RM Winter 2017

methods for middle and high school classrooms . New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

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). References Alvermann, D. E. (2008). Why bother theorizing adolescents’online literacies for classroom practice and research? Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy , 52 (1), 8-19.

Bailey, N. M., & Carroll, K. M. (2010). Motivating students’research skills and interests through a multimodal, multigenre research project. The English Journal, 99 (6), 78-85. Bennett, S., Maton, K., & Kervin, L. (2008). The digital natives debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39 (5), 775-786. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00793.x

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Visual rhetoric in a digital world: A critical sourcebook (pp. 309-320). NY: Bedford/ St. Martin’s.

Bowen, T., &Whithaus, C. (Eds.). (2013).“What else is possible”: Multimodal composing and genre in the teaching of writing. In Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres (pp. 1-13). University of Pittsburgh Press.

Butler, D., Gillum, J., & Arce, A. (2014, April 4). US secretly created ‘Cuban Twitter’ to stir unrest. The Associated Press. Retrieved from

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Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (2000). Designs for social futures. In Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). Multiliteracies (pp. 203-234). New York, NY: Routledge.

Gladwell, M. (2010). Small change. The New Yorker , 4 (2010), 42-49.

“Glogpedia.”(2014). Glogster EDU. Retrieved from http://edu.glogster.com/ glogpedia

Graham, M. S., & Benson, S. (2010). A springboard rather than a bridge: Diving into multimodal literacy. English Journal , 100 (2), 93-97.

Hicks, T. (2009). The digital writing workshop . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Hillocks, G., (2010). Teaching argument for critical thinking and writing: An

introduction. English Journal, 99 (6), 24-32.

Hocks, M. E. (2003). Understanding visual rhetoric in digital writing environments. College Composition and Communication , 54 (4), 629-656.

Howard, T. W. (2010). Technology changes rapidly; humans don’t. In Design to thrive: Creating social networks and online communities that last (pp. 199-224). Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. Howard, T.W. (2011). Intellectual properties in multimodal, 21st-Century composition classrooms. In Danielle Nicole Devoss and Martine Courant Rife
(Eds.), Copy(write): Intellectual property in the writing classroom (pp. 107-129). TheWAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press.

Andrews, R. (1997). Reconceiving argument. Educational Review, 49 (3), 259-269. doi:10.1080/0013191970490305

International Reading Association (IRA). (2009). New literacies and 21st century technologies

Applebee, A. N., & Langer, J. A. (2013). Writing instruction that works: Proven

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