Week 7 Article Reviews

Theories and Practices of Multimodal Education

I found this article very informative and surprisingly interesting.  Not being an ELA teacher, I fell that I have not been able to explore the values of literacy in the educational development of young learners.  Simply ideas that the article discussed such as the font having meaning and the various computerized type design and photo mechanical printing technologies that enhance visual texts, I was not aware of prior to reading this article.  The article explained how there has been new shifts in literacy learning when teachers and students interact with the characters, plots and visual aids in children books.  When reading a book out load to a group of students, the students should be able to comment aloud during the reading to express feelings and thoughts as they hear the story.  I remember when I was in elementary school and it was "story time" the class was not aloud to make a sounds.  If you did talk, you were sent out of the reading circle and had to read silently at your desk.  Maybe this is why I never liked reading as a child.  Reading was a form of punishment in school.  This is where I think education in America has failed.  Many children don't have the desire to learn because we do not allow them to want to learn by making learning exciting and fun for them.  Allowing students to create their own stories and animations to go along with them allows students to be creative and independent thinkers.  Literacy education has been reconstructed now with the use of digital media and visual text.  Now there are various forms of social and cultural shaped resources that school can bring into their classroom to enhance learning. 

Using The ADDIE Model to Design Second Life Activities for Online Learners

I really enjoyed reading this article and I had no idea that a technology such as Second Life online learning existed.  I am amazed at the findings discussed in the article about "social presence" and the comparison between face-to-face learning and the SL learning.  I personally do not enjoy the online learner experience because of the lack of social presence.  I am a face-to-face learner and I have always strive in the classroom setting.  This is currently my first online class and I feel that I am not creating relationships with my instructor or my peers.  Through the use of SL, I am anxious to see if this will change.  I think that the interactions of the avatars will be different and I find it hard to believe that they avatar's personality will reflect mine but I am eager to discover the use of SL to enhance my performance as an online student.  As the article discussed, the three relationship categorize of multi-level interaction are very important for a strong learning community.  I am interested to test out the verbal and non-verbal forms of my avatar to help promote these interactions.  I think that SL sounds like a effective tool to help bring together the online learning community but I do worry about the different challenges that were mentioned in the article.  My main concern is the possible need to upgrade computer equipment.  Not all students are in a position to upgrade their computer which may cause a huge bump in the online learning unit.  Overall, I thought that the article was informative and I am eager to create my avatar!