The Tale of Desperaux

As I watched The Tale of Desperaux, i realized that there were a lot of interpretation involved even when watching cartoons. Some of the basic questions include - What kind of features were given to the cartoon characters who were good/bad? What is the environment surrounding the characters? Why are they presented as such?

Hence, by selecting this cartoon movie, students will be able to their informal knowledge on cartoons or cartoon characters, which most of them would have experience with. Teacher can select a cartooon that students have watched have an informal discussion on the features or factors that tells them whether a character is good or evil. (A simple cartoon example would be those superhero ones, where the villain and hero is clear, with distinct attributes associated to each character respectively.)

Students will then watch portions of this movie, where they will be exposed to different lives - the lives of humans, mice and rats with certain characteristics and way of presenting these lives. As they watch, they will be asked to note down the clues in how the images were presented - the differences and similarities.
Students will share their observation with the class and teacher will elaborate on the points that were given.
Teacher may guide students towards looking at the colour contrast/ brightness and darkness. There is different degrees of darkness and lightness for the different lives portrayed in the movie.

Students will then be asked to critically think about why the different lives were portrayed with different colour and brightness intesity. They will then be asked to think of the implications of changing the colour contrast for the different lives projected, for e.g. what if human lives was in a darker shade or tone compared to the lives of the rats.

The above activity can be carried out for books and visuals as well - negative or bad characters are usually darker compared to those positive and good characters. Siggapore curriculum encourages to be literate in a broad range of texts, including visual texts, and in making meaning of these texts, students need to be aware of the abovementioned systematic knowledge and to critically think about the implications of such features.

Multimodality, 'reading' and literacy - C. Jewitt

Reading has to be seen in a wider perspective, to include multimodality instead of just literary aspects because the conventional perspective of reading - that reading is solely literal may limit individual from potential meaning making. Viewing reading as multimodal, starting from school, will enable students to bring a range of modes into their reading instead of just reading the words for meaning.

Often when we think of multimodal, there is this tendency to think that the use of different modes such as visuals, video and text need to be present in the same space. However even reading texts alone can be multimodal because reading is affected by the spatial organisation and framing of writing on the page, the directionality, shape, size and angle of a script(Kenner, 2000, which means that different scripts can be seen as different modes, giving rise to a variety of potentials for meaning-making with different representational principles underlying each writing system (Kenner and Kress, 2003). For example, in this digital storybook, the different fonts and sizes represents different meaning.



It is interesting to read into the kind of fonts used and the size of the fonts to represent different words and different meanings. The word SALE is familiar to us, not only because of the spelling, but also because of the type of font used, all in capital letters.

Hence, when we talk about multimodality and literacy, text or written words do not really have to take a back seat, but rather we should bring attention to the various roles writing play, and perhaps as mentioned in class on topology and topography, because it contributes to meaning making.

Of course in this era where technology is the main driving force in our society, knowing how to read means that readers need to make sense of images and other modes of representation and communication that is available on the screen. This is necessary because the full message of the screen has been distributed across the different modes and in order to get this full message we need to read the different modes and combine it together.

Just like the activity done in class on the best and worst websites, we needed to view the different modes available on the website to design our own complete meaning of the text.

Stein & Tan - How does it relate to Singapore?

Based on both articles by Tan and Stein:
"There is a need to broaden the the base of representation in classroom to include multimodal forms of communication that allow everyone to have a fair chance in expressing their 'voice'. Alongside that, the idea of multimodality also aims to address issues of diverse culture, nationality, identity and leading it to 'productive diversity' (Michaels & Sohmer, 2000)."

I guess this is especially relevant in Singapore where most of the time, it seems that teachers focus mainly on written work (compo, spelling, tests, exams) with little time for students to express themselves in other ways. Teachers also have their own way of viewing the topics and subjects taught in schools, and in our hurry to teach students as much as we can for them to 'academically excel', we forget that the written form and our "standard English" that we take for granted may not be familiar or easy to all our students; considering their identities, home background, culture and etc. Hence, when we neglect other forms of representation, we are depriving and marginalizing students in our class by not giving them a fair chance to prove themselves in ways that they are familiar with or accustomed to. For example, a student who is encouraged to talk and express him/herself freely at home rather than do written activities will feel restrained in classrooms which then leads to a restraint in literacy development.

As i read Tan's article, i realised that some of it has actually been applied in some of our lower primary classrooms, albeit at a much smaller scale. Group projects or rather group work have been implemented in classrooms around a common theme (for example, animals), where students of different abilities and cultures have been grouped together to learn from each other, contribute individual skills, and transform their acquired knowledge to achieve a common goal within the group (to come up with a mini-presentation on a chosen animal). Although the group work that have been carried out in school pale in comparison to the group project described by Tan, it does achieve certain elements of multiliteracies framework; one of which is to encourage students to work out their cultural and linguistic diversity.

However,i note that much more needs to be done in ensuring that every individual in the classroom is provided with equal opportunity to be active 'everyday' participants in literate societies' (Freebody & Luke, 2003) - be it on the teacher's, government's and society's part in implementing a truly effective multiliteracies approach to language teaching and practice.

Digital video and identity/selves (Vasudevan)

The discussion that we had in class - about better schools and smarter kids having the chance to carry out this project because they would not need so much time on their academics and hence would have more time to spare for digital videos caight my attention.
Yes i acknowledge the reality that the teachers in neighbourhood schools most often than not, have no time to carry out such projects because we are too busy chasing after them to buck up on their academic assessment. Not only that, at times we also have to deal with the issues in student's personal lives, parent issue of focusing on academic life and so forth.
As the discussion went on in class, i thought, wouldn't this digital video better benefit the children from neighbourhood schools instead of those from upper class schools? As mentioned in Vasudevan's article, the digital video is an expression of their lives and multiple identities and through this we get to know more about what is going on in their lives. Teachers in neighbourhood schools can use this to their advantage - to get to know and understand students beyond what goes on in the classroom i.e. the problems that they have, so that we can better help them in school.
During my teaching practicum, i saw how media can tell us so much about what is going on in the student's mind. There was this particular group of students who set up their own personal website to express themselves through composing song lyrics, posting up videos on youtube and what not. Viewers had to know the password before they can actually gain access to the website. I have to admit that they were technologically more advanced than i was. And students pick up things on technology really really fast.
So why do we worry if students are not able to use the video softwares or use the camera? This project can be an after school project to motivate them to participate in school activities, and im sure they have simple gadgets like camera or handphones even with a video function and a computer at home with the basic video editing software to come up witht a digital video of themselves. I admit, there will be students who do not have access to these gadgets, but i think the percentage is small. It can always be a group work so that those who have them can share with those who dont. We always encourage them to do group work in classes, so why dont we extend this for a bit outside of classroom lessons?
Ah.. the problem of parents. I believe there is no one solution to this, and honestly, i don't really know how to deal with them. But this digital story project can always be part of a linguistic lesson as part of learning how to express themselves clearly which would help them with their oral examinations.
Furthermore, isnt this in line with MOE's objectives of encouraging creativity and innovation in students?

***Note: I am not imposing these thoughts on anyone. Just some food for thought. I'm not even sure how I will handle such things once i start teaching. Yes, it is easier said than done.

Critical Reading in Everyday Life

In this world, where schools are becoming more technologically dependent, it is necessary for students to be able to read websites, which are multimodal in nature. As mentioned by Luke, reading is not a universal skill that only comprises of phonics, phonetics and denotative meaning but it also encompasses the underlying meaning or connotative meaning as well as the social practice that is embedded within the text. Hence, we will be analyzing the main page of a Singapore secondary school website that students need to navigate often in order to participate in the e-resources provided by the school.

Coding competence:
As mentioned by Luke, we need to have adequate knowledge of the alphabet, grapheme phoneme relationships, left-to-right directionality that is necessary for reading. In the case of reading this website, left-to-right and top-to-bottom directionality is necessary to go through all the features available on the website. We need to know the words that are used to represent the links so that they will know where and which links to click on in order to find out further information or to access other associated websites.

Semantic competence:
We have been exposed to a multi array of websites as information source and would have been familiar with the way a website is structured – how to differentiate a link from a text and so forth. It demands us to be able to comprehend the design and layout of the design in order to be able to make decisions on where they should go and read. In navigating this website, we would also need prior knowledge on the different links available such as the asknlearn, acelearn and so forth to make sense of what it would entail and whether it is meaningful to us..

Pragmatic competence:
We need to know the purpose of going to the website and the links that would direct them to their aim. Not only that, there are also certain rules that have been embedded within the website, for example, the quick access have been separated into categories and they have to select the category that is befitting to our position. We also need to know the rules of being able to access the associated websites by ensuring that we have the userid and password to some of the other websites.

Critical competence:
By critical competence, Luke refers to “the development of a meta-language for talking about how texts code cultural ideologies, and how they position readers in subtle and often quite exploitative ways”. Students then need to know how they are constructed as model readers and the power relations that are subtly projected in the text. Based on the images used, it seems that the school is foregrounding the students as its main participants. However, upon closer analysis of the picture, only students belonging to a certain group or CCA – such as the prefects and the band were shown. The news update on the right hand focuses on the School Excellence Award. The use of language in the welcome message also highlights their progress and accomplishment.
What is then the ideology behind these emphases?
One of the ideology could probably be that in order for the school to achieve all this, its students would have to play their part in achieving the best that they possibly can. In a way, the school is painting a picture of the kind of students that it requires for the school to excel.
In terms of power relation, the tagline of the school, “Your potential, Our purpose” gives the impression that students are in power. However, the rest of the website doesn’t really give students much power because they are all decided by the makers of the website or school authorities, except for the visuals that focuses on students.

Approaches

In order to raise awareness of the ideology in the text, we will be drawing on Kress’ (1987) questions that can be used to asked on any text:

1) Why is the topic being written?
2) How is the topic being written about?
3) What other ways of writing about the topic are there?

Firstly, we began the lesson by asking students other ways for the same message to be written in. This will allow students to see that different genres are available to choose from. The teacher will then ask students on the genre of the message in which the author has chosen. Students will then be asked to think of the purpose of the message. The purpose of the text is important, as it will determine the content of the message. It will show how the author has interpreted the topic based on the content of the message.

In order to highlight to students the language used to convey the message, teacher should ask questions to help students understand. The choice of action words, and the positioning of the school in the text are ways in which the author has chosen to send his message across. Students will be able to see that these choices influence the way the message is constructed. By replacing the structure or changing the action words used may not be able to create the same impact.

Once students are aware of the ideology behind the message, get students to rewrite the message in a different genre. Student will then be able to relate to the first question where author has chosen to write in an informative ways instead of other genre such as recount. This will allow students to realize the reason for the author’s choice of genre to convey the message.

Social discourse ----> literacy

It is important to acknowledge that there exists more than one type of discourse in a person's life and as mentioned by Gee, "All humans, barring serious disorder, get one form of discourse free, so to speak, and this through acquisition". The one discourse that Gee refers to is one which we commonly refer to as our native or mother tongue language, that is a socio-culturally determined way of using that particular language to communicate with intimates - whom Gee defined as people whom we share a great deal of knowledge because of a great deal of contact and similar experience e.g.family, relatives. However, this primary discourse would from group to group because of the diversity that influence our discourses - race, religion, socio-economic backgroud and etc which in turn accounts for the different ways in which we make sense of our experience. Hence, the language that we use actually shapes the way we view the world (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis). This is important in literacy as it involves meaning making, and linking it to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis mentioned earlier, it would mean that based on the language or types of language we use, it would affect the way we interpret meaning or make meaning. This is where Hybridity is comes in and plays an important role in literacy.

Because of the diverse background of our students and the type of native language that they are exposed to at home, they would bring with them to the classroom certain ways of viewing their experience which brings about different ways of making and interpreting meaning. In school, we are exposing students to another form of discourse, which is probably linked to another way of viewing things. Hence, the third space allows teachers to help students merge and link the experiences and meaning that they have brought from their home to the larger academic discourse. Hybridity and third space therefore allows educators to bridge the gap between the meaning made by students through their personal experiences and native discourse to that of academic discourse. However, I think this can only be done if teachers are aware and observant of the going-ons between students in the classroom. Only then can we find "seizable teaching moments" to bridge this gap to allow for better meaning making development for students and for teachers.

Why is mode, affordances and the two logics so important?

As i was reading the article, i was trying to find out the importance behind these different factors; of course apart from the fact that they contribute to meaning forming and making.
What is with the emphasis on different modes and its affordances?
The move from the use of writing to images and from books to screen in conveying meaning is changing the uses and effects of literacy which ultimately affects how we choose to represent and communicate meaning. Based on the wide variety of modes available today, it is pertinent that we know the affordances or possibilities of a particular mode to consider its effectiveness in conveying the right meaning. The logic of time and space forms part of the factors that we will be considering when choosing the mode that is to be used in representing our meaning - whether it is best represented in a quasi-temporal (time) or quasi-spatial manner (space).

I have chosen to explain the importance of acknowledging affordances through two similar advertisements on water conservation, one uses the logic of space and the other uses both the logic of space and time (video in the previous post - save walter).



In this particular advertisement poster, images were used and as mentioned by Kress, "Whatever relations are to be represented about the world have inevitably to be represented as spatial relations between the depicted elements of an image." Hence, the placement of the fish bowl, level of the water , tap, dripping water and background itself all contributes to the of kind meaning conveyed by the poster, which is inevitable. The elements in the image can be interpreted simultaneously, without having to follow a particular order. A person can choose to focus on the tagline or the fish bowl first, depending on the individual.

The video posted in the previous entry on the other hand, follows a particular sequence of time; the logic of time. The years appear in order, from 1980 to 2006, and it is this sequence that allows us to understand part of the meaning behind the poster - that as the years pass by, the amount of water is fast depleting. However, the logic of space adds on to the meaning, based on the position of the fish bowl and the words that appear in a particular space and size. Without either of the logics, the meaning conveyed would most likely not be the same as when both of them exist. The affordances of the mode used also contributes to the meaning - because a video allows for moving visuals which can represent the logic of time using images apart from the written mode itself.

The two examples shown above demonstrates how the use of the different modes and its affordances has an effect on meaning making, which explains why it is important for us to know such a concept, especially when we want to convey meanings to our pupils - to know which mode or rather combination of modes works best in conveying a particular meaning.