Writing Is More Than Ink on a Page Today
Filed by Josh Karp at 10:05 am on January 26, 2010 in Identity, Media Literacy, Participatory Learning, Schools • Leave a comment
Literacy today means not only the ability to read and write, but to create and comprehend an integrated mix of words, sounds, videos and images. Meet teachers and students who are leading the way.
There is a gnawing worry among the literati that the written word, and in particular the novel, is dying. In an interview last year with Tina Brown, novelist Philip Roth said he thinks the novel will become cultic in less than 25 years, with a small devoted group of readers, “maybe more than now read Latin poetry, but somewhere in that range.”
He pinpoints the problem with the form—“the print, the book. It’s the object itself.” Reading a novel requires focus and time that are in short supply today. The novel, he says, can’t compete with so many screens.
Yet it is in those multiple screens where George Lucas and cofounders of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy (IML) at the University of Southern California see a new form of “writing” emerging. Writing and reading are no longer just ink on the page. IML is reimagining how we think about text and communication.
“[Our] central philosophy has been that in today’s world, literacy means the ability to read and write not just with alphabetic texts, but also with sound, video and images all integrated,” says Elizabeth Daley, dean of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and executive director of IML.
Founded in 1998, IML grew out of a conversation Daley had with “Star Wars” director Lucas, who saw the need to help students (even those not in film school) develop multimedia literacy in order to live in an ever more visual and connected culture.
“We wanted to think about what kind of skills our students need to be competent and engaged in the 21st century,” says Holly Willis, director of academic programs at IML. “And we created programs to answer that question.”
The New Five-Page Paper
In expanding the concept of literacy, IML has done everything from offering preschool programs to reimagining what constitutes a textbook. For the latter, a group of students used a documentary about Iraqi doctors as a jumping off point for deeper research into issues raised by the film. The students conducted their own research, which they recorded in multimedia formats that were integrated back into the documentary as optional material for those seeking greater depth.
“The students went to primary sources and added to the body of knowledge. They [did] the discipline, rather than just learning about the discipline,” Daley says. “Five years ago, it would have been a five-page paper.”
Engaging students on a deeper level via digital media tools is also at the heart of the IML’s programs for younger kids. The IML has spearheaded projects that include using multimedia as a tool to improve literacy rates among preschool children; a K-12 Digital Storytelling project that offers workshops on story structure and digital film skills such as framing, editing and lighting; the New Mexico Collaborative, which offers digital media training and support to teachers from several school districts with large Pueblo Indian populations; and a three-year program that helped a group of Los Angeles teachers integrate media arts into their classrooms.
The last of those, the Wallis Annenberg Initiative, was implemented in a school district where more than half the students dropped out. In Amit Bernstein’s classroom, children with learning disabilities struggled to stay engaged in school. Their learning disabilities were often so severe, he says in the video documenting the project, that many rarely felt the pride of success in a project. Digital media provided a break from well-worn lesson plans, he said, and students dove into creating multimedia projects.
“I Poem” created by LA public school students.
For one classroom poetry assignment using iMovie, 26 of 30 students completed their projects—a far better percentage than ever before, according to Bernstein. Among them was a young boy with a poor attendance record who became deeply engaged in creating a digital version of a poem about his feelings in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “Half the time he doesn’t come to school,” said Bernstein. “And for him to complete this and to see how everyone was so touched by it. For this kid to have this much success, that was a golden moment.”
In another project, the IML team took digital storytelling to 4-year-olds. What would happen if they presented preschoolers a version of the digital storytelling workshop designed for graduate students? Turns out, the kids got it right away. Digital storytelling, one preschooler explained (with echoes of Roth), is “the same as storytelling except it’s on a screen.”
A few grades higher, Matt Lee, a double major in engineering and theater at USC, used principles and skills he’d learned in IML workshops to create an exploration of “The Tempest” via the 3-D virtual world of Second Life.
Using an avatar, visitors find texts amid the fog-shrouded digital island on which “The Tempest” is set. They can explore the influence of Sycorax, a deceased witch essential to the play’s backstory, and encounter animated butterflies that reveal interpretive poems.
“By physically sensing the space, there are objects you uncover and find that speak to you about who she was, [as well as] a spatial metaphor that articulates his basic argument,” says Willis.
Teaching the New Writing
In their book, “Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change and Assessment in the 21st Century Classroom,” editors Charles Moran, Kevin Hodgson and Anne Herrington offer new insights on an old craft.
Herrington, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and director of the school’s Western Massachusetts Writing program, echoes leaders at IML when he discusses how writing has become more varied.
“There are more genres and more modes being used,” Herrington says. “It’s broadening to composing not just alphabetic text, but images and sound. Not just text for the eye, but to be heard as well.”
Recently, on the first day of winter classes, Herrington asked her students to list all the writing they’d done in the last week. The responses included text messages, emails, postings on social network sites, essays, arguments and discussions via online message boards.
“There is just a huge range,” Herrington says. “It raises the question of what you are going to teach in a writing class [in the future].” (Read Spotlight’s post about this book or listen to a Teachers Teaching Teachers podcast with the editors. Also read Spotlight’s Creating the Next Generation of Writers about work being done by the National Writing Project.)
Moving Beyond a “Receive-Only” Culture
Among those considering that question is sixth-grade teacher Kevin Hodgson, who co-edited the book with Herrington. A former journalist, Hodgson has integrated technology directly into his curriculum at William E. Norris Elementary School in Southampton, Mass.
With digital media, says Hodgson, he immediately recognized possibilities for students to publish for authentic audiences.
“What I saw was an intense engagement when we added technology tools and when we began collaborating with other schools in the world around podcasting,”says Hodgson.
He also created a project in which students were able to take their stories from traditional text on the page and transform them into a digital picture book that used animation, audio and other media. With Hodgson steering their efforts toward new tools and technology, the students became far more involved than they typically did with simple text.
“They owned it from start to end,” Hodgson says.
Most recently, his class has been working on a project related to the book “Three Cups of Tea.” They are using mixed media tools to create online posters via the website Glogster.
It is this kind of education that IML’s Daley believes is essential as we move forward.
“If you don’t also know how to do this, you are a ‘receive-only’ culture,” she says. “You can read. But you can’t write.”
Photo by The Wallis Annenberg Initiative.
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- 21st Century Learning in Action: Literacy, English Language Learners and Digital Storytelling
- Writing Is More Than Ink on a Page Today
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Tags: anne herrington, charles moran, digital storytelling, elizabeth daley, george lucas, holly willis, imovie, institute for multimedia literacy, kevin hodgson, national writing project, phillip roth, tina brown, university of southern california, wallis annenberg initiative
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