The programs and technologies that Shawn Denton and William Sewell reference in their article, "Multimodal Literacies in the Secondary English Classroom," may be new. But the spirit behind their lessons are as old as teaching itself. And that is the key to their success.
In the article, printed this month in English Journal, Denton and Sewell review a number of multimedia projects they led in their high school classes.
Denton, a high school English teacher in Kansas, and Sewell, a former high school teacher and current professor of education, write about a project in which their students created PowerPoint presentations introducing a new holiday they invented, and one in which they created a MovieMaker presentation campaigning for their favorite bands for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
Both projects, among others the mentioned in the article, went far in engaging students. But, as much as the technology helps, it's the teachers' efforts to reach the students at their level that truly reaches them.
In facilitating the projects, the teachers creatively used popular culture to help draw the students in. For the holiday project, Denton showed clips of popular television shows Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld, both of which featured characters who have created their own celebrations. And in regard to the Rock and Roll project, Sewell encouraged his students to use video and audio clips of their favorite musical acts to highlight their presentations, which helped engage them fully.
"As music plays such an important role in students’ lives, students demonstrate a high degree of motivation with this project since they pick their own favorite music groups for their research projects," the authors write in the article. "Student who normally would not be engaged in traditional lessons put a great deal of energy and time into their presentations," (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
Certainly, the technologies available in Denton and Sewell's classrooms benefit the students in many ways. Learning to use the computer programs safely, responsibly and effectively will help them in both the academic and professional worlds, the authors note.
But without the teachers' innovative efforts to reach the students at common points of interest, like music and television, students may not engage as much, failing to put in the time or effort to learn from the assignments.
In other lessons, the teachers use clips from the movie Star Wars: A New Hope and from the television show Family Guy to teach lessons on story arch and internal and external conflict, among other literary themes.
"We found that these clips help build background and draw on previous knowledge to make connections with new learning," the authors write (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
"Implementation of technology in the classroom initially proved problematic as we had to learn the software, teach several different programs to our students, and adjust our teaching styles to be more multimodal in orientation," they concluded. "(But) in the end, we found assignments to be much more than work: presenting and receiving information in a multimodal format became fun for our students and us," (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
Sewell, W., & Denton, S. (May 2011). Multimodal Literacies in the Secondary English Classroom. English Journal, 100, 61-65. Retrieved May 21, 2011, from http://proquest
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