Week One: Multimodal

What I think seemed to be an overarching theme throughout these articles was how culture and different modes of meaning need to be considered as design, technology and tools change in terms of literacy pedagogy. In fact, culture and meaning may be considered more important, especially when we are able to broaden our community through the web. In addition, each article discusses the importance of different modes of meaning (linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, and spatial) in multimodality, which a "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures" describes as meanings interconnecting. And this is how meaning should work, in any capacity; they should always work together, but in new technology, it isn't just a few working together. The possibilities of using all at once is endless.

This all leads to another common thread, that of flexibility. These modes of meaning and the language (metalanguage) used in multiliteracies are constantly changing. It has made us all, in a sense, global citizens, it has given us all new identities in new arenas. One area of multimodality is how to bring this all together. The constant change of media, continuous relation to different discourse, and purpose all need to come together seamlessly.

In this way, all three articles tend to agree on this definition of multimodality. I believe "Designs for Social Futures states it best, "Multimodal meaning is no more than the other modes of meaning working together... (211)."