Bayview Beach Resort, Batu Ferringhi Beach, Penang, Malaysia

27-30 September 1999

Constructing texts: mixed-modes, multimedia, literacy and socio-economically disadvantaged students

Ruth Motley

The Department of Education, Training and Employment, South Australia

Abstract

Students who come to school today have already been immersed in digital and electronic audio-visual texts. Popular culture is part of student hybridised local cultural experiences. Currently school curriculum seems to exclude such literate experiences of many groups of students in favour of a narrow print/paper cannon. This paper details what happened when one class of students from a low socio-economic setting moved from a traditional curriculum and classroom into a site where they became involved in designing and authoring mixed-mode multimedia texts.

The study found that the introduction of information and communication technologies as text construction tools has the potential to disrupt taken for granted classroom literacy practices; reconfiguring the use of space, making strange familiar topics, the concept of time, classroom pedagogic relationships and even disrupting who can be a successful literate student. The study noted the convergence of literacy and numeracy skills and understandings as students went about the business of constructing their mixed-mode multimedia texts.

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Presenter

Ruth Motley is a Curriculum Officer with the Disadvantaged Schools Component of Commonwealth Literacy Team. She has spent a number of years at Seaton Park Primary School in South Australia, implementing information and communication technologies as literacy tools across the curriculum. Ruth has recently completed her Masters in Education and this paper discusses some of the findings.

Presentation format: Paper, 45 minutes duration