14.1 Literacies to Think and to Learn

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Multimodal Literacies: Communication and Learning in the Era of Digital Media

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Multimodal Literacies: Communication and Learning in the Era of Digital Media

13 classificações

This course introduces innovative approaches to learning and teaching, with a focus on the use of e-learning and social web technologies.

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Module 3: Making Spatial, Tactile, and Gestural Meanings + Making Audio and Oral Meanings + Literacies to Think and to Learn

In this third module of the course, we examine spatial, tactile, gestural, audio, and oral meanings – all today part of a wider repertoire of teaching and learning that we call "literacies" in the plural, or "multiliteracies." In the final section of the module, we explore how we use literacies to think in characteristically "academic" ways. In this sense, literacies play a critical supportive role in the learning process.

14.1 Literacies to Think and to Learn10:44

14.2 On Human Meaning Systems9:56

14.3 Academic Literacies as Ways of Thinking10:59

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Dr William Cope
Professor
Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership, College of Education
Dr Mary Kalantzis
Professor
College of Education

In this section we will explore what is specific about communication in humans.

A key aspect is our human capacity to apply symbols to meanings in the world and

to connect symbols with each other into symbol systems.

Symbols represent general things, for

example the concept of a dog is distinct from any particular dog.

And although young children learn the word dog at a young age,

it is not until they're older that they can use the words as a concept.

Conceptualization can also occur in other modes, for

instance in the visual or gestural meanings.

All academic disciplines use literacies as a basis for communicating knowledge and

also full learners to represent knowledge to themselves in their thinking.

>> In this section I'm going to talk about literacies to think and to learn.

Now what I'm getting to actually is the issue of academic literacies.

How do we represent what we know via multimodal meaning?

Not just in writing, but in a whole variety of modes.

And how do we develop our thinking through representing ourselves.

And what are the connections between thinking and

these forms of representation?

And what I'm going to do, I'm going to start off the discussion with a monkey and

a philosopher.

>> Animals, other than humans, can also think and communicate.

However, no other animal has as species peculiar

representational capacities, the way we make meanings to ourselves and

communicative capacities, the way we make meaning for others.

Nor do they have our thinking capacities, adult humans think through

the representational systems that are literacies.

Without these systems we could not think, or

at least we could not think in a way that is characteristically human.

In children, for this reason, learning literacies and

developing thinking capacities are inseparable.

Literacies are absolutely a basic of education,

in fact they are the most basic of basics.

Here is always we mean literacy in a plural not just reading and writing.

>> First the monkey.

Now, one of the remarkable things about life on earth is that,

in a funny kind of way, fruit flies are quite smart, they can learn things.

So, here we are across all living creatures,

all animals, that what we have is some neurobiological fundamentals.

There's something about brains which is just incredible.

Just, brains in general are incredible things, remarkable things and

we share those with all sorts of animals.

But the question really is what is the nature of human thinking and

more interestingly human symbols systems, human forms of representation and

communication, in what ways are they different from animals?

And the edge case is to look at the smartest of the primates, in fact

we know that dolphins are really smart, and we know that crows are really smart,

it's actually a relationship of the size of the brain to the size of the body.

So, it's not the size of the brain per se, those elephants have huge brains but

they've got huge bodies.

So it's about that and some animals are unusually smart.

Some people think cats and

dogs are pretty smart, but crows and dolphins are incredibly smart.

But the smartest of them all, of course, are the primates.

So here's the story of Kanji.

Kanji was a young bonobo and some researchers were actually

trying to teach his mother rudimentary forms of language.

So, it was really just testing to what extent might it be possible to teach

a bonobo language.

But Kanji was this little baby hanging on to the mother and

in fact what they realized after awhile, the mother wasn't learning much but

little Kanji being young was learning quite a lot.

Now you know what's interesting is that animals can communicate.

Animals can use tools, so tools are reformed member we talked about tactile,

stuff we use object in the world to do things in the world in meaningful ways,

objects that mean something to us.

Well, you know, animals can do that as well, so

what is it about humans which are different?

That's going to lead me now to the philosopher,

from the monkey to the philosopher.

There some very interesting distinctions made between forms of

communication representation, different orders and

different forms of communication representation.

An American philosopher named Charles Sanders Pierce

made a distinction between iconic thinking, between indicative thinking,

indicators, and symbolic thinking using symbols.

And roughly speaking, animals can do iconic thinking and representation and

communication.

They can do indicative thinking, representation and communication.

But by and large they can't do symbolic thinking,

although Kanji did actually learn to do some symbolic thinking.

But the limits of Kanji's symbolic thinking are kind of interesting I'm going

to get to that in a moment.

So, an icon, okay, an icon might be I've got a little drawing

I've done of a dog which represents a dog and I know that means dog.

The sound woof, right, might represent a dog to me, right?

I might draw a plan of a space and a gesture might represent something.

That I'm pointing that over there, that represents something.

So it's a direct reference to something in the world, and

in fact animals, a lot of animals can do a lot of this stuff.

They can operate in terms of communication representation, representation being

communication to yourself, talking to yourself, thinking if you like.

They can do that, and

they can even communicate with each other in iconic terms.

Now what an indicator is, an indicator is something

which always associated with one thing, okay.

So if I point to something there, right,

that's pointing to something specific and it's indicative, right.

If I say the name Julius Caesar, it's referring to

a specific person which is you got a picture of Julius Caesar in your head.

Or if I say, if I laugh, I mean it's an indicator

of my thinking something's funny.

And by the way, animal warnings are sounds which don't directly depict the reality.

So if an animal wants to warn fellow animals about a danger

sign they might make a noise.

That noise doesn't iconically represent the danger, but

it is indicative of that there is a danger.

If you see what I mean.

So this is another level of communication representation, animals can do that too.

But symbolic thinking builds semantic systems,

it builds systems that make meaning.

And the meaning is not just the connection between the indicator, or

the icon, and the thing.

It's actually meaning that also fits into a system where the meanings

are related to each other, and the meaning is partly related.

But with the connections between that and other meanings.

Okay let me just say what I mean.

When I use the word animal, right.

I'm actually grouping together a whole pile of things,

I mean in terms of the animal kingdom that includes insects, and birds, and

giraffes, and things that look incredibly different from each other.

And what I've done is I have a kind,

the reason why I can build that simple the word animal,

which is either oral or written down as the word animal, for example.

The reason why I can build that is I've got

a system in my head which classifies all these things in the world, right?

And they are called animals, so that is actually called a symbol.

Now, you know in the world of visuals we can have

abstract icons which are visual icons.

We can have keys on maps and diagrams and whatever which are symbols,

which sit in the systems of symbols and in terms of visual iconography,

classic symbol systems might be flow diagrams.

They might be circuit diagrams for electronics and so on.

But in the world of objects, we might have objects that stand for

things, sacred objects, for example, where it's purely an abstraction.

This is an object, but it stands for this generalized abstraction in a system which

may be religious or superstitious or something like that.

So it's the system which defines that object, not so

simply the object itself in relation to the world.

I might do something like I might nod.

I might have gestures like this but

they fit into a system of gestures which I have which I operate on my head.

I may have a thing like a doorbell which fits into a system of alerts.

So in other words what we do is we build these things

which form semantic systems if you like.

Now, the interesting thing is Kanji did learn a lot of this stuff.

A lot of the more complicated things that we do in language, for example,

like embedded clauses.

And it was a pretty not very complicated, not very high level symbol system.

But they were capable,

the researchers were capable of teaching Kanji a symbol system.

One of the huge differences though with Kanji is there was no way that

Kanji could pass this system on to anybody else.

Right, he couldn't then have a family of little bonobos and

teach the little bonobo.

So this business of being able to teach this symbolic representational system,

no animals can do.

So even though he partly made it into the world of symbols, it was a one-off.

Not reproducible, it's only if the ad researchers are willing to spend

a hell of a lot of time teaching him just to remember things, so to speak.

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