Flower

In my opinion, I see the picture as products of the education system. Singapore, being a meritocratic country, emphasizes heavily on qualifications. Therefore, to survive in such a country, education is very important. The white flowers, being in the centre of the picture occupies a fairly large area and I would equate this to the majority of the people, those who form the major work force. Above the white flowers, the stigma (hope my term is correct), in orange, are standing proud and tall. Those are the high flyers, who outshine the majority of the people, excelling in school and getting jobs with high prospects. And below are the wilted flowers, sadly, are those dropped out of school and have give up hope in life.

In addition, the flowers, in the foreground, are clearer than the background, the grass. Since my focus is on the flowers and I equate it with products of the education system, this also reflects the resource of Singapore. Singapore has no natural resource and we have to rely heavily on manpower. This is the focus of our government, therefore, emphasizing on education in order to succeed in Singapore.

Semiotics

We often take for granted the way we view things around us. We know red means dangers and white signifies purity. We know our traffic signs are available in triangular shape, hexagonal shape and circles. But what is it that makes us understand the meaning behind these colours and shapes? Semiotics.

What about the interpretation of body language? An example of a baby crying can mean so many things. The baby might be hungry, wet his diapers or want his parents. Semiotics also helps us understand the phenomena of babies crying. Babies, unable to talk, use crying as their form of communication and how their parents interpret their crying is also subjective. Meaning-making is there both subjective and objective as shown in the 2 examples above.

While doing this week’s reading, I kept recalling the module AAE102, Language in Context, where we analyzed words and advertorials. Framing, salience and spaces are there for a reason. Why is it that some advertisements work better than others? Why is it that some advertisements can linger on in our mind? What goes behind the making of these advertisements? Semiotic inventories.

In order to value add the meaning behind advertorials or cover page, typography is an element which facilitates making meaning potential. We would not want a straight, serious heavy font for a beach poster. Conversely, we would not want a playful, informal font for the cover of a dictionary.

So next time, don't take the things we see for granted. There is a lot that goes into design that cover, poster or advertisement.

Literacy metaphors in the classroom

“Possess a broad-based foundation for further education”

One contextual metaphor that I would associate with education is “education as a building or structure”. For a building or a structure, the foundation is the most important. Without proper foundation, the building will not be stable and may collapse. Similarly, in education, we have to build a strong foundation for our students. At every stage of their education, the ground work must be laid properly. Once the foundation is stable, the task of educating our students will be easier.

In this concept, teachers are the construction workers, laying the foundation for the students and ensuring that the foundations have been laid properly. At each stage of their progress, teachers also have to scaffold their learning, just like the scaffoldings that are set up when constructing a build so that each storey can be built. There is no shortcut in education. A teacher may give students tips and shortcuts to solve a problem, but in the long run, when students have to apply the concept to other areas, they may find themselves at a lost. Therefore, education is a tedious job but seeing the final product, brings a smile to our faces.

Once the building has been constructed, it is left to stand there, beautiful, tall and a landmark for all to see. At the end of our students’ education, we all want our students to stand tall and proud and excel in the working world and in their lives. All the meticulous planning and foundation-laying though tedious has been worth the effort.

“Be able to build friendships with others”

Another contextual metaphor is “education as networking”. Education also does not just look at the academic aspect but also interpersonal relations, such as friendships and social responsibilities. I would see it as, once students have friends in their class, they will feel happier coming to school. When students feel positive about themselves, they will feel more confident and then this will also be reflected in their school work. They also learn to build up interpersonal skills which need to possess when they are out in the working world as they would definitely have to have these skills in order to survive.

It is not unheard of to hear students going on exchange programs or having pen-pals for their writing class. This can be seen as networking and they are now starting at a very young age. Teachers from different schools or overseas schools collaborative with each other and pair their students up so that they have a pen-pal and have an authentic reason to write to each other. With digital technology, this has become possible and faster. Students learn how to write and interact.

Digital technology definitely has brought us to a new era of education. From the example above, students are able to learn networking skills. E-mail, Facebook, Friendster and other social networking websites have emerged and have helped countless people to get into contact with their long lost friends or even to make new friends. Teachers can make such of such platforms to create class groups and have discussion topics, instead of grand conversations in the class, which may not involve all the students. With such platforms, students are able to access it at any time and even those students who are shy to talk in class, have an alternative to share their thoughts.

Designing social futures

Blog. Diary.
E-news. Newspapers.
E-mails. Letters by post.
MMORPGs. Board games.
E-learning. Chalk-and-board lessons.

The first words are all coined recently, due to the emergence of the IT era. There is a transition from how people used to keep diaries, read newspapers, send snail mail and playing board games to the present day where many people prefer blogging, read their news online, send e-mails and play MMORPGs. Even in schools, there is the infusion of e-learning.

The world is evolving and no longer the same as before. Working lives have changed. It is no longer repetitive, unskilled work but rather it now involves workers who are multi-skilled, all-roundered and can do complex and integrated work. Society is changing alongside with working lives too. There is much hype on diversity, recognizing that there are differences in everyone. Everyone identifies themselves differently, such as members belonging to the various groups of communities and the languages they speak. Like a ripple effect, it is affecting personal lives are thus changing too. Personal space and privacy is diminishing and being made public due to media. Communities once drawing clear boundaries are now overlapping, resulting is boundaries blurring. People are now in multilayered lifeworlds.

All these, have implications on us teachers – how we teach and what we teach. As teachers, we have to account for the culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies. There is a multiplicity of discourses. We also have to take note that there is a huge range of text forms which presents information to us and the important role of multimedia technologies in our present lives.

Design, according to NLG, is driven by the metalanguage of Multiliteracies. Design of the classroom processes such as, materials, pedagogy, curricular and classroom will affect the results in learning. Design is also made up of three components, namely, available designs, designing and the redesigned to reinforce that meaning-making has to be an active and dynamic process. Available designs are what the world gives or has, in terms of its materials, genre and resources. It provides the resources for meaning. Designing, a semiotic activity, takes the meaning from available designs and then transforming, involving re-articulation and recombination of available resources, into new ways of viewing or presenting it. The result of Designing leads to new meaning, a new resource which is a new Available Design.

This has an effect on us teachers, in a way that there is a necessity for a language to talk about language, images, texts and meaning-making interactions. Due to the huge range of texts available in this present age, visual and textual, available through the media and electronically, language must be able to describe meaning in these various domains. Meaning making is multi-modal, involving various design elements such as audio, spatial, visual, linguistic and gestural design. Hybridity and intertextuality help to make multimodal meaning as texts these days involves many elements, such as the visual aspect and inter-relatedness of texts. As teachers, we therefore have to design our lessons to suit this versatility of language.

As such, in order to design such lessons, we also have to understand how the human mind works, which is embedded in social, cultural and material contexts. There are four factors to consider when planning the lesson.
Situated practice – providing an authentic purpose to learning, tapping on student’s schema and prior knowledge
Overt instruction – active interventions from the teacher, scaffolding and collaborative learning activities to achieve awareness and control of what is being learnt
Critical framing – denaturalize and make strange again what students have learnt
Transformed practice – Redesigned and applying to other contexts

In Singapore’s context, there is a heavy commitment to multilingualism and multiculturalism. In our classrooms, we have to consider that our students come from diverse backgrounds. To some, English might not be their first language. There is also an increasing number of foreign students in our classrooms. Teachers have to therefore, bear in mind the different and diverse backgrounds they have and the experiences they carry with them.

Singapore is also a society that runs on people-power and technology. Singapore also has a highly information-based economy. With this mindset, we teachers would want to prepare our students for this society. We want to equip our students with skills, especially in information technology. Schools are organizing computer workshops to train students in IT skills.

During my practicum, I attempted a lesson, infusing IT, where the students, in groups are required to search for information from the World Wide Web and then present the information on a piece of butcher paper. In order to ensure that students have obtained information from reliable sites, I shortlisted a few websites for them to use. The rationale behind his lesson is to infuse IT into the lesson through overt instruction, by providing scaffolding and active interventions. I was also trying to introduce the different elements of design, by setting the presentation of information in the form of a poster, a hybrid of design elements and genre.

With multiliteracy pedagogies, the classroom lies in the hands of the teachers, exploiting the use of the various resources to make lessons come alive and authentic for the students. Gone are the days where by it is chalk-and-talk. These days, IT is seeping at a rapid rate into our classrooms. Teachers use PowerPoint to prepare for lessons and this in itself, involves various elements of design, such as visual, linguistic and audio.