Mitra's Response to "Multimodal Literacy: What does it mean for Classroom Practice?"

I think I may have experienced heart palpations while reading this. I realize that I often respond to articles on the teaching of English/language arts in this way, with anxiety for the teacher, and may sound a bit like a broken record. (A record player- how’s that for an outdated simile in response to an article on multimodal literacy?)  However, when Walsh writes that the “…'new' of the future is constantly replacing the 'new' of now” (212), I can’t help but wonder how a teacher is supposed to keep pace. Some of the technologies given as examples in this article, written in 2008, would already be outdated in a classroom today, and they were relatively new then.

Two things struck me most while reading this. First is that teachers and students are being expected to learn and work with multimodal and digital texts. Yet they continue to be assessed through print based material. In this way, there is an even greater need to disrupt curricular instruction to “teach to the test.” In other words, teachers will have to break from what the students find engaging and personally relevant, multimodal instruction and digital texts for example, to teach them how to perform on a standardized test.

Secondly, I wonder what this emphasis on digital technology means for students already disadvantaged at school, namely students from low-income homes. They have less access to technology and less ability to update the technology they do have to compete with their peers. There is no “public library” of technology for them to access, and if there was, it would not compare to what some students have access to from their own bedrooms.