Identifying oneself through Multimedia

When reading the discussion post for this week I was interested to read more about this topic. When growing up, going to school involved paper, pencil, and overhead projectors. However, nowadays there is such an advantage with the advancements that have been made with technology but also the incorporation of it in the classroom. When students are given the option to select a modality they would like to express their learning through, I find that it not only allows them to implement a different method of expressing his/her learning, but it also provides the educator with an insight into that student’s identity and how media has had an influence in their lives.

In the article Film as Identity Exploration: A Multimodal Analysis of Youth-Produced Films (Halverson, 2010) this provided me with plenty of insight as to why it would be important for me, as well as any educator, to implement multimedia into their classrooms. It is imperative for a student to be given a way to express him/herself to the world in order to understand who he/she is as a person. Most times in school settings students are routinely stuck with the continuous forms of learning and unable to go beyond that. Halverson (2010) states that the “primary mechanism we have for constructing identity is through the stories we tell […] we construct narratives as a way to understand ourselves and our experiences in the world” (p. 2354-2355). Giving the students the ability to explain a story, whether it be to summarize something they read or have a multimedia production about an event in his/her life, have an equal influence on that particular student’s life. From my personal experiences in graduate school when I was given the opportunity to complete multimedia projects these were the ones I enjoyed the most. I was able to use various mediums and I was able to create it in a way

that expressed who I was and how I learned best. Every individual/student is different between their personalities, but also in the way he/she learns, therefore as a teacher, it is important not to stick to a “one size fits all” philosophy in your classroom. It has been proven that through “the process of telling, adapting, and performing narratives of personal experience that adolescents engage in positive identity development” (p.2356). Overall, it is imperative as educators to make sure that we are giving our students plenty of opportunities to utilize the technology in the classroom and develop different multimedia literacies in order to have them overcome the participation gap as well as to have a way of expressing his/her own identity.

References

• Halverson, E. R. (2010). Film as identity exploration: A multimodal analysis of youth-produced films. Teachers College Record, 112(9), 2352-2378.