RM Winter 2017 FINAL

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Reading Matters
Technology Matters
Reading Matters | Volume 16 • Winter 2016 | |63|
and has privacy control settings-students can choose whether
to make their website public, private, or limit access to those
given the web link for the Site. As with other digital writing, we
faced a paradox in publishing these sites. We wanted to allow
students to publish their writing for an authentic audience;
however, we also had to ensure student safety (Hicks, 2009).
We chose to post a link to each student’s website on their
English teacher’s page of the school website to give students a
chance to display their website for an audience other than their
classmates; however, this page was also password protected. The
students knew this password and could share it with those who
they wanted to view their sites, yet this password protected them
from having unintentional viewers stumble upon their websites.
Whatever the decision regarding publication of students’ writing,
it is important that students and teachers discuss and understand
how student work will be published and the audience it may
potentially influence (Hicks, 2009). Particularly in this case of
students designing an argument for a cause important to them,
it was important that they felt their argument had the potential
to sway opinion. However, this authentic audience must be
negotiated safely within parameters agreeable to parties such
as students, parents, teachers, and school administrators.
Making Arguments Multimodal
Jacobs (2012) reasoned why it may be becoming more
essential to teach multimodality: “As the world grows increasingly
multimodal, instruction needs to move beyond traditional
texts and include opportunities for engagement in multimodal
academic literacies wherein students not only ‘read’multimodal
texts, but also create multimodal texts” (p. 249). In describing
the digital, multimodal tools used in high-school classrooms,
teachers may gain means to instantiate the perspective of
multiliteracies. By having students create a multimodal argument
for a PSA of their chosen cause, teachers can follow the concept
germane to the NLG (1996) of helping students become engaged
citizens capable of designing arguments for the benefit of
future communities. The description of the tools we used during
the writing process as well as their purpose, affordances, and
disadvantages may provide teachers means to move beyond
using technology merely for direct instruction or for students
recopying what they have already written by more conventional
means (Peterson & McClay, 2012). Instead, in using these tools
for academic purposes, students will build the digital skills and
multiliteracies necessary to affect change for their future in an
increasingly globalized and technological world (NLG, 1996).
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