Multiliteracies

We live in an ever increasing technological world and as technology advances it is important, as teachers, that we have some awareness and understanding of the impact that this will have on children in relation to their learning. Children are saturated with multimedia and in many cases are far more technologically savvy than the adults around them. The use of such multimedia has prompted and required new thinking about literacy in general. Hill defines the term multiliteracies as 'actually cover[ing] what has also been regarded as electronic literacies, technoliteracies, digital literacies, visual literacies, and print based literacies' (2006, p. 323). The ability to be multiliterate and be able to understand and navigate the different forms of media will be a vital part of children's learning in the future and as Hill states 'we live in a time where speed of information is central to success, and reading and writing proficiency will be even more critical to our children's future' (2006, p. 340).
 * Multiliteracies**


 * PHOTO STORY ACTIVITY**

As part of this assignment I decided it would be a good opportunity to try and learn more about the applications of Photo Story 3 for Windows, as this program could also been viewed as a means of creating multimodal artifacts as it involves text, pictures and sound. I asked my nephew, Oliver (7) and my niece Laura (8) to help me create a story for this aspect of my assignment. I asked Oliver and Laura to create pictures on felt boards, “Felt Creations”, which I had purchased from Aldi. There were five themes for Oliver and Laura to choose from and I advised that they could use one board or a combination of the different themes to create pictures for a story. The different themes included: Knight Outer Space Safari Police Nativity After they had created their pictures on the boards I then took photos of these on my digital camera and uploaded them into the Photo Story program. I then asked Laura and Oliver to create a story to go with their pictures. This would be an example of shared writing as I typed the text on the computer as they dictated their ideas with some help and guidance from myself to prompt further detail in their stories. After we had created the text for the pictures I then asked Laura and Oliver to read out their stories and recorded their voices over the top of the pictures. I have used their recorded reading as a means of practicing running records and these records can be viewed on the Reading page of my wiki. Both Laura and Oliver really enjoyed creating these stories as it involved a creative aspect of coming up with the pictures and also the novelty of using the computer to create a story. They also really liked being able to play back the completed story and hear their voices which accompanied the pictures that they had created. I also really enjoyed making the stories with the children and it is something that I may use eventually in a classroom environment.

Oliver's Story
 * media type="file" key="Olivers Story.wmv"

Laura's Story
 * media type="file" key="Lauras Story.wmv"