358 research outputs found
Curriculum Policy, Planning and Professional Development
No full textThis chapter focuses on our research findings related to curriculum policy, planning and professional development. From the outset, our multilingual digital storytelling project was about working closely with lead teachers to shape our pedagogical approach and discuss how this way of learning languages could be embedded within and across the curriculum. Lotherington (2014) rightly states that practice is key to sustainability and it is vital to discover ways to work with digital technology in our classrooms: ‘it is one thing to have a brave new idea about teaching language and literacy using contemporary media, and another thing to translate this into classroom practice’ (ibid.: 89). At the core of the success of our project was classroom teachers who were willing to take risks, experiment and learn new skills. Holmes in writing about our project in relation to creative multilingualism commented that all the projects mentioned had three common features: ‘their impact on young people; their acknowledgement of the complexities of multilingual learning; and their finely tuned models dependent on the time and expertise of highly skilled practitioners’ (2014: 8)
From Literacy to Multiliteracies
No full textThis chapter sets MDST within the context of current understandings ofmultiliteracies (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000; Coiro et al., 2008). It examines theshift from page to screen and towards text as ‘design’. In exploring the movefrom literacy to multiliteracies it recognises the role of new technologies indeveloping pupils’ languages and supports links between different areas of language: English mother tongue, EAL, foreign and community languages.Cummins and Early’s (2011) argument about identity texts is looked at and howa multiliteracies approach, bringing students’ language and culture into thecurriculum, engages students in their learning. This chapter also recognises the power of stories for language learning and cultural exploration and how stories,images, rhymes and melodies are at the core of our cultural identity. Research ineducational theory provides evidence that storytelling and the construction ofnarrative have a signifi cant impact on how students learn. One of the biggestimpacts is the ability to connect the subject matter to a personal experience of the
learner, allowing for a more powerful exploration of the content being studied.The argument posited here is that by integrating multimodality, multilingualismand intertextuality, digital stories transform the traditional act of simply reading aself-contained text to a more complex activity involving reading, watching, listening, sharing and actively interacting
Drama, English and Digital Storytelling: Using drama to create digital stories across languages and cultures
No full textAs part of the international. Multilingual Critical Connections Project, students from four UK schools created digital stories about mental illness, migration, technology and views of the world. Vicky Macleroy explores the integral role of drama in the digital storytelling process, and shows how learning English has been supported and enhanced through a multilingual approach
Learner autonomy, critical thinking and student voice
No full textIn this chapter we focus on our research fi ndings in relation to learner autonomy, critical thinking and student voice. Little (2004) in discussing learner autonomy sees it as learners becoming involved in all aspects of the learning process and understanding the rationale, content and ways of learning. Although this chapter is about learner autonomy this is not about students working alone, rather this approach to learning develops in interaction with others and teachers have a responsibility for making things happen. The teacher’s key role is to ‘create and maintain a learning community; if teachers stop teaching, most learners will stop learning’ (ibid.: 1). From this perspective, it is the nature of the pedagogical dialogue
that frames learning. As part of this process towards learner autonomy, young people need to be reflective and develop the ability to self-assess their learning
Multimodal Composition and Creativity
No full textThe focus in this chapter is multimodal composition and examining the creativeprocess of digital storytelling. Lundby (2008) talks about how digital storytelling‘creates a new composition’ through the multimodality of its stories and textsand challenges schools’ notion of literacy. In exploring the interactive andcomposing processes of digital storytelling, we highlight ‘the processual characterof creativity and aesthetic aspects of digital creation’ (Nyboe and Drotner,2008). In examining the digital world here, we aim to look at how young peoplelearn to become meaning makers and in the creation of a digital story decidehow ‘each of its elements – space, time, objects, beings, and actions – can beselected, arranged, and transformed for the needs of an aesthetic experience’
(Friedlander, 2008: 186)
Reflections and implications for multilingual digital literacy
No full textThe idea for researching multilingual digital storytelling arose out of concerns to do with language and literacy education in the UK context relating in particular to multilingualism and the growing role played by the digital media. At a time when the ability to navigate different cultural frames and different modes of communication have become key skills, we were deeply aware of the failure of mainstream education to prepare young people adequately for life in an increasingly interdependent and interconnected world
Critical Connections: Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project. Introduction and research methodology.
No full textIn part one of this book we examined how understandings about language and literacy learning have evolved during the late-modern period taking into account the significance of the digital media and online communication. In relation to the multiliteracies model, we have looked at both multimodal and multilingual strands highlighting how the latter has hitherto been under-researched, no doubt due, in part at least, to the fact that most studies have been carried out in English dominant countries. At the same time we have discussed the important role played by stories in the way we make sense of experience and in the way we learn. Foregrounding dialogic modes of thinking in relation to working with the digital media and in exploration of culture, we have explored different ways in which creativity and criticality can be fostered. This has involved interrogation of notions of learner agency and voice and recognition of their significance in relation to identity construction and active citizenship. We have also looked at ways in which learning takes place outside of school – in the home, in the community and online – and how boundaries between spaces of learning, social interaction and entertainment have become increasingly blurred especially for children and young people
Introduction
No full textStories take us into our own and other worlds. They appeal to people of all ages and across all cultures. They enable us to better understand the familiar, but also to make connections to the unknown. They engage our minds, but also our hearts. They can illuminate, but also challenge. And when we become authors of stories, we take a significant further step. We resist being defined by others and declare the legitimacy of a personal way of seeing and making sense of reality. Part of that way of seeing is conveyed in the language through which we choose to communicate and represent ourselves. When stories are created in different languages or combinations of languages, they often carry greater cultural authenticity. They also embody and give positive expression to plurilingual repertoires within individuals and societies providing a deeper literacy experience and a basis for greater intercultural respect and understanding
Exploring the transgressive, taboo and far out in a graphic novel of ‘Hansel and Gretel’
No full textHow is a graphic novel read? How do graphic novels subvert and transgress the borders and hinterlands of children’s literature? This chapter applies critical literacy and multimodal theory to the reading of a graphic novel, Hansel and Gretel & Zombies (Harper and Cano, 2016) and looks at how readers make meaning across modes. Reading children’s literature in this way recognises the complexity of multimodal communication and looks closely at the affordances of different modes. In using critical literacy and multimodal theory to analyse a graphic novel, this chapter interrogates how these texts play with the taboo and transgressive (Janks, 2010) and open up possibilities for subverting fairy tales. This approach examines the possibilities of different modes of representation to make meaning and looks carefully at how ideas are framed, from whose perspective, and how these graphic retellings play with death. It also examines how meaning is made through comic features employed in graphic novels (panels, gutter, flow, speech bubbles, movement lines and emanata, sound effects). Bringing graphic novels (and comics) into the study of children’s literature expands how we perceive the taboo in children’s literature presenting opposing viewpoints together and investigating ways that reading a graphic novel offers possibilities to the reader to play with transgressive and far-out ideas
How Weird is Weird? Young people, activist citizenship and multivoiced digital stories
No full textWhat happens when young people begin to frame stories from their communities through the lens of a camera? How can critical engagement with digital technology enable young people to construct alternative narratives and capture the languages and voices of their communities? In what ways can digital storytelling contribute to translingual-transcultural learning within global learning networks? In this chapter we look at how the process of digital storytelling is rooted in the community and how communities can be viewed as a ‘space for collective learning, action and change’ (Packham, 2008: 8) and as a space for reciprocity. Transforming personal and cultural stories into a bilingual film pushes young people to imagine other viewpoints, reconceptualise identities, and put across their ideas to a wider audience. As digital storytellers, young people start to think about how the lives of people in their community are understood and how the sharing and shaping of digital stories can be viewed as a political act (Hill, 2014). Young filmmakers are encouraged to engage in a form of activist citizenship (Isin & Neilsen, 2008) opening up new ways to represent and re-imagine their communities and advocate new kinds of citizenship
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