Week 12, "Let's Play": Ranker, all modes, Audio heading

"Kress ( 2003 ) defines an affordance in the context of discussing multimodality as follows:
What can a specific mode do?
What are its limitations and potentials?
What are the affordances of a mode?
The materiality of a mode, for instance the material of sound in speech or in music, or graphic matter and light in image, or of the motion of parts of the body in gesture, holds specific potentials for representation, and at the same time brings certain limitations."

(Ranker, 2015)



My first issue with this was that, for a guy talking about how important multimodality is, he sure didn't make any of his text multimodal. There's no audio, video -- nothing. However, Kress, the "father" of multimodality who is quoted here by Ranker, does. (Video above provided by YouTube)

Noisy! Probably not for someone who can't hear the audio.

I pulled the Kress quote because of Rankin's emphasis on "afforances," Which is essentially what we are doing with this week's blogs; we are attempting to find how a mode(s) works and for what purpose, what other modes it best works with, and then we are defining its limitations. For example. My heading is Audio, and audio won't work for everyone -- especially not alone.

So what do you do for a deaf person to hear the audio? Make it multimodal! Captions are a form of multimodality, and honestly, so are those multimodal articles NPR puts online.

Memes are just feels put into snippets.

But for those of us who can use the audio with some multimodal adjustments, BABR offers a lot of options, not the least of them vlogs and podcasts.

For the audio resource list from the book, check out bit.ly/MultimodalAudio!

In Ranker's article, we follow a class with a blog assignment similar to our own. The ninth-grade boys we follow, however, use a vlog and links, rather than the text we seem to insist on sticking to. "By narrating their research findings to their audience, they explored several topics in depth," and regularly responded to commentors from their class, helping them investigate the topic even further than they would otherwise. They eventually created their own documentary on fast food.

Affordances of their medium, vlogs, were montage, links, written interaction and, honestly, the ability to sample or remix meaning of other people's research (which was not on Ranker's list).

The following are some inspirational videos for multimodality and some tips from Ranker on how best to implement multimodality in the classroom.

"STEPS FOR IMMEDIATE IMPLEMENTATION 

1. Investigate what media are available to you that might enhance an upcoming inquiry project or unit. 

2. Consider what blogs and digital video can afford your students’ exploration of their topic, and how its distinct affordances can add layers and dimensions to your class inquiry project. For example, consider which aspects of your unit might be best suited to exploration through the visual versus written mode. Which aspects of the topic could be best explored through social interaction? 

3. If you are considering integrating blogs into your inquiry project, explore free blogging websites such as Blogger (blogger.com) and Edublogs (edublogs.org). Prior to using the blog with the class, begin by experimenting with setting up a class blog using the blogging site. Explore its parameters, capabilities, security settings, and generally how you might use the blog with your class. 

4. If you are considering integrating digital video into your inquiry project, explore the digital video editing programs available to you. PCs now come with software packages that include Movie Maker, and Apple computers come with iMovie installed. Depending upon how familiar you are with using digital video, play around with the available video editing software, making a movie of your own. This will enable you to familiarize yourself with video editing interfaces, and to create a video that you can use as an example with the class when introducing video editing."

(Ranker, 2015, p.577)

So there it is. It may look long but I have two block quotes, three videos, an image, a GIF, and only about three or four paragraphs I wrote -- and that was me being wordy like I am. I was hoping to do the whole thing without typing, but as I mentioned before, Ranker doesn't have any audio or video I could find :-(

Good luck with your posts and chapters! See you Saturday.