Multimodal+Literacy+Narratives-+Leveraging+Audio,+Image,+and+Video


 * Multimodal Literacy Narratives- Leveraging Audio, Image, and Video **

toc

=Description= Media in variety forms surrounds us, now more than ever. In this session, presenters will share ways in which audio, image, and video can be used in creative ways to explore and create compelling narratives and engaging historical artifacts. Presenters will focus on a variety of new literacies activities that leverage both original and existing audio, image, and video files to create multimodal compositions that connect media literacy and humanities curriculum content.

This session will include an overview of the role of audio and visual content in narrative and hands-on work with technology tools that facilitate the construction of multimodal literacy narratives. Our hands on work will focus on four humanities based pedagogies, Historical Soundscapes, Historical Narrative Mashup, DV Sound Bite, and the Commercial Narrative Remix.

Historical Soundscapes
What does it mean to compose? Most of us probably think of music, maybe classical music, when we hear the word compose. Of course, a composition is much more. Compositions involve the creative and even artistic rendering of ideas using various modes of express. We might compose in text or with paint or with sound or even with physical objects. Today, compositions are taking on a new meaning with the emergence of the new technologies. In this activity, students use a free audio software program called [|Audacity] to compose an Historical SoundScape. A [|soundscape] is a collection of sounds that emerge from a natural or human-made environment. For this activity, students can compose sounds to interpret an historical event, place, or people.

For more on using Audacity to create audio projects see [|this article] from Wikieducator.

Click here to [|listen] to historical soundscape composition on a topic from Raleigh North Carolina's sports history. This project is an interpretation of a place in Raleigh where a minor league baseball team used to play. The team had many names as it changed major league affiliations over the years, but for a long period it was known as the Raleigh Caps. The Caps played in a stadium, long since demolished, at the corner of Peace St and Capital Blvd. close to downtown Raleigh. Today, the site is home to the city of Raleigh's Solid Waste Services. The map below shows the location of the facility. It is the placemark labeled "A." This soundscape interprets the place with sounds from the Solid Waste Services facility, as well as ambiant sound from a baseball game, some history read aloud about Raleigh Caps most famous player, and a 1906 recording of baseball's most famous song. media type="googlemap" key="http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&q=waste+peace+st&fb=1&split=1&gl=us&ei=YfNVSrOmB4KntgfIhZnUAg&radius=0.26&sll=35.78795,-78.642626&sspn=0.006092,0.00912&filter=0&rq=1&t=h&ll=35.789064,-78.644814&spn=0.006092,0.00912&z=16&output=embed" width="425" height="350"

Post your ideas or creating an historical soundscape. media type="custom" key="4073575"

Historical Narrative Map Mash
In everyday life, humans are constantly processing information about the space around them. We perceive our environment through multiple sources, and typically rely on the subtle combination of these perceptions to make sense out of our environs. Often, we package information that emphasizes one sense over another. Maps are an example such a representation. Maps are commonplace because of the power that visual representations provide, but maps also allow us to transcend the limits of our perceptive power. With a map we can see around corners, over hills, even to the other side of the world. New technologies enable us to supplement traditional maps in powerful and meaningful ways. This activity is focused on using historical sources to enhance maps.

An Historical Narrative MapMash combines spatial representations with historical resources in a creative and descriptive manner. The term [|mashup] emerged in the last few years and is most often used to refer to a mixture of digital content. A mashup can be made in an number of environments. Early mashups were combinations of software applications, and there are a lot of these software mashups available. Here is a recent list of over [|1700 Google Map mashups]! We will be doing something a bit different. We will compose mashups in a spatial context using Google Maps.

This activity focuses on identifying an historical topic, developing a question related to that topic, locating sources relevant for an investigation of the question, and the constructing an interpretation or answer to your question in Google Maps. Your interpretation will mashup the various sources you have located as well as presenting some interpretative comments. Think of this as a new way to write an historical narrative or essay. Instead of using paper or a word processor, we will use a series of text boxes in the Google My Maps application. To access Google My Maps, just visit [] and click the My Maps link in the upper left. From here you can compose an historical narrative mashup by simply dropping placemarks on the location of relevant historical information. Before you start composing, it might be helpful to create a storyboard that lays out the various pieces of your narrative.

In this example, I have started a map that looks at the reactions of everyday Americans immediately following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This map features historical resources from a collection of audio recording that we made by field workers for the Library Congress's [|Archive of American Folk Song]. The question driving this inquiry is; What were the reactions of Americans in the days immediately following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?

media type="googlemap" key="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&msa=0&msid=100766996001237245403.00046d2f39746e1b498de&ll=37.926868,-85.869141&spn=24.191303,37.353516&z=4&output=embed" width="425" height="350"

For more on this historical narrative mapmash, see my blog posts at [] and []

The interviews are featured in an American Memory online collection called [|After the Day of Infamy]. Visit this site, click on "List of Recordings" and listen to one of the interview recordings. Share your thoughts about the interview(s) you listen to at media type="custom" key="4073575"

Leveraging Digital Video to Create Narrative
Emerging technologies, like digital video (DV), provide students and educators with an opportunity to use media to create, produce, manipulate, and share evolving conceptions of text and multimedia products. As such, DV is a particularly dynamic technology with compelling implications for today's classroom. While older forms of video have been used to varying degrees in education, DV can play an important role in the 1:1 classroom as a new media form and a new tool for multimedia composition.

In addition, integrating visual images with written text, as done in most digital stories and multimodal compositions, enhances and accelerates comprehension. Meaning here is not necessarily additive, but more layered, interactive, and complex. As such, text and pictures, when paired together, often convey more meaning when juxtaposed. This effect is further intensified with digital video, where motion, design, and interactivity can easily be manipulated by the user and added to the mix.

Judith Wells Lindfors writes, //“I believe that **inquiry** is universal, a part of what it is to be human. Over the past decade a similar suggestion has been proposed for **narrative**. The presence of narrative across cultures suggests that to be human is to create and respond to story. Barbara Hardy (1977) calls narrative ‘a primary act of mind’ (p. 12), a fundamental way we understand and construct our experience in the world. However, within this universal presence of narrative, there is wonderful cultural **variation in the sorts of stories told and in the manner and contexts of their telling.** And within these cultural norms, the individual creates and tells and responds to story. And so the suggestion is that narrative is at once a universal and cultural and an individual phenomenon.”//
 * Content connection: //Narrative.//**

DV maximizes this potential for variation in the stories we tell and the manner and contexts of their telling.

Framework for Using DV in the Classroom: //Watch, Analyze,// and //Create.//

Two examples of **Creating DV** (DIY / Flip cam aesthetic):


 * ==DV Sound Bite==

Twain refers to a sound bite as "a minimum of sound to a maximum of sense." The digital video sound bite, then, provides us with a dynamic way to explore and portray theme and thematic content. It allows us to leverage DV for multimodal composition in simple but compelling ways.

1) Choose theme & complete initial freewrite; 2) Collaborate in small group to craft group definition; 3) Based on initial group definition, draft sound bite, storyboard, and film!; 4) Read variety of texts related to theme and engage in some inquiry; 5) Revise definition and sound bite based on informed reading and research; 6) Create new soundbite DV!; 7) Share DV’s and reflect on theme, process, and product!
 * Process:**


 * Examples:**

[] || **Initial Thoughts on 21st Century Literacies DV Sound Bite** (Collected) || **21st Century Literacies DV Sound Bite Follow up** (Single Group) ||
 * [[image:wisdom3.jpg link="http://wisdombook.org"]] || media type="custom" key="4083747" || media type="custom" key="4083763" ||
 * **Andrew Zuckerman's //Wisdom//** (book trailer)


 * ==Commercial Narrative Remix==

Punya Mishra speaks of the importance of "repurposing" media and technology as a part of the new literacies focus. The commercial narrative remix provides a dynamic way to explore, generate, and manipulate narrative.

- Content connections: //media literacy, online reading comprehension,// and //storytelling.//

//**Option 1:** Critical response, reaction, transformation of commercial message://


 * media type="youtube" key="e50YBu14j3U" height="364" width="445" || media type="youtube" key="_uozG9td6AE" height="364" width="445" ||
 * **Kaplan U. Original** || **Kaplan U. Remix** ||

//**Option 2:** Creating a new narrative out of the existing audiovisual components of the commercial message://


 * media type="custom" key="4083515" || media type="custom" key="4083489" ||
 * **Worldwide Coverage Original** || **Worldwide Coverage Remix** ||

- To download a copy of the original Worldwide Coverage commercial to manipulate, click [|here]. Please contact Carl at carl_young@ncsu.edu to share what you create!


 * media type="custom" key="4084125" ||
 * Carl's Presentation: DV Focus ||

=Additional Resources=

- [|Code of Best Practices for Fair Use Practices in Media Literacy Education] - Temple University

- [|Copyright and Fair Use SlideShare] - Spiro Bolos, New Trier High School

- [|Creative Commons]

- [|CC Mixter]

- [|Remix America]

= = = = =Continued Discussion about the Multimodal Literacy Narratives Session= Continue the discussion on the media type="custom" key="4073575"