Digital Storytelling & Multimodal Composition- Blog Post 4

The use of technology in the classroom has drastically changed throughout my time in school; yet, surprisingly, how it was used in English classes has not. The first time I recall using technology in an English class was in middle school when we would read weekly Achieve3000 articles on our individually issued Chromebooks and answer the questions associated with them. In high school, we would occasionally use the Chromebook cart to do research as part of the frontloading process of a new unit. Also, we would typically spend a day in the computer lab typing up the final draft of a paper. The only time technology was ever a part of composing was during the occasional PowerPoint presentation. When I think about how integral technology has become today, especially considering the shift to online composing and submission in the context of Covid-19, it is wild to think about how little my high school prepared me for education in the context of technology and multimodal production. In college, I have had many more opportunities to explore digital composing and other multimodal forms. Going through college in a pandemic has pushed lots of new challenges on students and professors to come up with various formats for assignments and final projects. I created a narrated PowerPoint as a final project for my Intro to Educational Psychology class, which allowed me to dabble in balancing visuals, written and spoken words. Last semester I had a writing workshop class in which all of our writing projects were submitted as zines. It was amazing how the process of creating zines became intertwined with my writing process; for example, as I was writing I planned out how I could play with page space to go along with what I was writing. I'm even creating a blog right now for Currins 547, which is my first time working in this form of online composing.

    When I think about my own future classroom, I definitely plan on incorporating technology and other multimodal composition as part of the composing process of writing. I would love to do a unit on zines in my class because as I mentioned before, the modality of the zine eventually became part of how I expressed what I was trying to convey. Also, the community that was built in that class throughout the process of trading zines and commenting on them was really rewarding, especially considering for many of us it was the first semester back on campus. This is likely why Buchanan states zines may be beneficial to "engage and motivate students to become involved in the written word." In short, zines build community. When it comes to other new media genres, I am particularly interested in the Book Trailer. Not only are students all likely to be familiar with the trailer concept as it relates to movies, but by reading a book and creating the trailer, students must think hierarchically to decide what they should advertise. This causes children to engage in deeper learning about what they had read and causes them to highlight moments of suspense in the story. I also found myself very drawn to a digital diary, specifically the COVID-19 Journal by Caitlyn M. in a past class. I think this is something that is more compelling for me personally because I have always wanted to be better about journaling my experiences and emotions and I think being able to play around with including videos or pictures of the experience can be really beneficial in my journalling.