Students as multimodal designers and authors

This chapter discusses students as multimodal designers and authors, and describes and analyses the various knowledges, skills, and pedagogies associated with developing students’ multimodal authorship in regular classrooms. It begins by defining what is meant by multimodal literacy and examines arguments supporting its inclusion in curricula and why it should be considered an essential life competence. It then describes specific semiotic or communicative techniques that teachers may introduce to their students, and a range of digital tools for authoring multimodal artefacts. The chapter concludes by presenting two vignettes illustrating different approaches primary and middle school teachers have taken to implementing multimodal authoring tasks with their students, and details the attributes and characteristics of classroom environments supporting successful multimodal curriculum implementation.