Annotated+Resources

This video was selected in order to make connections between literacy and the ‘real world’. Fellowes (2007, p.29) argues that students need to gain experience with visual texts that serve a ‘real’ communicative purpose for an intended audience. She also states that today’s students need to be exposed to a variety of visual texts and need to be taught about the language (visual grammar) of the visual text and how it is used to create meaning. In this lesson, students will discuss the visual grammar needed to extract information from the video. In order to assist students to read and understand visual grammar, they need to be taught about the codes of such texts (Fellowes, 2007, p.30). These are the tools that are used to establish a specific message. The character is the video maker who personally narrates his 1year travel around Australia. He provides background knowledge and the viewer sees the country through his eyes and perspective. The use of close-up camera shots of the moviemaker’s face with various facial expressions is very engaging. There are also long shots of the locations, which depict the contrast between city lights, the dry, dusty outback and lush, green savannahs. The music used (Over the rainbow and Wonderful World) was chosen as they complement the visual image. Its melody does not compete with the narration and when the narrator is silent, the music takes over. There is a limited amount of written text, which demonstrates that there are times when text is not necessary to create meaning, and emphasises the effectiveness of visual and audio literacy. This lesson is the introduction lesson to the unit and the video is used more as a stimulus. But students need to recognise the use of codes in visual texts and be able to apply them in their own visual composition. This resource serves to both introduce the unit to the students and also visual elements (codes) in order to understand visual literacy. ||
 * **RESOURCE 1 / LESSON 1 (SHARON):** YouTube video ||
 * **Screen capture** **/ image or copy of the text** || media type="youtube" key="VK-vBsQf_ME" width="425" height="350" ||
 * **Explanation of the resource** || The resource is a YouTube video made by a German backpacker who spent a year travelling around Australia. The video runs for 3 mins 58 seconds and was made as he had a childhood dream to travel to “faraway countries and the other side of the world”. ||
 * **Relevance to the outcome** || This YouTube video is a great introduction to the topic of this unit, which focuses on exploring significant places in Australia. Visual stimulus works well in the classroom as students are attracted and will be engaged to the “real life” nature of these videos. Teachers should create a context for these short videos in order to assist students to explore learning. ||
 * **Aspect of Literacy suitable to be explored** || The subject of literacy pedagogy has changed rapidly due to cultural differences and the rapidly shifting communications media. Cope and Kalantzis (2000, p.5) refer to the pedagogy of Multiliteracies, which focuses on modes of representation much broader than language alone. Meaning is made in ways that are increasingly multimodal: written-linguistic modes of meaning are part and parcel of visual, audio and spatial patterns of meaning.

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 * **RESOURCE 2: Infinity Holidays travel brochures of Australia** (Lucy) ||
 * **Screen capture** **/ image or copy of the text**
 * **Explanation of the resource**

|| The resource is a wide selection of travel brochures of Australia. Each brochure provides descriptions of various places around Australia. The brochures selected for this annotation are from //Infinity Holidays 2009-2010// but are not limited to these for use in the lessons. ||
 * **Relevance to the outcome**

|| This resource will allow students to explore local and national places of Australia through visual and written means. Some of the brochures also touch on the significance of these places to Australia. This aligns directly with the focus outcome. ||
 * **Aspect of Literacy suitable to be explored** || The aspect of literacy most suitable to be explored in this resource is the use of grammatical features found within descriptions. For the purpose of these lessons, the most prominent grammatical feature is the use of various types of adjectives found within descriptions. Students in Stage 2 should begin focusing on how an author conveys meaning and feeling about what is being described (BOS NSW, 1998a, p. 260) and this can be seen through an exploration of adjectives. Students at this stage should also be using a wider range of adjectives, moving away from the older describing words (Derewianka, 1998, p. 46). While a lot of this is done through conversation and reading, more challenging adjectives can be introduced through explicit work with specific themes (Derewianka, 1998, p. 46) such as for the purpose of these lessons.

By just looking at one double page spread in the Northern Territory //Infinity Holidays// brochure, examples of each type of adjective group related to a description can be seen.

‘Dramatic’, ‘spectacular’, ‘scorching’, ‘rugged’, ‘lush’, ‘glorious’ are just some of the examples of describing adjectives.

‘The tallest one’, ‘as much or as little’, ‘most concentrated’, ‘most iconic’, ‘third largest’ are some of the examples of comparing adjectives used.

‘Endless’, ‘more than 50’, ‘one of Australia’s’, ‘one of only a handful’, ‘one of the most’ are examples of numbering adjectives found on the double page spread.

Some examples of classifying adjectives found in this double page spread are ‘ancient ranges’, ‘central’, ‘spiritual history’, ‘tropical city’, and ‘natural attractions’.

Being able to explore these various types of adjectives in use in real life contexts, students will gather a deeper understanding of the subject and what is required of them when they are to create their descriptions. ||

|| The resource is a link from Australia’s official tourism Website Come Walkabout The come walkabout planner is a way for tourists of Australia to plan their trips in a fun and interactive way. It has 16 different popular routes of travel with images and information for each location. Each route has a magnified section of the map with points signifying each location. After planning your route there is an email link allowing you to keep track of your travel plans. || || The aspect of literacy to be explored through the resource is the composition of a multimodal text. The website is made up of many elements; images and written word are used to great effect due to their design and placement. A multimodal text can be described as “the integrated meaning making systems of electronic multimedia texts.” (Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. 2000, p. 26). Cope and Kalantzis (2000, p.26) discuss the ‘modes of meaning’ or the design aspects in a multimodal text; spatial, audio, linguistic, visual and gestural. The resource has a variety of these components and can be viewed as an example of the spatial, linguistic and visual modes of meaning.
 * ** RESOURCE 3: ** Lesson 3 (Elise). ||
 *  Screen capture / image or copy of the tex |||| [[image:CopytoConvert.jpg]] ||
 * ** Explanation of the resource **
 * ** Relevance to the outcome ** || The resource is particularly valuable to the outcome of the lesson; learning about multimodal texts in relation to local and national areas. Due to the websites interesting composition, navigation, images and texts students will be motivated to learn both about the concepts of multimodal texts and planning travel in Australia. The website is particularly useful when used on a smartboard due to the interactive nature of its navigation, allowing students to easily move through the website with their hands and/or the mouse. ||
 *  **Aspect of Literacy suitable to be explored **

Students should be given ample opportunity for “viewing, creating and critiquing multimodal texts… which can include spoken, written, visual, aural and interactive aspects.” (New London Group, 2000; Unsworth, 2001, cited in Callow, 2006, p.7). The ‘Come Walkabout’ websites has real life examples of visual, written and interactive aspects which enable students to explore spatial concepts and design placement. Led by the teacher, students use the website to view and critique its elements and as a jumping board for creating their own multimodal texts. As internet use is ever increasing, not only at home but within schools or on portable devices, the need for students to be able to decode websites is crucial. As is the need to be able to design and create such texts. By breaking up these texts into there many elements students are able to see what they are made of and the placement of each element. Students must also critique why these design choices have been made, realising that the creation of a text always has a purpose. Kress puts this succinctly, stating that when a message is “spread across several modes, we need to know on what basis this spreading happens, what principles are at work.” (2003, p.35).

When the computer mouse hovers over the journey titles on the website, the movement of text boxes link to the movement and highlighting of the map of Australia. This is an example of resource interaction that can only be had through multimodal texts. Teaching students to manipulate and understand useful websites is an important part of their grammar development. The website is beneficial in teaching the concepts of compositional grammar, while motivating students and linking their learning to HSIE outcomes. ||


 * **RESOURCE 4: [|http://www.xtranormal.com] (Cathy)** ||
 * [[image:xtranormal.jpg width="632" height="405"]] [[image:file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Mummy/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msoclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg width="564" height="363" link="http://www.xtranormal.com/"]] ||
 * **Explanation of the resource** || xtranormal.com is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), text-to-film animation creation tool. Users choose characters and settings from a menu, and type in their script. Camera angles, actions, sound effects, and other features of filmmaking are dragged into the script from a menu on the left of the screen.

A multimodal, electronic text is extremely culturally relevant to students today, as much of their time is typically spent in viewing, through television, movies, computers, and electronic games. ||
 * **Relevance to the outcome** || Producing a short animated film describing a place in Australia is an ideal way for students to fulfil the outcome ENS2.5. To create a film about a place, students are required to have adequate knowledge of that place and its significance in order to have their animated characters articulate a clear description. ||
 * **Aspect of Literacy suitable to be explored** || This resource is most suitable for focussing on a multimodal range of literacy options, and in particular visual literacy. In classrooms we may have students storyboard a story to bring it to life, but using xtranormal.com we can go beyond this in a very sophisticated way and have the students actually produce the film they would otherwise be imagining. They actually produce the spoken text as well as the image (video) and sound effects (audio). Blending the component semiotics to produce the film requires students to make some complex decisions, drawing on knowledge of multimodal literacies.

Using xtranormal.com is in itself a rich multimodal task requiring students to consider their choice of aspects of several modes weaving together to produce meaning. Particularly pertinent are the choices of cinematography: the camera can be selected through a range of shot lengths (close, medium and long); offer/demand; salience of subject and mode; and viewing angle (low, medium or high).

In this context, students are expected to produce a film describing a place in Australia and its significance to Australia and Australians. To do so, they would be required to choose: · Whether their meaning will be best conveyed through a single-character monologue, or through dialogue between two characters; · The interplay between the different modes, that is, when to focus on modal coherence, modal density, modal complexity and semiotic salience; how to do this, and when and how to transition between different emphases. · The visual literacy and grammar of each scene, and how this affects meaning and viewer engagement. This includes the camera angle, including the length of shot, the viewing angle, and whether the character is (or characters are) making an offer or demand on the viewer.

While the meaning will primarily be constructed through the dialogue or monologue produced, each of these other elements are simultaneously affecting the communication of the subject (Kress, 2003, p. 35).

The production of an electronic text is likely to be the most complex interweaving of different forms of grammar the students will have produced. While the format of the resource is very user-friendly, allowing for the simple production of a complicated text, the choices made by the students will allow the teacher to assess their understanding of how each of the component literacies affect the coherency of the product. ||

||   || || The resource is a selection of images used in advertising various travel locations. Each image contains a number of key aspects of visual grammar that help to convey the intended message. || || These resources are highly relevant to the outcome of the lessons and also the unit of work. The use of these or similar resources in exploring aspects of visual grammar allows the students opportunity to analyse images for aspects of visual grammar. In scaffolding this process the teacher is able to model use of metalanguage, assisting the students in their development of this important skill. This is one aspect that Callow (2006) posits is crucial in the teaching of visual literacy (p. 8). The images allow the students to explore the purpose of images in advertising and how the creator of the images uses visual grammar to achieve a purpose. || || The selected resources will be used in the context of the wider unit of work to explore aspects of visual grammar and how this can be employed to convey a particular feeling or message to the viewer.
 * **RESOURCE 5:** ||
 * Selected images used in advertising travel locations (James)**
 * **Screen capture** **/ image or copy of the text**
 * **Explanation of the resource**
 * **Relevance to the outcome**
 * **Aspect of Literacy suitable to be explored**

As stated earlier, the Board of Studies presents that students in Stage 2 should begin focusing on how meaning is communicated through various forms of text (BOS NSW, 1998a, p. 260). This is true also of the meanings that can be made through image and the use of visual grammar aspects.

Callow (2006) reinforces the use of images and the inclusion of visual literacy within the class, emphasizing the need for students to be involved in viewing, creating and critiquing multimodal texts, and the use of this resource in the context of the examination of image and its role in conveying a message helps to meet this aim (p. 7).

The aspects of visual grammar that the students will be examining through this particular lesson are conceptual or symbolic meanings, angles, demands and offers, the use of shot length and colour and the layout of a page. They will be examining not only how the author of an image uses these aspects to convey a specific attitude or meaning, but also practicing using these techniques.

An important point to ensure when students are learning to identify and use these aspects is to provide strong scaffolding and continual reference to the purpose of the lesson, to create a persuasive text (Callow, 2006, p. 16). ||