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Redesigned

 

                 The final part of the cycle of Available Designs is Redesigned. The New London group explains redesigned as “the outcome of Designing is a new meaning, something through which meaning-makers remake themselves” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 23). Throughout this project students are engaged in learning about a variety of culturally relevant activities in order for them to gain necessary background knowledge to create two different products.   The first product that they create is their weekly journals.

 

                  The game prompts students to keep journals “so others may learn how to survive by reading their journals”.   This prompt  gives my students a real audience for their journals.   By giving my students a specific audience they then had to chose how they wanted to represent what they learned.  The students created narrative journals where they detailed what their characters did in order to survive.  The students were engrossed in creating engaging texts that others might use to help them survive.  My students worked on their journals first by collaborating with their group and discussing the topics then they collaborated on how they wanted to detail their accounts.  They used paper and pencil to brainstorm ideas of what to include, and then they wrote their journal in Google Drive on the iPads.  

 

                   At the end of the project, students were asked to create digital stories to present to the community what they learned from the project.  I wanted the students to have a culminating project that encompassed all that they learned.  I also wanted to give them a new audience to write for and an opportunity to create a multimodal text.   The students were presented with three options for topics for their digital stories: What I learned, Tips on how to survive, or A year in the life of their characters.  The students worked together in their groups to create their digital stories.  They first created a storyline using a storyboard.  They then used Adobe Voice to create their digital stories.  Adobe Voice allows students to upload pictures, add text, and choose the layout of their presentation.  It also allows students to record their own voice and add in music to their presentation.  The students loved creating the digital stories to share with their families and friends.  Many exclaimed that they had not realized all they had learned during the project until they created their digital stories.  

 

                   The thought behind creating “Surviving Alaska”  was I wanted students to be able to not only understand different modalities, but I also wanted them to be able to interpret cultural and linguistic knowledge. I wanted them to understand how they can use cultural knowledge and their own funds of knowledge not only in their everyday life but also in new situations.

 

                   As students are able to understand their own world, they are able to transfer that knowledge to the greater, global world around them.  I want my students to grow and achieve and be ambassadors for their language, their culture, and their communities, and being multiliterate will help them achieve that goal.