Week 7 Assignment # 1.1 Theories and practice of Multimodal Education

    Multimodal Education

   It is becoming quite evident in this “new media” age that a transition from print-based education to multimodal education is occurring. Even Though, many traditional roles for teachers remain necessary; they act as facilitator, instructor, model, and so on. However, they are three additional roles teachers need to adopt in order to facilitate children’s navigation of complex, multimodal, electronic worlds, these include teacher as resource manager, teacher as co- constructors of knowledge and teacher as design consultant. In the article; “Theories and Practices of Multimodal Education: The Instructional Dynamics of Picture Books and Primary Classrooms”, authors Dawnene D. Hassett and Jen Scott Curwood posits the idea that that teachers’ and students’ interactions with the characters, plots, and visuals of interactive children’s books can highlight new shifts in literacy learning. They suggest an approach that is multimodal. To them, a multimodal approach in the classroom can be a source of creativity for both teachers and students because it focuses on the combination of text, audio and image as individual modes and how these can be creatively combined to produce meaning, encourage interaction and learning in the classroom. Furthermore, as Siegel noted, “language arts education can no longer ignore the way that our social, cultural, and economic worlds now require facility with texts and practices involving the full range of representational modes.” To me, this approach to teaching and learning is exceptional because teachers combine two or more multimodal learning modes to provide a well-rounded educational experience. They help their students to construct knowledge through the use of pointed questions and open ended questions. Since school environments have diverse student populations with a wide variety of learning styles, a multimodal approach helps each student achieve academic success in their own way.