Post 5

“A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures” by The New London Group

“#PleaseHelp: Learning to Write (Again) on Twitter” by Keri Franklin

“The authors argue that the multiplicity of communications channels and increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the world today call for a much broader view of literacy than portrayed by traditional language-based approaches”(1).

The New London Group provides an overview of how multiliteracies can be used in a changing social environment. By using multimodal ways of communication, students can draw on their own “semiotic literacy practices” to convey meaning.

“In relation to the new environment of literacy pedagogy, we need to reopen two fundamental questions: the “what” of literacy pedagogy, or what it is that students need to learn; and the  “how” of literacy pedagogy, or the range of appropriate learning relationships”(13).

In her blog, Keri Franklin ambitiously decided to join Twitter. She liked the idea of Twitter, although she did not fully understand the genre.Before she began effectively tweeting, she know that she would need help. “We all need support as writers. It helps if we have someone more experienced to explain the whys and hows”. She needed to learn the basics, but many of the concepts of twitter were foreign to her. After seeking her mentor she was introduced to a metalanguage. A metalanguage consists of words used for talking about and teaching language, and once she understood things like hash tagging and the intricacies of the twittersphere, she began to read. She developed a basic understanding of a new literary and immersed herself in the genre. With the tools in hand, and the mentors in place to immerse herself in a new form of literacy, she dove in, and slowly but surely began to write in a new genre.