Issue 6: iPAD, New Media Ecosystem & Multimodality, Audience Expectations

Images taken from http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/01/ipad-first-impressions-review.html

With Apple’s new Apple ipad, IT users enter into a new generation of “netbooks” and this will slowly change the way the world uses technology. Although some may see it as the larger version of the already-famous Apple iphone, the ipad comes with additional new features such as being able to watch movies (including HD), TV, colour screen web browsing, playing games and reading e-books. Its large 9.7″ screen and touch screen makes it hands down one of the coolest netbooks around. The ipad is optimized for movies and games . It also happens to let you read quite well and with built-in Bluetooth and WiFi, it lets you surf virtually anywhere. If connection is an issue, the ipad allows you to connect with your existing iphone to connect to the 3G network on your iphone (as it uses your iphone as a modem) and presto, you’re able to surf practically anywhere at any time.

( Information summary taken from http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/01/ipad-first-impressions-review.html )

Images taken from http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/01/ipad-first-impressions-review.html

The ipad enables users to do things they never thought possible. Its uses are countless, and it can change they way we see literacy as it is. Already, its accruing to students today whose surroundings are filled with visual, electronic and digital texts, according to Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001; Kress et al., 2001; Kress, 2003; Unsworth, 2001, 2002, 2003. These texts now are referred to as 'multimodal', either in print form or picture books, information books, newspapers or magazines - the ipad can provide for them all comfortably. The concept of multimodal texts in non-print form are film, video and, increasingly, those texts through the electronic screen such as email, the internet and digital media such as CD Roms or DVDs.

Images taken from http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/01/ipad-first-impressions-review.html

With an electronic or digital screen, there are added combinations of movement and sound (Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2001)). I believe that the ipad can challenge the old philosophy of traditional literacy's prominence on print in the light of the increasing multimodal texts and digital technology. As Bearne, (2003) said: “There is a 'paradigm shift', thus the discussion of textual shift of literacy education has occurred.” With the ipad, this is all possible and a change of perspective on how we interpret text is beginning to occur.

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Reference

Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy Leaming and the Design of Social Futures. Melbourne: Macmillan.

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001.) Multimodal Discourse. London: Arnold.

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge

Kress, G., Jewitt, c., Ogborn, J. & Tsatsarelis, C, (2001). Multimodal Teaching and Learning. The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom. London: Continuum

Unsworth, 1. (2001). Teaching Multiliteracies Across the Curriculum. Changing Contexts of Text and Image in Classroom Practice. Buckingham: Open University Press.