Digital Literacy Project

        When I was first introduced to the idea of spiral education in a different class, I was very fascinated by it and I was automatically for the idea because I agreed that students master their skills and knowledge by accumulating what they learn from one level to the next.  A kindergartener can't master writing a persuasive essay all at once.  They need to learn a little bit in one grade and more in the next grade and so on.  Therefore, I was very much in favor of the spiral curriculum until I read Smagorinsky's chapter.  As I was reading the Smagorinsky chapter, I started to imagine how this curriculum would look like; I thought the spiral curriculum might beget a very structured and controlled curriculum across all grades because all teachers at all grades would make sure that students are accumulating their skills and knowledge from one level to the next, and so teachers will have to ensure which content they're teaching. So, I was not really sure about the rigidness and inflexibility of the spiral education when I was imagining how it might look like.

         In addition to Smagorinsky's interesting idea, another idea that Hicks mentions in his chapter got my attention.  Hicks argued that students could learn the same writing process that they learn via print writing by learning the multimodal writings because “any kind of composing—whether print alone or any combination of media—requires a similar thinking process. The MAPS heuristic mentioned requires us to help students think about how, when, and why they are producing messages for different audiences” (p.135).  I agree that there is definitely an awareness of the audience in both print writing and multi-modal writing; however, I think there are definitely certain things that multi-modal writings cannot fully achieve as print-writings could, or things that multi-modals lack.  For example, multi-modal writings are great for providing students with visualization but they hinder students from making their own visualization because they present one type of visualization for the students. 

       I'd like to try to have students create their own multi-modal writings just to inform them that both types of writing that seem to be very different can have the same or similar writing process and writing strategies.  However, I wouldn't rely on the multi-modal writing wholly though because I believe that print-only-writings and multi-modal writings have unique value in each of them although they may share some qualities. I think it would be challenging for me to incorporate digital writing in my lesson plans because it would require a number of hours to educate students not only how to write their papers but also transfer their writing to the digital means.  However, I can see the value in introducing this type of writing and how to create one to the students, and I think I will definitely try to teach it someday.