For one week in March, I will be traveling from the northern Atacama Desert to the Central Valley in Chile, showing English-language teachers how they can use digital storytelling in their curriculum. My message is simple: Visual and audio literacy have become essential language skills, now that we can hold the Internet in our hands to read.
I will travel to Arica, Antofagasta, and Santiago for the U.S. State Department’s English-Language Program from March 8-15. My four presentations will include some of the basic elements that I lectured on for the State Department last year in New Delhi, India and Kathmandu, Nepal. Researching those presentations persuaded me that the extra time and training required to add multimedia to language programs is worthwhile. I saw that a number of teachers worldwide are successfully combining language literacy with visual literacy.
Experience shows that digital storytelling motivates students to write and revise, to perform, to analyze which words can be replaced with images for more impact, to develop audio and video editing skills, and to understand how reactions can be evoked by music, sounds, and images–for good and bad.
The reasons these pioneering teachers are doing this are the same reasons that I have been learning to create videos to accompany my written articles. Today we all need multiple literacies.
Yes Cathy,
Paulo Coelho can be considered most important educator in Brazil, and his approach was “read the words, read the world…”
Today, we have to teach our students to read “multiple litteracies” as you menioned. I’ve been doing that by taking my students to understand the process of reading/understanding all the languages worth to be explored with the help of technology: midia samples, cinema, music, images,stories, and so on.
I’m glad you are helpin us in this process.
Cath —
Can you post something about how Chile is surviving the huge earthquake. Will you go there now?
–Anne