Double Entry Journal 12

Chapter 6: Analyzing Students' Multimodal Texts: The Product and the Process

1. Why do educators need to be careful about  terms like "Digital Native"?

 It will "lead to an understanding of a whole generation as a homogeneous group."

2. What outcome occurs when young people are encourage to transform their understanding of particular topics by designing a multimodal text?

 It's positive.  It "supports the notion that digital transformations and designing can enhance the learning process."

3. You may skip the section titled "Context for the Project".

4. What was the goal of the project in terms of product?

"The goal in terms of product was to track the development of the participants’ multimodal literacies over a two-year period by comparing two multimodal products created at the beginning and end of the period (see Levy & Kimber, 2009)." 

5. What was the goal of the project in terms of process?

 "The goal in terms of process was to gain a deeper understanding of how multimodal texts were created, especially when the students were working in pairs at the computer (see Gardner & Levy, 2010)."

6. How were the participants for the study selected?

"..initially chose to focus on a small group represented by one school. Then, from this group, we selected the students who fulfilled the following three criteria: they had worked collaboratively in pairs, they had fully completed the task, and the video screen data recordings were intact and complete.

7.  Describe the task students engage is for the purpose of this study?

 "The 2004 task required students to evaluate possible solutions in response to the environmental threats posed by plastic bags; the 2006 task followed a similar pattern, but with global warming as the topic. Each task was carefully structured and divided into three phases of development: researching, designing, and reflecting. Part of the research process required the student to complete two templates: first, a concept map to organize information acquired from web sources; and second, a decision-making matrix to facilitate transformation of the ideas in their concept map into a preferred solution, as required for their multimodal text."

8. Explain how the researchers compared the student created multimodal texts?

 • the first slide/page in the set (title slide/page)

• the choice and shape or wording in the headings of individual slides/pages throughout the set (headings)

• the quality of knowledge revealed in each slide/page and the complete set (knowledge representation)

9. What differences in Jenny's PowerPoint presentation do you find the most interesting?

The fact that her position on the topic went from directness to neutral.

10. How is working together on a computer unlike working together using a pencil and paper?

 1.  Typed words appear on the screen immediately, but there is usually a wait between keying an instruction and the response of the computer. 

 2.  The length of the wait time is unpredictiable

11. What was interesting about student's behavior as they collaborated on a task at the computer?

"and the computer response acts as a cueing device for the users to resume their onscreen work."

12. What can teachers learn about designing learning activities that involve the creation of multimodal texts from this study?

Teachers can learn that it is "beneficial to develop in students’ time management skills and a sense of priorities in relation to the task at hand."  Also, that
the technology needs to work effectively and efficiently and in a timely manner" because the temptation to become off-task increases while having to wait for results or the technology to work properly.

13. According the the conclusion of this study, what do student need to learn in order to successful complete a multimodal text construction?
should include a range of skills that are required for task completion and include ICT skills; cognitive skills such as analysis, synthesis, summation, and logical organization of ideas; and focus and time management skills.

14. Are you surprised by the conclusions drawn in this study?
"Students still require traditional skills for successful task completion."
 It's not so much that I am surprised by this actual statement, but more surprised that people didn't believe or assume that traditional skills are not necessary.



Source:

Thomas, Michael (2011-04-29). Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies (p.83-95). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.