Multiliteracies can be seen as the basis for multimodal learning (Cope and Lantzis, 2017) just as traditionally literacy was seen as the foundation of traditional learning wher being able to read and write was the backbone of being able to demonstrate your learning and progression. Multiliteracy incorporates the ability to make meaning from multiple modes of communication and sources of information, but within the cowoncept of learning as a process of creation and production, rather than on as a simple consumer, it also involves developing the skills and metacognition to understand their relevance and application in different ways of meaning making. As with other areas under the more general idea of 'digital literacy', this goes beyond the technical skills of knowing 'how', but the more complex abilities to know 'what' and 'why'.

Digital literacy is the ability to access, manage, understand, integrate, communicate, evaluate and create information safely and appropriately through digital technologies for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship. It includes competences that are variously referred to as computer literacy, ICT literacy, information literacy and media literacy. (Law, Woo, de la Torre and Wong, 2018)

It is the development of these abilities above the 'being able to make a video' which makes multimodal learning so powerful and empowering, It enables teachers and students go beyond the 'substitution' level of changing the way we teach and learn to 'redefined' (Curwood, 2012)

Multimodal learning also affords the ability ot move towards rhizomatic learning, a concept of an open ended learning process which is incredibyl personalised. Using the wide range of technologies and affordances available allows individuals to create their own connected, over lapped and linked network with no or little framework restricitng the learning process. One of its champions, Dave Cormier, gives an excellent summary of rhizomatic learning here and the infographic summarizes the main elements, which are highly related to and simily to multimodality.

Cited in Mackness, Bell and Funes 2015

References

Bell, F., Mackness, J., and Funes, M. (2016) Participant association and emergent curriculum in a MOOC: can the community be the curriculum? Research in Learning Technology(24).

Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2017). Conceptualizing e-learning, in B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds), e-Learning Ecologies, New York, Routledge.

Cormier, D. (2011, Nov 5th) Rhizomatic learning – why we teach?, Available at: http://davecormier.com/edblog/2011/11/05/rhizomatic-learning-why-learn/

Curwood, J. (2012) Cultural shifts, multimodal representations, and assessment practices: A case study, E-Learning and Digital Media(9)2, 232-244

Law, N., Woo, D., de la Torre, J. and Wong, J. (2018) A global framework of reference on digital literacy skills for indicator 4.4.2, Information Paper No. 51, Montreal, UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Available at: http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/ip51-global-framework-reference-digital-literacy-skills-2018-en.pdf