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Ladislaus M. Semali, Editor, Transmediation in the Classroom: A Semiotics-Based Media Literacy Framework (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002; ISBN 0-8204-5199-1).
In this book, author Ladislaus M. Semali and the text's contributors challenge traditional educational techniques as well as provide new frameworks in order to examine how "individuals shape or are shaped by sign and symbol systems or program elements that surround their learning and communicating environments" (p. xi). This framework is based on the notion of transmediation - "the process of taking understandings from one sign system and moving them into another in order to make meaning or 'representing' meaning across sign systems" (p. 160)". For instance, when a student reads a short story and then creates a drawing of the story's events, or perhaps a web page of what the story represents visually, transmediation has taken place.
With new multi-media equipment being introduced every year, Transmediation in the Classroom challenges educators to keep up with these new advances, implementing them in their own classrooms for a holistic experience to the topic at hand. As Semali notes," When students and teachers combine words, pictures, and mathematical symbols to express their ideas, they are said to transmediate. A truly literate person is one who can mediate his or her world through multiple sign systems - not just language (2002: 10)". Essentially, Transmediation in the Classroom helps educators realize the power of media images and helps them move beyond traditional teaching forms by integrating new frameworks for learning material in classroom activities and lesson plans.
Transmediation in the Classroom marries three critical areas of study: semiotics, public school curriculum, and media literacy. Semiotics and curriculum studies are long-standing, established areas of research within the Academy. However, media literacy is a relatively new area of inquiry, gaining notoriety within the past twenty years under a variety of non-deplumes: Visual Culture, Visual Literacy, Visual Studies, Visual Anthropology, or Visual Communication, just to name a few.
Transmediation in the Classroom begins with a preface and introductory chapter written by Semali on the relationship between semiotics and transmediation. The second chapter provides a personal reflection by Judith Fueyo on her own experiences of "moving from a verbal world to a visual one" (2002:22). The remaining ten chapters provide a variety...