Overview:
A multimedia intensive lesson about Thomas Pynchon’s novel Against the Day built against the model of an online geographical tour
Work description:
HTML/CSS programming, identification of suitable Creative Commons media (audio, video, photos), Google map creation, content development (each page is delivered by a different character in the novel) and wiki lesson creation
Learner target:
High school or college level students of modern literature
Technology employed:
Dreamweaver, Google Maps Engine Lite, Fireworks, Flickr, Wikispaces, YouTube
Theoretical foundations:
Fleming and Mills’ VARK model asserts that different learners have varying abilities and preferences for learning through the four different modalities: reading, visual, auditory and kinesthetic (Fleming, 2001-2010). Fleming notes that many learners do not have a preferred modality, but rather are flexible in the ability to leverage different modalities in different scenarios. Furthermore, many of these multimodal learners actively desire to consume related content across multiple modalities so as to develop a deeper understanding. As such, with its rich depth of media content, I believe a virtual tour is an ideal vehicle to engage today’s growing population of multimodal learners.
References:
Fleming, N. (2001-2011). VARK — a guide to learning styles. Retrieved from http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=categories
