Multiliteracies and communications media
How do I make sense of and communicate with the world?
The New Basics category, Multiliteracies and communications media, refers to technologies of communication that use various codes for the exchange of messages, texts and information. Historically, communications media have included spoken language, writing, print and some visual media like photograph and film. Since World War II, the various electronic media such as television and other digital information technologies have provided much more complex audiovisual layers to these.
Yet the old technologies of pen writing, book reading, spoken communications, mental arithmetic and so on are not made redundant by these changes. They remain central to the New Basics. But if new communications technologies are viewed merely as add-ons then there is the danger of further crowding an already cluttered curriculum. New communications change the way we use old media, enhancing and augmenting them.
Communications media require mastery of symbolic codes ranging from number systems to sign language, from linguistic grammars to computer codes. Networked societies call for various kinds of literacy simultaneously, the mastery of many different codes, and the capacity to switch between and blend multiliteracies. For instance, to read or construct a web page requires an array of literacies and numeracies:
- traditional print literacies (to record information and ideas);
- visual literacies (for overall design and to manipulate images);
- aural and musical literacies (to build a soundscape around the page);
- mathematical understandings of number and chance and data (to keep track of usage and to survey interest levels).
- To participate effectively in the global village as well as in the ever-increasing number of cosmopolitan pockets in Australia requires skills of communicating across different cultural and language groups. This requires an understanding of, and basic means for, communicating with people from many communities and cultures - local and global, face-to-face, in selected languages, and with sensitivity to their needs and practices.
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Mastering the interactions between new and old technologies is fundamental to the New Basics, and increasingly a common expectation of workplaces. It is important that students learn to integrate and blend different media and different codes in ways that are effective in solving real-world problems in schools, communities and workplaces. This might involve, for example, creating blended texts that combine visual arts, sound and traditional print script.
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The presentation of self, cultural representation across a range of media, and the mixing and matching of communicative messages are central elements in service and information economies. The design and performance of multi-media texts-blending both the traditional and the new, the informational and the aesthetic-is central to preparing people for balanced and innovative engagement with a diversity of people, cultures and economies.
What better place than through the visual and performing arts to learn about the eternal verities, especially since religion no longer provides the answers for many, and when other school classes with ethical overtones are few and far between.
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Communicating using languages and intercultural understandings
Multilingualism is an essential tool in intercultural communication and for productive diversity. This typically involves learning languages other than English, and understanding cultural differences and variations in patterns of communication.
Intercultural understandings come from a realisation of what it means to communicate with someone from another culture. Many misunderstandings arise from a misinterpretation of the speaker's intention. It is only through attempting to communicate in a language that is not your own that you understand the possibilities for miscomprehension and become more sympathetic towards the difficulties faced by people who do not share your first language.
The ability to operate in the middle world between cultures can be generated in very young learners of another language. While the experience of the so-called third place may occur through the learning of one language, it is a skill that can be transferred to dealings with other cultures in other contexts. Knowledge of the intent and tone of the language allows a true understanding of the messages in intercultural communication.
Cultural knowledge (geography, customs, history, high culture) helps us to interpret references in texts-both oral and written. On a social level, communicating using languages also means having the facility to use the right word in the right place at the right time (as epitomised by the bon mot) even during communications between speakers of Australian English.
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Historically, literacy and numeracy involved learning the codes of language and number systems, and using them in a range of contexts. This and more are now required. What is also required is the mastery of traditional skills and techniques, genres and texts, and their applications through new media and new technologies.
Arithmetic, algebra, geometry, statistics and functions should be taught in a context of constant use. Literacy and numeracy are not stand-alone activities or skills: they are integrated with one another and with new repertoires of practice.
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