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Teaching in the 21st century has significantly different roles than in the past. Teachers are no longer seen as commanding and imposing of learning, but rather guides, instructors, and advisors through the learning process. They are there to provide support and feedback to students, as they access their own goals through the reading and creation of multimodal texts. We need to open their minds to the world around them, and how they fit, and create meaning of it. Through overt instruction, critical framing, situated practice, and transformed practice (New London Group, 1996), teachers need to assist students in reading, retrieving, and evaluating the multiliteracies that they are afforded through technology.
In that, teachers need to be active purveyors of digital citizenship, through teaching students how to make responsible choices online, through discussions about ethics, responsibilities accountability, and online safety. Serafini (2011) argues that “to expand students’ interpretive repertoires, teachers need to extend their own understanding of a variety of perspectives, theories, and practices used to comprehend visual images, graphic design, and multimodal texts. Each visual medium has its own language, structure, or visual syntax that needs to be understood” (p. 349). We live in a digital age of change, and while teachers cannot be experts on all digital mediums, they need to be involved in continuous professional development in order to stay current. Teachers can also expand their learning through collaboration with students. Educators now teach the digital age, and whether they like it or not, their students can often out-knowledge them in the area of technological creativity. Teachers need to create a safe collaborative environment where students can work together to assist each other’s learning. In our futuristic society, the workplace is now very collaborative. By teaching students the skills to work collectively, educators are providing students with the necessary skills to be successful outside of school. Inquiry based learning is the way of the future, and students are often the experts in their own learning. The teacher’s role is to develop this need for inquiry, and challenge students thinking, and get them to think critically about the texts they are engaging with, with an emphasis on the student’s perspective. It is equally important however for teachers to help students successfully access the materials and tools that they need in order to inquire effectively. When engaging in multiliteracies pedagogy, it is most important that educators not limiting students to pencil and paper tasks, but rather encourage them to show their knowledge in modes that suit their abilities and understanding. |