Where's The Beef?

Three aspects of this article that I either didn't know about before reading it or hadn't thought of before reading it were: The mode idea that explains how "students will develop a 'fluency'" for each type of techonolgy based learning depending on their preferences in that technology. I can see how students would be able to get their messages out better and also understand what a teacher is looking for if they are working with technology that best fits their needs. I hadn't thought about "having mulitple data sets for students that included actual artifacts of student work" before because as an English teacher it always seemed that papers were the be all and end all. However, by having little portfolios for students with all of their materials included is a way to help them in the future. They will be able to look back at all their work and the combination of technology based work with papers and better understand what they were supposed to be learning in the first place. I also hadn't really thought about how "serious pieces of work by students" in the field of technology would be applied to their learning skills, but reading this article made me realize that if a student spends time on their piece, having the technology best fit them first, then they are more likely to figure out how to learn in a more efficient way and also take learning more serious.

Two tidbits I got out of this article that will help me in my teaching process are: "Having students create a book trailer or a soundtrack of the books journey" which will show that the student truly understands the book and is able to be creative, analytical, and productive in their ability to learn. The other tidbit was asking students questions that would help me to match them up with the proper technology for them to learn with. That was a genius idea that I would have never thought about. All students are different, they learn better in different formats, so they should be match accordingly.

My question is: What is an Animato?

P.S. I liked the picture of the cow and how it maps out different communications. I specifically liked the numbers 10, 11, and 13 because I want to be an English teacher and that's kind of the heart of English writing. So, I thought it was interesting that those three communications were located close to the heart.