Beyond Technology for Technology's Sake: Advancing Multiliteracies in the Twenty-First Century

Borsheim, C, Merrit, K, & Reed, D (2008). Beyond technology for technology's sake: advancing multiliteracies inthe twenty-first century . The Clearing House. 82, 87-90.

Summary

The use of technology needs to go farther than making the learning happen because your using technology; The use of technology should be used to enhance learning by using the standards already provided by the state or district. National Council of the Teachers of English President Kylene Beers wanted to create a theme that says Because Shift Happens: Teaching in the 21st century. It was mainly focusing on the integration of technology in English as a more of a lifestyle. The use of communication technologies and multimedia allows the teacher to teach the same standards in English except move from a traditional sense to a technology rich sense, which creates a multi-literate person. A multi-literate person is someone who is knowldgeable in different subject areas and in different contexts and environments. Therefore multiliteracies is using texts in many differents ways but is still knowledgeable of the use of the text and can interact with the text. For examples, learning about poems can begin in the classroom, then use that knowledge to build information through research, and use all the of the differnt texts (information) to create a blog and discuss the texts with other people. The teachers who would commit themselves to a multiliteracy pedagogy would help the students understand the varieties of text and media as well as why a certain piece of technology would help to attain a specific goal while using the text.

Multiliteracies in the Traditional Curriculum
High stakes tests always seem to get in the way when teaching and using technology. But the multiliteracies pedagogy promotes a constructivist model for teaching. Also technology can enhance traditional teaching practices and correlate with the standards. Last, the use of technology supports and advances the multiliteracies. Carlin used a 10th Grade English class to use the technologies to enhance the writing process for a research paper. Instead of using the books in the library, the students decided the use of the Internet was more up-to-date. As they took notes, instead of using notecards for ordering, sorting, locating, and gathering information the students created wikis, blogs, and used Microsoft Word for note taking. Students who did not feel comfortable suing wikis and blogs opted to use Microsoft Word to document and cite sources for the research. Lastly, students used Microsoft Word to compose and revise the paper. When the paper was fully revised then the students had to turn the paper into a multimedia presentation, which included movie maker or Power Point. In conclusion, technology was used to organize online information, facilitate revisions, and collaborate between peers. Collaboration was created when revising and producing the multimedia presentation. The multiliteracies support the traditional curricular objectives.

Multiliteracies beyond Classroom Walls

Dawn focused on engaging students in reading and writing. The use of blogs, wikis, podcasts, and networking sites helped students to understand the ideas in the classroom and beyond. The students were able to network during class time and outside of the classroom. Dawn wanted a larger audience for the high school students so she began podcasting. Students listend to the National Public Radio's "This I Believe" essays, wrote an essay, recorded and edited podcasts, and posted them on a blog so people in the community and country could listen to the podcasts. The National Public Radio's "This I Believe" essay helped these speech students to hear the content in the speech as well as listen to the volume and speed of the speech.

Also students created a poet page on a networking site such as MySpace or FaceBook to help understand genre. The site was based on the Internet based research of the genre by the student. The networking site had to have sections such as list of friends (allowed poeple to comment on the genre on the page created), chat converstaions with other poets (students)about their work (helped create ideas and look at different perspectives), or an analysis of a poem written from the poet's perspective (analyze the poem and decipher its meaning). Students responded to the texts about work and were more involved in the text and not the technology necessarily. The multiliteracies, which focuses on the use of technology with pre-existing standards, focus on a different kind of thinking for both teachers and students. Teachers think of ways that technology will enhance the pre-existing standards and students use the technology to build those skill needed to meet the pre-existing standards.

Multiliteracies for Preservice Teachers

When Kelly used wikis and blogs in the preservice teacher classroom the students gained the ability to reflect and learn more about the technology's role in the multiliteracies in life. Though the students already have knowledge of the use of technology, the use of the wikis and blogs allows others to help preservice teachers build more information and experience with the role of technology with the multiliteracies. A wikispace was provided to invite students, mentor teachers, interns, university faculty and staff, and teacher candidates to collaborate and discuss online the different methods and ideas based on the multiliteracies. This technique increased the professional communication necessary for teaching.

Multiliteracies Pedagogy: Adding Depth to a Breadth of Possibilities

Students of all levels need to develop multiliteracy skills. Skills that can be used in different environments, different contexts, and different subjects which also focus on the implementation of technology. Incorporating technology in language arts is important, but it should meet the pre-existing standards.

Reflection
The ideas from this article are parallel to my way of thinking. I want to read more about ways teachers implement technology without it being a bourdon. I always come up with ideas for teachers to help them implement the use of technology so that it would save more time or would be more beneficial to the student. I enjoyed the different uses of technology in this article. The research paper that was completed solely with the use of technology was a great idea. I have used all of those steps before in Technology class. I would like to learn about the comment option though in Microsoft Word because that would save a lot of time on my behalf and help the students more directly with editing. Next, the use of the MySpace and FaceBook to create a poet's page was a brilliant idea. My only thought was that it would be hard to convince the parents, principal, and superintendent to allow you to use MySpace in an English class. The use of the wikis and blogs helped the students to come out and state their opinions and thoughts on a particular matter. Again I feel as though I have another way to use technology in the classroom.

Impact

After reading this article I decided I should have read this article first. I know it is not necessarily about podcasting but it is about implementing technology into language arts. That is where the multiliteracies becomes very important using the technology to meet the learning standards. Students as well as teachers are always changing to the new approaches to learning and teaching. My thought is that if technology will increase the interest in learning then why not use the capabilities of technology? I will use this article to help me focus on the proposal for the use of emerging technology in the classroom. I have looked at ipods and podcasting, but this article supports the use of the podcast. I am looking at another article based solely on podcasts for next week. I am hoping it will help me to better understand podcasting in more depth.

I am still deciding on what exactly I will be proposing for the ipod. I did see something in an article named iWrite used for the ipod that I would like to read more about. So, so far, I stand at the use of podcasting in the classroom. This article has helped me to decide that I will focus on Language Arts for the proposal.