Saturday, November 17, 2007

Teacher Learning for New Times: Digital Video Composing as Multimodal Inquiry

Session F.29 - 8:00 am to 9:15 am Saturday, 11/17/2007

Abstract: English educators illustrate how they use digital video composing as a quintessential multimodal literacy practice in their teacher education classes. The session contributes to a model for integrating DV into English classes and provides practical course materials and DV examples to demonstrate this new practice in action.
Literacy practices have changed in the 21st century digital world. Adolescents carry these new digital literacies to school but often have to leave them outside the classroom door, like guns in the old West (Gee, 2004). Providing teachers with opportunities to learn these literacy practices and use them as learning tools in English classes is a solution examined in this session by three English educators using digital video composing as a quintessential multimodal literacy practice in their teacher education classes.

“Reading and Writing through Digital Video Composing”
- David Bruce, Kent State University

Students enrolled in an ELA methods teacher education course are introduced to the teaching of reading and writing broadly defined. One assignment is to complete the familiar task of reading and interpreting poems through the (often) less familiar mode of DV. In using DV, students create an interpretation of the poem that layers the purposeful use of images, ambient sound, music, graphics, text, transitions, movement, and special effects. Through the process of creating the video poems, students also examine the parallel composition processes to print, connect their work to the ELA content standards, as well as complete a heuristic to explicate their authorial intent. Handouts of assignments as well as examples of student work will be provided.

“Summer Camp for New Times: Preservice Teachers, Middle Schoolers, and Digital Video”
- Meg Callahan, University of Rochester
Embedded within a required teacher education course, preservice English teachers conduct a one-week summer camp for urban middle school students focusing on media literacy, technology, and environmental action. The work culminates in a showcase of student digital video Public Service Announcements, and a great deal of reflection about how multimodal literacies shape pedagogy and practice.

Undergirding the graduate course are four principles: (1) twenty-first century literacies are multimodal (Kress, 2000), thus media literacy IS contemporary literacy; (2) multimedia analysis and composition are best taught as integrated elements; (3) literacies are embedded in social contexts and practices, therefore classroom literacy pedagogy should have authentic purposes and audiences; (4) media literacy and technology are particularly suited to developing an interdependent community of learners. An outline and analysis of the graduate course, Integrating English and Technology, as well as examples of middle-school and graduate student PSA’s will be provided.

“Expanding Literacy: Digital Video Composing as Multimodal Literacy Practice”
- Suzanne M.Miller, University at Buffalo, SUNY
How, if at all, can a teacher education class focusing on digital video composing expand teachers’ notions of literacy? In this class, pre-service and in-service teachers engaged in composing of Digital Video (DV) in familiar genres (e.g., movie trailers on novels, uncommercials, 20-20 inquiries) related to the English curriculum. In their written reflections and interviews, teachers described DV production as an engaging flow experience that provided access to authentic multimodal design practice. Learning to combine the power of visual, written, and musical mediation for meaning-making and understanding, most teachers were able to move beyond traditional notions of literacy and learning. As they carried DV into their own classrooms, they found DV composing particularly effective as a literacy tool when students pursued a multimodal inquiry drawing on what they knew from their lives and from youth/media/popular culture. This class is based on the author’s work in the City Voices, City Visions Digital Video Composing project in the Buffalo Public Schools.

This session contributes to a model for integrating digital video as a quintessential multimodal literacy practice into English education courses and provides practical course materials and DV examples to exemplify this new practice in action.

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