Student composition of digital animated multimodal narratives: the multimodal grammatical knowledge of students and teachers. (original) (raw)
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English language and multimodal narrative
The Routledge Handbook of English Language and Digital Humanities. , 2020
We are in an age of media transition in which the textual is increasingly integrated with other semiotic modes and old and new media interact in a complex relationship. This chapter examines the evolving technology of whiteboard animation as a relatively new digitally mediated multimodal storytelling form that exemplifies the complexity of the convergence between old and new media. Some whiteboard animation videos rely on the material practices of drawing and photography, whereas others mimic the material, using digital animation software and video to generate a story. The most common elements of whiteboard animation are the visualisation of a whiteboard as the canvas, the illustrator’s hand in the field of view and a marker drawing out the story. In the last decade, do-it-yourself (DIY) software programmes have emerged allowing ordinary people to tell their stories through whiteboard animation using libraries that include pre-drawn characters, stock images, music, drawing implements and hands. Whiteboard animation is a multimodal storytelling form that is increasingly used to educate, inform, advertise and entertain. This chapter investigates the little-studied form of whiteboard animation to uncover the persuasive power of digital storytelling and reveal how technological transformations can inform storytelling practices. To develop frameworks for understanding the affordances that digital technologies bring to stories, this research explores narrativity and narrative discourse as social, rhetorical and multimodal. Through the lens of multimodality and rhetorical narratology, setting, time, point of view and voice are analysed in commercial and DIY whiteboard animation examples, paying attention to material practices of production and multimodal narrative development, as well as the complex relationship between speaker, audience, message and medium. This research on whiteboard animation looks to understand the intersection between technology and storytelling and contributes to digital humanities scholarship that looks to understand the implications of technology, writing and narrative.
Multimodal Narrative Texts, Creativity, and English Teaching as a Foreign Language
Advances in Linguistics and Communication Studies, 2019
The chapter explores a methodological approach where creativity is encouraged through the production of multimodal iPad-mediated narrative texts in the English as a foreign language classroom (EFL) in secondary education. The study, which is based on creativity of human language, evaluates the multimodal productions of a group of students of secondary education (Year 7) in Spain, who work with iPads (1:1 context) within a cooperative learning approach, and analyzes this learning experience from the students' point of view. The results show the impact multimodality has on the own students and on their way of working with the foreign language. The quality of their productions, not only regarding language but also as an act of creation, and the way they appropriate the different semiotic modes multimodality offers will also be examined. Finally, the authors suggest some guidelines to encourage multimodal production and creativity in the EFL secondary classroom and show examples whi...
What middle years students know about the creation of multimodal texts
Australian Computers in Education Conference, 2012
Over a period of three years, the ‘3D multimodal authoring pedagogy’ research project engaged middle years students from 48 classes in a structured program introducing them to techniques for effective story-telling (narrative composition) using multimedia software. To enable us to better understand the capabilities of the students as they entered the program, they completed a self-report of their knowledge of multimodal ‘design elements’. An analysis of the results from one year of the study (5 schools, 19 classes and 326 students) indicates that students are relatively uninformed about how to communicate meaning effectively using multimedia software, even amongst classes taught by teachers who are enthusiastic and committed to multimodal authoring. Significant gender and year level differences were identified. These results have important implications for ICT education, which values purposeful communication over a de-contextualised repertoire of skills, along with literacy education which, in the Australian Curriculum, includes the creation of multimodal texts.
2012
Contemporary approaches to literacy embrace digital and multimodal communication, and this is increasingly recognised in the syllabi prescribed by various education authorities across the world. Insufficient attention has been given to the evaluation of multimodal texts in ways which are semiotically grounded, accessible to the teacher and scalable to larger research studies. We present an evaluation instrument that addresses these requirements. The application of this instrument to 81 texts drawn from 17 classes has established the viability of the approach and allowed a subset of ‘high achieving’ classes to be identified. The derivation of the instrument is described in detail, the final form presented, evaluator guidelines elaborated, and the rating scales developed in full. Limitations are discussed along with recommendations for further work and development, but as an evaluation initiative the current work is presented as an important contribution to the continued development o...