or any thing that has printed letter on it. This course enables me to explore a brand new kind of literacy called multimodal literacies. Through participating in classroom activities, I have an overview on the types of multimodal literacies, compare their advantages and disadvantages, explore their functions on language learning, and critically analyze inequity issue on them.

In my digital portfolio, I choose seven artifacts to reflect my learning process.

1. the artifact I chose to represent literacy

At the beginning of EDUC 714, I chose an instant noodle bag when the instructor asked us to bring one artifact to represent literacy. I chose this bag mainly because the printed characters/ letters on it. I thought these two kinds of printed texts represent multiculturalism in Vancouver. This reason reflects my traditional concept on literacy which should be printed text. When I only focus on the text, I neglect other elements on the bag.

2. weekly writing on digital literacies

The second thing I chose is this in class writing. In week 3, we discuss the readings on digital literacies. Although I have thought the text on computer belongs to a kind of literacy, I never considered it deeply. This activity enables me to lend important insight to digital literacies. According to my understanding on the Lam (2000)’s article and my own experience, I argue that current literacies on line belong to certain group of people and this sort of literacy quite contradicts to the traditional one. I also found that digital literacies include on-line videos, pictures, and even songs. Digital literacies expand my horizon on the concept of literacy.

3. autobiography (selected)

At the same time, the autobiography I wrote also reflect how digital literacies influence on my language learning. In my autobiography, I talked about my experience on learning Japanese. I got linguistic improvement, engage into social relationships and construct my identities through the facilitation of digital literacies. In this artifact, I especially show my friend’s blog (http://hi.baidu.com/silverdevil ) to give an example how to develop writing proficiency on line.

4. presentation and critical summary

In week 7, I and Dragon did a presentation on Norton & Vanderheyden (2001)’s article comic book culture and second language learners. In this article, I encounter the concept of ‘multimodal literacies’. To make a concise summary on the article, I and Dragon studied the function of comics on SLL and comic books’ merits and drawbacks in depth. During the presentation, we also compared teachers’ and parents’ views on comics between in Asia and in Canada. After the presentation, we individually wrote a critical summary. Through this assignment, I had a better grasp on multimodal literacies and decided to further explore them in the latter part of the course.

5. My QQ Zone (http://new.qzone.qq.com/328277036/infocenter)

On the discussion part of our presentation, many peers reflected that I did not show any example on how comics help to improve linguistic proficiency or develop social relationships. Here, I made a complementary by using my QQ zone. In my Qzone, I published some comics in my L1 to represent the characteristics, the viewpoints and the daily life style of Fujyoshi (a kind of girls who like boy’s love very much). After reading my post, one of my friends who is also a fujyoshi as well as me left a comment and expressed her own feeling. She felt the comics are very interested and reflect what she thinks. I discuss this happily and become more closed on the viewpoints of fujyoshi. But when my mother read this post, she only said that it is not fun, and not worth to reading. Hence, literacy on line belongs to certain type of people and helps to develop friendship within these people.

6. video from youtube

Combing digital literacies and visual literacies such as comics, and TV, we come to the concept of multimodal literacies. These literacies include not only text but also image, gesture, sound and so on. The girl on the video expresses her feeling on these literacies, stating their importance as well as challenges.

7. the book media literacy: a reader (Macedo & Steinberg, 2007)

After I decided to write my final paper on multimodal literacies, I read many articles including some from this book. I realized some inequity among tradition literacy and multimodal ones as well as within multimodality. First, mono-modal literacy is over highly valued while multimodal ones are under estimated. Second, Standard English is shifting to global English. Third, there is over emphasis on multimodality in L2, neglecting the function of that in L1. Finally, multimodal literacies are just viewed as alternative in literacies. With this regard, I hope I would explore the issues of inequity on multimodal literacies in future.

At the end of the course, I review the artifact I chose at the beginning. I found that what is in this bag is not only text but also pictures. Text and pictures combine together and represent multimodal literacies. With this kind of literacies, I believe students would learn more vivid, contextualized and funny. When we advocate that multimodality could scaffold students on language improvement and social relationship as well as identity construction, however, we also need to realize that misuse of multimodality will cause students’ distraction on learning. Hence, we, as teachers, need to guide students how to correctly use multimodal literacies and facilitate them to critically think the information appearing in the multimodal literacies.

Week 13: View things differently

This week is the end of this course. If I am asked to choose an artefact to present literacy, I will still choose the instant noodle bag. But this time I will not just view the Chinese & English characters as literacy. Indeed, the whole bag– text & pictures is a kind of literacy: multimodal literacy. With this kind of literacy, I believe students can learn more vivid, contextualized and funny. When I see the different characters, I will think about the equity among different literacies. I hope I would further explore this issue later ~_~

Week 7-: Critical thinking on multimodal literacies

To write my paper on multimodal literacies, I read some books and several articles. I found that ‘Media literacy: A reader’ (Macedo & Steinberg, 2007) is very thoughtful.

Through reading some articles in it, I began to think the issue of (in)equity in multimodal literacies.
1 Mono-modal VS. Multi-modal
As the vedio mentioned, print medial has been highly valued in education system. In contrast, multi-modal literacies have been over underestimated. Many teachers and parents view Internet, movies and comics as dismissive.
2 ‘Standard’ English VS. Global English
With print media, people in the past paied more attention on ’standard’ English. Students were taught to write as what chapter books did. Now global English of adolescent pop culture rather than ’standard’ English should be taught in ESL classes.
3 Multi-modal in L2 VS. Multi-modal in L1
Educators and teachers in ESL only advocate students to use multi-modal in L2. However, they neglect that multi-modal in L1 could hlep L2 learners to keep their L1 identity and culture.
4 Low proficiency VS. High proficiency
After reading some articles, I found that multimodal literacies are often used by students with low proficiency or diability in learning. When these students could not express themselves in text modal or understand the text, teachers tend to use multi-modals to facilitate them. In this case, multi-modal likes a substitute or subordinates to print media. I argue that multi-modal literacies are also suitable for students with high profiency. For example, we use drama in this course and most students feel interested in and excited about this mode of learning.

Week 7-: Multimodal literacies

From Week 3 & 7, I realized that I have learnt a new kind of literacy– multimodal literacies which includes digital literacies and visual literacies such as comics & TV. Multimodality attends to meaning as it is made through the situated configurations across image, gesture, gaze, body posture, sound, writing, music, speech, and so on. The vedio below shows how a student-teacher understand on the concept of multimodal literacies, why these literacies are important and what are the challenges.

According to her view, literacy traditionally has be printed focus.  Print media has been very valued in education system However, now print media need to cooperate with multimodals which students experience in their daily life. Multimodal literacies help students critically analysize the information presented in these multi-modals. One challenge for this student-teacher is that students might be more familiar with these multi-modals than the teachers. In this case, teachers need to give power to students, and shift their roles from controlers to facilitators.

Week 7: Presentation & critical summary

This week, I did a presentation with Dargon on ‘Comic books and L2 learners’ (Norton & Vanderheyden, 2001).

Then we individually wrote critical summary based on the reading and the presentation. In the article, Norton and Vanderheyden argue that comics play a positive role to L2 learners not only on lingustic development but also social relationships and identity construction. Because many colleagues expressed that we did not give detailed examples in the presentation, here I want to show an example how comics enable people to construct identities and build relationship.
My QQ Zone

Week 3: Autobiography (selected)

Personally, I also have some experience to use digital literacies in my 2nd language learning. In my autobiography, I wrote as below:
“From my junior year in Central South University which is located in Changsha, Hunan province, I learnt Japanese as my second foreign language. Since my teacher is very irresponsible, I learnt Japanese almost by myself through online manga, music and online chatting. Manga, similar to comic books or graphic stories, enables me to improve my reading proficiency in Japanese. Due to tons of graph in manga, I could guess the meaning of stories even at the beginning of my Japanese learning. I would like to compare the sentences in manga to the grammar rules in the textbooks. Moreover, manga are usually contextualized in daily conversations. As a result, what I learnt from manga is more realistic. Thanks to Internet, I could easily access to manga which I could not buy in Changsha. After developing some Japanese proficiency, in 2007, I joined an online translation association called Sumisora Sub which translates Japanese Manga and anime into Chinese. In this association, I knew a lot of new friends who share the same interest with me. They helped me when I came across difficulty in translation and understanding Japanese. Furthermore, I chat with these friends on line in Japanese. This provided me a chance to write in Japanese. In Japanese course, we were not required to write in Japanese. Hence, online chatting is the only way that I got to get a sense how to write in Japanese. On the other hand, we might sometimes using Japanese pronunciation to create new Chinese phrases. These phrases would soon spread out in Internet and become web phrases. To easily express meaning, Japanese people like to use some English letters to create hieroglyphic symbols such as orz (a person kneeling on the ground) which means people are frustrated. To improve these hieroglyphic symbols, our Chinese use some characters in ancient period. For example, orz becomes 囧rz. Now 囧 becomes subculture in China. I believe it results from global culture and the large scale use of Internet.”
Many people could understand how students use digital literacies to improve reading, literning. However, they might wonder how to improve writing. Now I want to show my friend’s blog. He insist to writing in Japaness in his blog, though he is a 18 year old Chinese living in China. Through this trying, his Japanese is quite ‘native speaker’.
YM’s Blog

Week 3: Weekly writing on digital literacies

In the past, literacy was thought to be formal writing on a piece of paper. After the invention and wide use of Internet, literacy gains diverse meanings. For example, the character, picture and letters on screen could be literacy. Even just some symbols could be, such as J, >.<

The literacy on line tends to become more easy-understanding, short and contextualized. In the past, if people are not illiterate, they could read, write and understand the meaning of the text. However, current literacy on line belongs to certain group of people. Even I sue Chinese character to write my blog; my mother could not understand what I am saying. Group members with same interest create their own literacy to represent their identities. People possess different identities on line such as otaku and fujoshi (the former like gear while the later is female who likes boy’s love) which are not very acceptable in real life. With globalization, the literacy on line is becoming without borders. It is a fashion that people could use mixed languages on line. This sort of literacy quite contradicts to the traditional literacy.

Week 2: My artefact to represent literacy

In week 2, our instructor asked us to bring one artifact that can represent literacy.

I chose an instant noodle bag for two reasons. First, there are some printed characters on it. Second, there are two languages on the bag: Chinese and English. This represents multiculturalism in Vancouver. This band of instant noodle is imported from Hong Kong. Most its customers here are still Chinese. For attracting customers, they need to print Chinese on it though Vancouver is an English speaking city. From this regard, literacy is socially situated.
Sept 9, 2008