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Unit 6 Reflection

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  In our last unit, we talked about digital composition. This is the use of digital tools to create a multimodal final product. I can’t say that I’m the biggest fan of this. I avoid Canva at all costs because I’m so bad at using technology to design things. In general, I much prefer paper-based handouts and assignments over technology-based ones. If I have a paper version of it to lay in the middle of my desk, it serves as a physical reminder for me to do an assignment. Without something being in my way, I will forget about it. I even have to keep my room key in the middle of the floor by the door, so I remember to take it with me, or I’ll leave without it. I also hate switching tabs to reference something when I’m typing because by the time I’m back in the tab that I’m typing in, I forget what I was supposed to write. I’d much rather have a physical version to reference. It saves me time and the headache of squinting at my screen. In the reading, “Use of Multimodal/Digital Tools for R
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Unit 5 Reflection

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 Unit 5 was all about podcasting and blogging. I’m a frequent consumer of podcasts and, personally, they have revolutionized the way that I read. I was an avid reader in my childhood, but as I grew up, I started to have major problems with focusing on any book you put in front of me. I listened to my first podcast when I was a senior in high school after picking up the book 1984 by George Orwell. At first, I immensely struggled to retain any of what I read and felt like I was just looking at words rather than taking them in, so I started listening to an audiobook. It completely transformed the way I experienced the story. There was mood music and sound effects, and the tone of the narrator’s voice varied depending on the emotion displayed in the scene. I was hooked. I remember sitting at my desk in study hall and my jaw dropping as I listened to the part where (SPOILER ALERT) Winston and Julia were arrested in the bedroom that they rented. Beforehand, there were background noises of bi
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Unit 4 Reflection

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To start unit 4, we discussed video game usage in the classroom. My experience with them is quite limited. The only game I have consistently enjoyed over a long period of time is Minecraft, and my interest in that only comes in intermittent spurts. I also had an Animal Crossing problem for about a month, but my addiction to it got so bad so fast that I would neglect myself and my needs in favor of catching digital fish. Needless to say, that had to stop. While video games are not exactly my thing, I have used them in an educational context. In my high school German class, we made videos for our end of unit projects, and I did the majority of mine in Minecraft. Our units were mostly about everyday topics, like parts of a house, colors, animals, hobbies, foods, and jobs. In Minecraft I was able to show these things through my character’s outfits, items in the game, and through sets I would build. In our reading, “Video Games in the Secondary English Language Arts Classroom,” by Brady L.
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Unit 3 Reflection

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We started unit 3 with a reading and discussion on social media use. The article, “Middle School Students’ Social Media Use,” showed that while social media has its deficits, it is a booming highway of communication that uses multiple modes to convey information. When I tracked my own social media usage, I was not incredibly surprised. TikTok consumes a large majority of my screen time, which I expected, but the disparity between my usage of it and all other apps is quite large. In the past week, I spent 21.5 hours on TikTok with the closest second being Snapchat with 5.5 hours. This averages out to about 3 hours a day for TikTok and 47 minutes a day on Snapchat. I’m honestly surprised that Snapchat was the second highest. I only open it up to send or receive a quick picture or message, so I thought it would be lower. Etsy, Depop, and Pinterest are where I fall down most of my rabbit holes, so I was surprised that none of them were even in my top five. TikTok is my biggest time waster
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Unit 2 Reflection

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       Our second unit was titled “Multimodal composition.” During the last few days of this section, we did some activities in class that I thought would work great in the classroom. They were called Process Drama exercises. My favorites were acting out vocabulary words, character testimonials, and extended roleplay.       First, during our vocabulary word activity, we were given words to act out and our classmates had to guess which one we were emulating. My group had the word “nook” and we represented it by having one of our members crouched in the corner with a book. I think this is a really creative way to practice vocabulary in the classroom. Worksheets and copying definitions are not engaging to the students. We learn better when we have fun, and these activities give kinesthetic learners the opportunity to learn in the way they do best.       After that, we wrote testimonials for different characters in the short story “Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin. The idea of this activi
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Unit 1 Reflection

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       In our first unit in Writing for Nonprint Media, we learned about visual literacy. This is the skill of being able to gather information from a picture, rather than a body of text. I found this topic to be very interesting and applicable to everyday life, as we are constantly inundated with things that require visual literacy, yet we are not always taught the skills necessary to decode the information that they send to us. Some examples would be TV shows, movies, advertisements, pictures, charts/ graphs, and so on. A particular article we read that went into detail on this subject was, “A Suite of Strategies for Navigating Graphic Novels: A Dual Coding Approach,” by Barbara J. McClanahan and Maribeth Nottingham. In their article, they discuss graphic novels and the specific “dual coding approach” that one must use to read them. This combination of words and images results in better retention of information, being a perfect example of the benefits of multimodal learning. I also
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About the Author

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      Hello! My name is Mia Stepanovich, and I am a sophomore secondary English education major at Slippery Rock University. I live with my three cats in Butler, Pennsylvania where I love to dance and crochet.  This is a blog that will detail my experience in my Writing for Nonprint Media class. We will be learning about the use of multimedia to convey ideas, or "more than words," as my professor says. Multimodality is a major focus. This is the use of multiple modes of expression in communication. My posts will be reflections on the units in the course where I will share my thoughts on what we learn. I have loved reading and writing from a young age, so I hope you enjoy learning along with me about one of my favorite subjects. Attached is a video that explains more about multimodality and its importance. 
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