Oh Me, Oh My, Multi-Modality

MULTIMODALITY!! So, what is there to say?? SO much, that’s for sure! Well, first off I think that it must be stated that I very much agree with the multimodality theory of teaching. Incorporating different forms of media into today’s composition classes is extremely pertinent to today’s society. Almost everywhere we look, we see forms of literacy in all its stages: pictures, videos, animation, traditional text – and all combinations of these. So why wouldn’t we create curriculums that include assignments which reflect real-world applications of text and literacy? It seems obvious that we should no longer solely focus on text-based composition assignments in order to create multi-literate students. Obviously I believe there are many benefits gained from multimodality learning, the most prominent would be the overall familiarity with the different forms of media that appear in everyday life. I guess some complications with multimodal learning would be finding an effective way to incorporate it into a curriculum in a way that enables students to benefit from it. I think that there is a lot of “stuff” to multimodality, and the whole idea can come across as overwhelming so it is important for educators to be able to narrow down the most useful tools that multimodality can offer. Also, I think it is important to be flexible with the applications of multimodality, by which I mean that curriculums should reflect the usages of modes and texts as they are actually used in the real world, and as real-world modes change, so should curriculums.