Multimodal Resource Evaluation

 

When planning activities and lessons to foster literacy skills in students that need challenging, it is important to include multimodal tools. Students that are bored with traditional reading and writing methods will be more engaged with unique opportunities to use different methods to express themselves and deepen their learning, such as spending time engaging with websites and apps that do not seem like regular schoolwork. In this post, I will review three multimodal tools (Story Jumper, Bubbl.us, and Atlas Obscura); two that I included in my lesson plan, and one educational website that is geared towards curiosity and personal digital inquiry.

In my lesson plan, students will be using Story Jumper to create their own storybooks. Story Jumper is a collaborative website where students (and anyone) can create, narrate, and publish their own books. It is appropriate for elementary students at all levels, since it features a voice recording tool for very young students that do not have adequate typing skills yet. It features a tutorial video to get started, and you can add text boxes, props (cartoon drawings of people, animals, and objects) scenes (pre-made backgrounds), and photos to your pages. One drawback of Story Jumper is that you can resize the props and rotate them, but not manipulate them, so creativity is slightly limited in that aspect. The default setting is 15 pages, including a dedication page, and a front and back cover. You can add pages, make voice recordings to narrate, and collaborate by inviting other users to edit your story. The story pages are arranged as slides, similar to PowerPoint. This feature makes the tool appropriate for both individual work and group projects, and also prompts students to consider their audience, which is an engagement strategy that deepens learning and encourages serious and creative writing. I intend to use the feature of Story Jumper that allows for photos to be inserted in the story, because students will create their original artwork using pencils, paper, and colored pencils/markers. However, since this lesson will be conducted virtually and students will be learning from home instead of in the classroom per the recent decision in OKCPS, I will modify the lesson such that students may do drawings only if they have access to art materials at home. Story Jumper has many background scenes and props to choose from, so there will be good options for artistic expression. They can also upload photos from Google to get more specific results.

Another tool in my lesson plan is Bubbl.us, a graphic organizer that, like Google Docs, allows multiple users to live-edit the same document. Bubbl.us is appropriate for mid to upper elementary students, middle school, and high school. One drawback of this website is the limitation of only three mind maps until an "upgrade" (payment) is required. Students/teachers make “mind maps” by starting with a colored bubble that fits as much text as needed for note taking, then are able to add more bubbles, with optional arrows guiding the reader to the next note. You can share your mind map with others, and invite them to edit, so it is a good application to support group note taking and collaborative effort. The purpose Bubbl.us will serve in my lesson plan is to take notes about themes and what they notice about the artwork in the two stories we will be reading. Note taking is an especially important process for all students to learn, but I believe benefits gifted/bored/disengaged students in particular. Some students can get overwhelmed with too many details or the perceived difficulty of a project and can give up. However, with visually appealing and very easy graphic organizers, students can break their work into manageable chunks by documenting their initial thoughts and pieces of gathered information to come back to later and build on. This is a good tool for personal digital inquiry projects, but is highly accessible for other types of assignments as well. Below I include a mind map that I created after reading a short article on Atlas Obscura, the website I mention below.



The third tool that I will talk about, but is not included in my lesson plan is the aforementioned Atlas Obscura, a travel/informational website that supports personal digital inquiry by featuring articles about often little-known places, foods, and traditions of different cultures. It offers seminars, videos, and workshops about art, nature, writing, and much more. It is appropriate for upper elementary, middle and high school students. The articles are fairly short, and well-written. This is an excellent website to engage students that need challenging because it provides unusual and captivating information about things that bring students outside of their own world and piques curiosity about the rest of the world. It is accompanied with clear and artistic pictures, and would be a good starting point for a PDI unit, source material (either for writing or drawing), or even a down time activity. Since the articles are not always too in depth, however, it should be used as a starting point for more research. Informational websites like these are always staples of multimodal teaching, but since Atlas Obscura focuses on things that are not well-known, it seems to be an interesting tool for students that may be disengaged.

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