I’m a huge fan of bringing multi-modalities into the classroom so students can experience how texts can be expressed in different ways, which may lead to different insights and new perspectives. I know it’s too idealistic to say that it should always be done, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that using multimodal texts is best practices.

To explore using multimodal texts in the classroom, I decided to consider Neil Gaiman’s poem “House” and remediate it by creating a Padlet picture wall to convey the sense that I got from the poem. Check out the Padlet below or here for a full view, in which the pictures were arranged intentionally (when embedding the Padlet directly into the blog, the pictures rearranged themselves to fit in the smaller amount of space).

According to Jones and Hafner in their chapter on Multimodality, the visual layout of a text expresses information to the audience. In Western culture, we read from left to right, and Jones and Hafner posit that when reading a text in this Western context, “given” information is typically positioned on the left, while “new” information is typically positioned on the right.* In my Padlet, at first I had positioned the actual poem in the middle, and that did afford it a certain level of prominence over all of the images, which enhanced it prominence (the poem was moved to the middle of the Padlet when it was embedded below). However, I decided to move the poem closer to the left (but not quite all the way) to showcase that the poem should be read almost immediately. It is the “given” information that all of the rest of the information (pictures) will be in relation to. Understandably, our eye is drawn to pictures perhaps before words, but given this insight from Jones and Hafner on the position of text, I wanted to subtly encourage my viewers to read the poem first.

Then, after the poem was read, I wanted the viewers to take a closer, more considerate amount of time on the pictures to think about how they relate to, or express, the poem according to what they felt or saw in their minds vs. what is posted on the Padlet. This new information — the pictures — “is the new message yet to be agreed upon that the reader is intended to take from the text, and may therefore be presented as problematic” (Jones and Hafner). This was my goal — to pose the pictures as possibly problematic for viewers (or students), to create a certain perspective that may or may not be similar to their own ideas and conceptions about the poem and how it should be expressed. I chose pictures that I liked and thought fit with my subjective conception, but I could have gone vastly different routes. I could have included pictures of people mowing their lawn and washing their windows. I could have posted pictures of crowds of people, houses on hilltops, papier mache, cars, buses, someone asleep, I considered it. But then I thought, that’s not what this poem is about to me. It’s about loneliness, and longing, and not being seen for who you really are. And about seeing the facades that other people put up (or maybe just this one, special person) — and maybe wanting to spend time with them in their house.

My reading of “House,” however, may be subjective and is largely influenced by my own personal experiences. Through this type of remediation activity, a problematic sort of experience can be created for the viewers as they attempt to discern their own view of the poem and whether or not it fits with the visual aspect (the pictures I chose) of the text. So much rich discussion could burgeon from this exercise. I would love to take up this kind of activity in the classroom with students and have them showcase their different readings and expressions of the same poem to see how different their perspectives can be. Alternately, students could pick a poem or text of their choice and remediate it on Padlet or some other platform — perhaps without showing the actual poem. Then as a class or in small groups, we could make inferences about the themes, motifs, tone, feeling, etc. of the student’s chosen poem and then read it after viewing the visual text first. Honestly, there are so many possibilities in terms of incorporating and sharing multimodal texts in the classroom, and I think it’s really important to do so in order to appeal to the senses of all learners and increase engagement, creativity, critical thinking, and inquiry.

Upon Reflection:

I thought Padlet was the perfect tool for my expression of remediation of a text because of its ability to show text and pictures in a collage-like format on an image board. Of course, there can be lots of perfect tools for exploring multimodality and remediation, but Padlet was so easy that I was really drawn to it. Like most platforms, you have to sign up to create a Padlet. Unfortunately, the basic, “free forever” version allows you to create only three padlets — EVER. That seems *quite* the low amount to me, and the only other “Pro” version starts at $8.25 a month ($99/year). Yikes. I mean, Padlet is great and all, and you’d get unlimited Padlets, but again, I’m stingy. To bypass this, you could have each student make an account for at least one Padlet (at least one because though there are three given by the basic version, I renamed my Padlet twice and apparently that counts as different Padlets? Yeah, I was bummed), but you wouldn’t be able to use Padlet more than three times a year, max. I love its ease of use and what it does, but it’s probably not worth the price. Though I don’t know what’s out there, I feel confident there must be some platform where you can similarly post a bunch of pictures or media in a collage or other style, for free.

In addition, moving pictures around in Padlet was a pain. At first it seemed like a fun feature, but I quickly found out that if I wanted to really customize and be particular about where certain pictures went, it was really difficult to make sure the other pictures didn’t immediately move away. Padlet quickly lost points in my book for that, because I wanted to be intentional about where I placed the pictures. Eventually I got them approximately to the point I wanted, but that was definitely a constraint of Padlet. That being said, it’s undeniable that Padlet could be used for so many great activities and projects in the classroom. It can be used for more creative things like exploring multimodality and remediation of texts, or it could even be used as more like a feedback forum — it was used this way to close out two of my online classes. I would love to hear your ideas about what to do with Padlet in your classroom!

Questions, Concerns, Suggestions, etc.

• Have you used the other formats of Padlet? For example, the “shelf” as opposed to the “wall”?
• Are you aware of any other tool like Padlet that does not require a hefty annual fee?
• Have you used Padlet in your classroom before? How did the students react to it? Were there issues in terms of appropriateness of posts? I might be concerned about that since posts can be made anonymously or might be difficult to monitor.
• Come to think of it, posts may be hard to monitor in terms of assessment for that reason; you would have be explicit about telling students to put their name on their post (if it is includes posts from classmates).
• Be sure what name you want to name your Padlet so you don’t have to change it and end up losing two possible Padlets out of your 3 free ones. 😦

*This typicality can also often be found within sentence structure (again, in the West) and in the flow from one sentence to the next, at least in what we often term as “good” or clear writing. This concept in writing is known as the “known-new contract.”