UNIT 1 😯

 

Unit one focused on introducing multimodality. Which honestly, was a word that I had only heard a few times and barely knew the meaning of. But after this unit, I feel like I understand it more. Multimodality can be accomplished in so many different ways, way more than I thought. Some ways that it can be accomplished are through websites, podcasts, videos, graphic novels, collages, and many others. One example that we really touched base on in class was graphic novels. Now, I never really got into graphic novels that much, mainly because I like picturing what was going on in a book myself. What I never realized was how complex it could be to read and fully understand a graphic novel. When we read the article How to Read Graphic Novels as Literature for September 1st, my eyes felt like they were flying over the words but my brain couldn't work fast enough to understand what I was looking at. 

This is exactly what I felt as I was reading that article. While I understood the basics of a graphic novel, there is so much more to it and I never knew. This article goes into depth about the mechanics of graphic novels and describes how the words and pictures interact with each other. A graphic novel reader is able to use textual, design, and visual elements to help build an understanding, whereas print readers often don't have that skill. The other article we read for that same day was Why Use Graphic Novels_ Why Now, and at a certain point, the two articles connect. Both articles talk about how important it is for students to be taught graphic novels. With graphic novels, students are thinking, while they are reading, about different themes and ideas and how those themes and ideas are realized by the words and the pictures. It teaches students to make meaning from the words and pictures. Because in this case, the picture speaks louder than words. Graphic novels are not picture books, or books that one reads because it is easier than reading all the words in a print book. If a student can read and understand graphic novels, not only are they able to read graphics as insightfully as they would regular print books but their eyes are now opened to a whole new style of reading and understanding stories. 

And because of that... I added this picture. It really does blow my mind how many positive things students get out of reading graphic novels and teachers still decide that it isn't worth it. But what really blows my mind is how often I see multimodality in my everyday life and just never notice. The weather channel on the news, field trips for learning, and instruction manuals, these are all examples of multimodality in the real world that I have simply looked over. It is such an important thing to understand. it is brought up of many things. It is characterized by many different modes of activities but all within one medium.