Multimedia,+Video,+and+associated+New+Literacies+of+the+Web+2.0+reading+and+writing

** Multimedia, Video, and associated New Literacies of the Web 2.0 reading and writing **
**"New literacies" involved in producing a digital video as a collaborative team**

**//Thinking and technical//**

We had to be able to navigate WikiSpaces and HuskyCT, create a plan, storyboard, write a script, create images, gather existing footage and music, and then modify the materials using PhotoShop, iMovie, and other editing programs. To use programs to capture voice, drop it in the film, edit it, revise it per our suggestions, and then publish it on the web.

**//More than technical issues//**

The process of creating a video in a group is a long, challenging one if few group members have familiarity with the literacies necessary to successfully construct a movie. Granted, some literacies, such as using the hardware (a flipcam, for example) are fairly straightforward: hit the big red button, capture the video, transport it to the computer, and *BAM*... done.

However, the process of transforming the captured video into something engaging, educating, and valuable is something to be much greater than the sum of its underlying parts; it requires finesse, an eye for art, and a sense of what people are most intrigued by. The reason is because in addition to learning the literacies for something like iMovie, which is a fairly simple piece of software, the movie-making process relies on having an understanding of film, film editing, storyboarding, and direction that is not typically embedded in content curricula when we ask our students to make videos for us. The literacies we are referring to aren't necessary technical or technological ones, but rather a group of things that are hard to define (for example, how can we quantify what constitutes a "good" camera angle if the movie-making process is so subjective?).

New technologic literacies include more than keyboard strokes. It opens a new challenge to teachers for artistic expression, dynamic ways of commanding attention, and a calculated way of delivering content. Likewise it propels student into the 21st century of creative writing in a three dimensional manner. Looking at history, teachers seemed to always cultivate passionate learners in the fields of science, journalism, art and music. Also, multimedia will allow a career pathway that will rival the book authors, songwriters and painters. A major responsibility for teachers is sensing that dormant skill in students, and then boost them with challenge, praise and acceptance towards a high tech multimedia expression, career and hobby... maybe as a future teacher of educational technology.

**//The ability to read and write online//**

New Literacies include any new technology which allows children or adults to read, research, or learn online or through other technologies. Basically, anything that betters our lives! Examples include podcasts, online shopping, fanfiction, ereaders, skype, digital storytelling, social networking, instant messaging, blogging, googledocs, wikis, videos, youtube, etc. The list goes on and on. Basically, taking our old idea of literacy (the ability to read and write) and molding it into an 21st century version (the ability to read and write online).

Basically, any skill that we have used in the past and being able to adapt that skill using various sources of technology. There is a lack of educational technology courses nationwide to teach educators how to productively use the resources available to them.

Students will need to story board their ideas. Story boarding would be a great lesson for students. Students need to understand that a storyboard is a visual map of their movie which guides the students on what the movie is going to look like, how it is going to filmed, etc. Storyboarding is like a graphic organizer, except now, it is being used to organize a video, versus, writing an essay. Video making is an excellent new literacy that provides students with the opportunity to portray a message in an effective way using multiple technology skills to do it.

The nice thing about framing it that way for students is that it becomes a generalizable skill that works for writing papers, organizing thoughts for paintings, creating future videos, and more (unlike a lot of the literacies, like the processes of directing, editing, and other video-specific things). There are a lot of other underlying literacies embedded in video-editing or filming that would need to be addressed individually, especially in terms of how to interpret how films are received and why they are received as such.

**//Work collaboratively//**

This kind of activity could be seen as a problem-solving situation and in this way requires different skills and “new literacies”. The students have to work collaboratively identifying their own skills and their peers' in order to work effectively. This type of activity could also be consider a project-based learning activity, since all students had to collaboratively produce the video.

In today's day and age, we need to use technology and teach students to use it together in a collaborative way. It is important that students can synergize together in effective positive ways to show understanding of material that is taught. A new literacy that may be adopted within a classroom setting is discussing, creating, and editing a video. When creating a video students need to work together in teams to ensure the information they are presenting is accurate and entertaining at the same time. It provides students with the opportunity to use new tools, incorporate pictures, accompanying text, animations, transitions, and they may even include music.

**//Thinking skills//**

The article of Aho (2005) presents different skills that may be involved in producing a digital video: 1. Inventive thinking, the students have to create the message, the sequence of scenes, the characters for example. 2. Effective communication, the students have to choose the best way to show the message to really impact the audience. Therefore, they have to understand their audience and create the message according to that. Finally, students use metacognitive skills: 1. Planning skills, they have to anticipate different circumstances and possible obstacles to the project and overcome these. 2. Monitoring and control in order to identify the possible errors, and if they are achieving or not the goal, and adjust their activities to get the goal.

That "new literacies" involve a lot more than meets the eye. We obviously saw the skills that were necessary in order to make our video. Not only did we need story board skills, but also needed to know what materials we needed, how to put it into place, and also how to evaluate it after. These are actually some of the key characteristics to skills in metacognition.

**How to learn these "new literacies"?**

**//Modeling,//** highlighting the pros and cons of other movies, and facilitating the way students analyze their own films. The tangential skills, like using Photoshop and Flash for film editing, can be taught through YouTube tutorials (which are also forms of modeling) or direct instruction by a teacher in a classroom, but may be even better received if learned through social construction in a fashion similar to what we did with our video.

These skills might be learned by working through **//Problem-based, Project-based, and Case-based learning,//** where the students could be engaged easily, and in this way overcome the inherent difficulties to this kind of project.

With the use of technology in various content areas, we have the ability to do a lot of a lot of **//"cross training"//** if you will in our classrooms. This cross training is extremely important to the general transfer content ability for students. In other words, the ability to indirectly find relationships between ideas of one content area to a completely different content area. The interactive nature of technology allows us to create much more meaning out of learning, then what we would find in a 'regular' classroom. Though technology has its flaws, if it is used appropriately, there can be great gains in the classroom not only short term but also long term.

**//Teachers need to help students tap into their knowledge and skills and transfer them for school and work//**—“conceptualizing, producing, delivering and receiving…” [more advanced forms of these] communications (Aho, 2005). Almost as a taxonomy of multimedia skills, knowledge and understanding: at its base is the transactional text message and at its peak creating a transformative multimedia segment (calling it a video might be limiting) integrating all elements of a story to convey a powerful message. Now, it’s just a matter of bringing the technology and teacher openness into the classrooms to support students in these experiences.

Jeff Gomez from Starlight Runner Entertainment said that in order to be a successful writer of transmedia, you need to understand the language of the different media platforms and be versatile in them. This is what we need to help our students do. We believe that they have the hours of **//experimentation,//** but we need to help them see the ways to expand the media for broader use to convey powerful messages. They are only able to see the media in the limited capacity that they use it in—in a social sphere.