RM Winter 2017 FINAL

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Reading Matters
Technology Matters
| 60| Reading Matters | Volume 16 • Winter 2016 |
ABSTRACT—This article describes the digital, multimodal tools
used throughout the writing process to help students design
multimodal arguments. The author discusses the need for
integrating multimodal arguments in classrooms based upon
the New London Group’s multiliteracies perspective. Reflecting
upon a formative experiment in high-school English classrooms,
the author describes how students used these tools to argue
for a chosen social cause, the implementation of these tools at
each stage of the writing process, the purpose for using each
tool, and the affordances and disadvantages of such tool use.
Multimodal composing is “the conscious manipulation of the
interaction among various sensory experiences-visual, textual,
verbal, tactile, and aural-used in the processes of producing
and reading texts” (Bowen &Whithaus, 2013, p. 7). The New
London Group (1996) highlighted the concept of multimodality
in their perspective of multiliteracies. Although the New
London Group (NLG) and others described the potential and
necessity for students understanding the expanding concept
of text and literacy that digital technologies afford to enact
social change, some doubt whether or not adolescents will
really achieve such change in these digital spaces (Gladwell,
2010). In a formative experiment in two high-school English III
classrooms over an eight-week period, I worked with a teacher
to enact an intervention using digital, multimodal tools with
a process writing approach to help students write better
arguments, both traditional and online. During this intervention
we helped students design multimodal arguments for a cause
important to them and publish this argument as a Public Service
Announcement (PSA). I describe here the digital, multimodal
tools used in this intervention with the hope of giving teachers
practical classroom application of the multiliteracies framework.
Writing, Digital Tools, and Social
Change
Writing is a technology that has long held the potential to
impact social change. For example, Martin Luther revolutionized
the church by using the printing press to disseminate his theses
(Howard, 2010). Today, technology, such as social media, is a tool
that writers deliberately utilize to publish their social arguments.
For example, the United States government attempted to provoke
an uprising of the Cuban people not through diplomacy or
military action, but through the spread of social media (Butler,
Gillum, & Arce, 2014). The United States Agency for International
Development created a Cuban form of Twitter called ZunZuneo in
what some considered an attempt to undermine the communist
government in Cuba. Shirky (2008) claimed that changes in
communication tools led to changes in how society functions
and maintains itself. However, some doubt the power of social
action in online environments. Gladwell (2010) argued that
Twitter and other social media technologies will not be the tools
of the next generation as they lack the leadership, organization,
and close personal ties that characterize successful social
protests, such as those of the Civil Rights Movement. Regarding
students’ use of technological tools, research is beginning to
debunk the term digital native introduced by Prensky (2001)
as a myth and question whether or not students have the
digital literacies necessary to support academic learning, such
as argumentative writing (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008).
Digital Tools, Multiliteracies, and
Writing Instruction
Adolescents today live in a world in which they are surrounded
by technology as they are exposed to media an average of 7.5
hours a day, seven days a week (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010).
Their engagement in these activities and the need to integrate
these activities meaningfully into schooling has been noted
(Alvermann, 2008). Professional organizations for literacy have
issued position statements on new literacies that call for teaching
practices to include teaching students to assess information
found online, create with multimedia, understand multimodality,
and be given the strategies required to practice literacy online
(International Reading Association [IRA], 2009; National Council
of Teachers of English [NCTE], 2005, 2008). However, in this digital
era in which authorship is ubiquitous and reaches an immediate,
vast audience (Yancey, 2009), how are students being instructed to
use technology to develop writing that is not merely participatory
as Gladwell (2010) implied, but is reflective and influential? The
NLG (1996) saw the need to teach students in an increasingly
technological and globalized world an expanded concept of
literacy, which they coined multiliteracies. Whereas traditional
schooling attempted to homogenize citizens to prepare them
with the same skills and knowledge to be ready for the economic
market, the intent of multiliteracies is to celebrate differences
to teach students to use their particular skills and interests to
be active, engaged citizens capable of designing “their social
future” (NLG, 1996, pp. 60, 72). The NLG focused on designing an
expanded concept of text across multiple modes of representation-
linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and multimodal. Of these
modes, the multimodal was considered the most significant (NLG,
1996), especially today as the Internet and other Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) demand integrating modes
to convey and comprehend meaning (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000).
However, the NLG created a perspective that still has limited
classroom application (Graham & Benson, 2010; Sewell & Denton,
2011). In addition to a dearth of publications to help integrate
multiliteracies in classrooms, teachers also face an accountability
Using Digital Tools to Convey Multimodal
Arguments
By Emily Howell, Iowa State University