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The ability to read and write in monomodal text formats is no longer enough to be literate in the 21st century and into the future. In order for student to become multiliterate, they need to be instructed on how to engage, interact, and understand how multimodal texts convey and produce meaning. Educators need to deliver a pedagogy that provides students with the skills to be self-reliant critical thinkers and communicators in a society that demands this kind of literacy.
Future educators need to be confident in their ability to promote this type of learning through multiple modes in order to create a classroom environment where students can effectively create, learn and think critically about the media and modalities that they are using, in order to create a society that will be able to function in the future. Educators and policy makers needs to move away from creating ‘robots’ or rote learning, and build a community of thinkers, and collaborative problem solvers. Students should not be busy focusing on remembering answers, but rather on the ability to access answers through technology, and be able to discuss and think critically about them. Students are no longer confound by the four walls of the classroom. Through the integration of a multiliteracies pedagogy, students learn how to engage with the world, and the global community that they are very much a part of. They need to learn how to collaborate, and work with others to create, design, and perhaps most importantly, solve problems. Multiliteracies pedagogy has exploded a necessary shift in culture that allows teachers, and others in the educational field, to look at the way that we are educating students for tomorrow, and rethink educational and curriculum practice. Students need to discover and inquire with guidance, in order to make their own meaning, through the use of technological tools. They need to be active citizens in their learning communities and beyond. Through the use of multiliteracies pedagogy with the incorporation of: multimodalites, the four components of multiliteracies pedagogy (New London Group, 1996), technology, identity integration, new digital formative assessment pedagogy, and media and digital literacy, students in the 21st century will be able to be actively prepared for an unknown future. |