Week #14 Reading and Discussion

"...Ours is an age in which the pictoral turn has supplanted the linguistic one, as images push words off the page and our lives become increasingly mediated by a popular visual culture." (Hull, 2003)

I chose the above quote, because I can see the truth of the quote stand out in my classroom, within my students. My students are very visual and are poor readers and are terrible at reading comprehension. They have a very difficult time actually reading to understand, they mostly read only to make the school day go by faster and to not be bothered by the teacher for not doing their classwork. Though, they do not read much, my students are certainly visually stimulated easily. The students draw a lot and are always asking to print out a picture they found while completing digital assignments. I could have my students read and discuss the photosynthetic process in plants and bacteria, but if I do not include and reference an image of the process my students would be lost.



I chose the above image, because this is the look I see on my students almost everyday. An image or series of images helps immensely when reading about new science class content.

#1: Digital storytelling promotes academic literacies by requiring the student to be able to communicate effectively through speech and text without loosing the audience due to not being verbally or text illiterate. The production of digital stories is fun, interactive, and is often used to draw in an audience and the students know that if they are not literate they may not capture the attention of the target audience.

#2: No, I do not think that digital storytelling with music, speech, and images is easier. I do think that the addition of such does promote the mood of the story, but the extra time and effort in creating a multimedia production is more resource intensive than pure text.

#3: Yes, digital storytelling does increase the "action" feeling of a story or communication. Digital stories are more influential and "drive home" the story's message than a text-only story.Yes, the impact on the academic lives of our students would be positive, because through the production of these digital stories the students will try to interest and influence their audience and that drive will help them want to become more literate so that their products are more influential to their audience.

References:

Hull, G. (2003). At last: Youth culture and digital media.Research in the Teaching of English, 38(2), 230.

A picture is worth a thousand words [Web Graphic]. Retrieved from https://www.dlsweb.rmit.edu.au/lsu./content/1_StudySkills/study_tuts/learning styles/visual.html