Traditional, our schoolsystem is using text to explain topics. Although we use some images, most of the knowledge we present to our student is highly textual. Also, the students needs to represent their knowledge textual. Write a story, doing presentations etc. Even a subject as mathematics nowadays is more explaining in text then presenting explanations in numbers and figures.

A lot of students profit from this way of learning. They are so called verbal learners, using text and words to gain knowledge. But there are also students with a different preference of learning. They make more use of their visuo(spatial) memory. Although there seems so far no scientific proof for this distinction, more and more in education there is a conviction this distinction really exist (Rogowsky, Calhoun & Tallal, 2015). In the Netherlands they started a research at two universities, Groningen and Utrecht,  to see if there is any scientific proof for this distinction (http://www.stichtingbeelddenken.nl/organisatie/werkgroepen/).

As you can read on this webpage these learners profits from learning by using images, colours and pictures.

So, like said in the video by Dr Cope and Dr Kalantzis, multimodal learning is a way of learning that should be integrated due to the common core program, but is also helps the learners to enlarge their understanding of a topic. Most of all, it’s necessary, because multimodal learning helps the student to connect with the digital era.

But it’s also likely that more students can profit from the education in this way, because a multimodal way of learning fits more to a visual spatial student, comparing to the more literacy education. They will be able to enlarge their knowledge, to be part of the schoolsystem, more than they usually were able to!

How does multimodal learning looks like? There are a lot of examples on the internet. I would like to address two.

Thinking of history, you can present simple a text about the life expectancy in Europe, Asia and so on over the years. But you can also present this topic in a more mathematical way and present a figure, a bar chart, to tell this story. This figure should then represents different continents, comparing the life expectancy in different years.  

Thinking of a multimodal way to present this subject, you can look at a youtube video  of Hans Rosling.Using images, colours and pictures, makes it attractive for visualspatial learners, but using text and hearing, it appels to all students. And it’s connecting to the digital era.

A second example, using multiliteracies as a multimodal representation you can find at prezi. A lot of people use prezi like powerpoint. Most likely by bullets and text. But you can use prezi in a way it’s combining text, listening, image and sound, thereby switching in different modes and therefore support powerful learning (synesthesia).  

A nice example is from a prezi presentation using graphics and text is this award winner presentation.

An other example, about public schools, it the prezi presentation A Year a Mission Hill. Using images, video’s etc. to tell a story and to convince people to a different way of education.

So, using multimodel knowledge representation is necessary for students, not only because we are living in a digital era, but also because the visual students will profit from it.

And maybe this update will change in the future to a call for the verbal learners.

Considering using textbooks started in 1500, and we’re still using mostly textbooks in our classroom, it will take a while before we will use only a visual mode, if that will happen  ;)

Rogowsky, B., Calhoun, B. & Tallal, P. (2015). Matching learning style to instructional method: Effects on comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(1), 64-78.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037478