Multimodality

It is so completely true that children learn in a multimodal fashion. Not only do they want to write stories at school, but illustrate them and perform them for classmates. This multimodality is especially true when it comes to technology. Students increasingly want to create presentations on the computer using text, images, sounds, transitions, even movies. Students often come to school knowing more about technology than their teachers. They've already been online and have most likely been playing multimodal computer games for years. As educators, we must recognize the value of this kind of pre-existing literacy and analyze how it can help that particular student become literate in other areas. Faigly's article was written in 1999 and he mentioned that not every household is connected to the Internet. I think that is still true, but not nearly as much now as it was then. I've worked at "underprivileged" schools and upper middle class schools and both populations had a wealth of prior knowledge of technology and the Internet from use at home, at friend's houses, at the library, and at school. I really liked the example of the Zapatista and how they used the available technology to their advantage to further their message. This is what we should be teaching in school: authentic ways to use literacy to solve problems.