Original Unit Outline

The original unit of work should be briefly described. (As a source document,
there are no word count expectations or restrictions.)
Extracted from the Legal Studies Unit 2 Outline of the Emmanuel College VCE
Teacher Plan 2014

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Redesign using iPed

Drawing broadly on relevant theory, aspects which could be substantially
enhanced by the introduction of New Media Literacies should be described.

The aim of the re-design is to provide students with texts which will increase
their awareness and their learning through modes other than traditional print
text.
The four stages of iPed provided the foundation for the re-design of the original
unit outline. It is a research-based pedagogy Mills (2011), which after in-class
studies and evaluation found that the average time on task was higher when
students had to create screen-based texts and that all students, even those with
learning difficulties, were able to complete the intended digital product.
Mills (2011), explains the first stage link as the teachers assisting students to
form connections between the media text and themselves, the immediate
culture and the extended world. With a subject such as legal studies, the content
hinges on its real-world application. There is a need to link the content with the
individual student as well as their cultural and immediate community.
The Challenge phase of iPed acknowledges that texts and textual practices are
ideological and social Mills (2011). It teaches students to judge the authority of
media texts and question its authenticity as well as reflection on their final
product made from that information. With Legal Studies, it is the facts that
determine the outcome of a case and its reliability in court. This second phase
will allow students to develop the skills they need to manage media texts found
online. It intends students to question their sources, (What is the purpose of this
webpage? Who is its audience? Is it trustworthy?). It also requires students to
question their final products construct. (What is the purpose of this work? Who is
their audience? Are all perspectives included?).
The Co-create stage involves the production of media with an intended
audience their immediate school in mind. The following redesign of an existing
unit intends to add more creation through multimodal means using digital texts
as a source to accompany the textbook.

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Finally, in the Share phase, students can present their final product to their
community and the global on-line audience. In conjunction with the third phase,
this will help students to develop skills in how they research multimodal texts,
the ability to establish trustworthy sources, the ability to create with an intended
audience in mind and the skills to create an engaging and informative resource.

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Revised Unit Outline

The revision which incorporates New Media Literacies should be presented as a
unit outline. This could be presented creatively, and is not restricted to a
document in tabular format.
RED- Existing form of New Media Literacies Pedagogy
BLUE- Added/ enhanced form of New Media Literacies Pedagogy
WEEK
1

Content
Unit 2: Issues in
Civil Law
Area of Study 1:
Civil Law
The Need for
civil law
Key principles
of civil law
The distinction
and
relationship
between civil
law & criminal
law
An overview of
law-making
through the
courts.
Torts,
including
negligence,
defamation
and related
defences.

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Skills

Lessons
*See below

-Define key legal

terminology and
use it
appropriately
-Observe a live
court case and
experience the
visual, gestural,
spatial and
auditory modes of
the courtroom
-Research and
gather
information about
civil cases, using
print and
electronic media.
-Discuss,
interpret and
analyse legal
information.
-Describe the
process of lawmaking through
courts using
illustrative cases.
-Apply civil law
principles to
relevant cases
-Create a form of
media text
-Explain types of
torts, their
respective
elements and
related defences.
-Communicate
with the broader
community
outside the
classroom using

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Theory
*See above for
iPed specific
links.
*See below
lesson outline
for New Media
Literacies
analysis.

media texts

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The Re-Design (per lesson)

*This lesson timeline has been reduced in span to show what a completed unit
will look like once redesigned. It will focus on completing the part of the unit
which is the Overview on law making through the courts (Week 2 and 3)
**Each Area of Study takes approximately 4 weeks and a total of 12-15 lessons.
Each stage of the iPed pedagogy is likely to take more than 1-2 lessons. (3-4
would be preferable, perhaps more on the Co-creation and Challenge lessons).

Formerly:
The lesson was an introduction into the definitions relating to law-making and
the courts. It started with a conversation about the purpose of courts and led
into deeper reading through the textbook followed by chapter summary
questions.
Lesson 1 (LINK)
The introductory class should be engaging and set the tone for the rest of the
unit. For this particular class, the students should be provided with a class set of
laptops that are able to access Google Drive. In groups of 4-5, they are to create
a brainstorm (using PowerPoint), using information they already know about the
courts and law-making, (the textbook should be used as a further resource). The
slides are to include relevant images which they are to use the internet to
research, (a multimodal skill), and look presentable (using fonts, colour and slide
design/structure). The end result should include relevant definitions, images and
content that is summarised and suitable of a slideshow format.

Formerly:
This lesson was spent revising and further looking into the court hierarchy and
examining the legal terms in relations to law-making in the courts, (Precedent,
ratio Decidendi, hierarchy etc.) This was done primarily using the textbook as

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the source of information, a text-heavy resource with limited images. The

information was put onto the board which students then had to copy into their
workbooks.
Lesson 2 (LINK)
As part of the introduction to the unit, students will have to opportunity to visit
the Magistrates court in Dandenong. Students will be subjected to standard
security procedures, (bag scans, pat downs etc.) and will have to opportunity to
watch various summary cases in progress as private citizens. The aim of this
change is to expose the students to modes other than just written text. They will
be able to experience and learn through the gestural mode (as conducted by the
judge, lawyers and parties), sound, movement and visual, (through the court
proceedings).

Formerly:
This lesson was run as a class conversation about the precedent and negligence
of the Snail in a bottle case Donoghue vs. Stevenson 1932 (found in the
textbook). The conversation was followed by a brainstorm on the board using
known legal terms and talking through the outcome of the case.
Lesson 3 (CHALLENGE)
This lesson will introduce popular BBC radio show Law Report and the
Magistrates court website. Two New Media resources which teach through
auditory, visual, and spatial modes
Upon their first classroom lesson for the unit, students will be required to form
groups of 3-4 and present a short 2 minute summary of the Donoghue vs.
Stevenson 1932 case to the class, only extracting facts from the textbook case
study. The students will then access the magistrates court website and the ABC
radio website (still within groups), and find a closed case of negligence.
Individually, using their collaborated research, they will write a short paragraph
comparing their respective case to the textbook case.

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The group members will then be Jigsawed so that new groups are formed with
1-2 members from each original group. The members of this new group will
present to each other their new case and comparisons.

Formerly:
This lesson was focused on answering summary questions of the unit so far. This
was to ensure the students had a firm grasp on precedent before moving onto
statutory interpretation and Tort law.

Lesson 4 (CO-CREATE)
This lesson will involve discussion of selected cases from the previous lesson.
The class will intend to read deeper into the societal implications of the judges
ruling in each case: the reasoning, the decision and the deeper implications of its
impact on society. Students will be asked to write or type ideas and thoughts on
the discussion as reference for future use.
I.e. In this particular case, the judge ruled __BLANK___ setting the precedent that
__BLANK___. How will this decision, now made law, affect others who have
previously acted the same way? Will they have to change their behaviour/ take
precautions to avoid breaking the law? Will the defendant need to pay damages?
What is the social implication of this/ how will this affect them and their family?

Formerly:
The following lessons revolved around case analysis, an important skill for those
in the subject. The lessons never went into the deeper meaning of the text, just
the face value and facts. If a person was deemed in breach of the law, all that
was looked at was the facts that proved a breach and the immediate monetary
compensation. No thought was given to connecting the outcome to the
community.
Lesson 5 (CO-CREATE)

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Using ABC radio, and the Magistrates court website for recent or real-time cases,
students will now work individually to create a multimodal report via PowerPoint,
Prezzie or other presentation software. The aim is to create an informative report
on their respective cases which they can share with the community, (What is
going on in the case? Why/ how it is relevant to the community? What are the
social implications of the case going to have on the lives of the defendant and
plaintiff?)
The reports need to contain text, images and an additional mode of text (a video,
a news segment, a radio segment or music).
Formerly:
A formative test would be conducted to gain students knowledge of definition,
legal structure and facts. There was no attempt to use New Media Literacies at
this point in time, (approx 8 weeks in), to do anything creative. ICT was used as
a tool to type and conduct research rather than to teach though media texts.
Lesson 6 (SHARE)
To complete the 4th objective of the iPed pedagogy, students will share their final
product with the wider school community by uploading their work to a public
Wikispaces page for other legal classes from both campuses and the wider online community to see.

The Theory behind the revision

Drawing on relevant theory in more detail, the ways in which new media literacy
enhances the learning objectives of the unit should be justified.

There is a growing awareness among visual and reading theorists alike that
image is as important as written text Healy (2000), signalling that there needs
to be a change in way subjects are taught. Burn (2013), offer the idea that
multimodality theory can provide new ways to think about sign systems, and the
codes and conventions of the more visual texts i.e. narrative films, animations
etc. This would mean that the introduction of New Media Literacy pedagogy is
the key to bringing about a greater understanding of semiotics within the

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classroom. As the times change and a greater shift towards new technology and
forms of communication is evident, there become new ways to teach and new
ways to learn through multimodal means.
Walsh (2011), refers to studies by Prensky 2001 and Gee 2003 and mentions
their prevailing argument...that students are learning differently because of the
changes in communication. It makes sense that if the ways students
communicate are changing, the pedagogy must also adapt to incorporate this
change. Walsh (2011), explains that making and communicating meaning
through reading and writing is usually done in a linear fashion with a social
purpose in mind. That is, to read a purely text print from start to finish, analysing
the punctuation and structure along the way. By utilizing multimodal texts, the
reader is exposed to the modes of sound, gestural, image, spoken word and in
some cases movement. This impacts the way they read. Studies by Bearne et all
2007 are referred to by Walsh (2011), with the results confirming that reading
was no longer linear when students were confronted with on-screen texts but
that they were engaging with radial browsing, that is trawling through the
different modes and retrieving key information; essentially orchestrating the
different modes to make meaning. The ability to make meaning is vital as a
recent study by Wyn, Turnbull and Grimshaw (2014) has shown that at a level
where students must perform to a level set by standardized tests, e.g. the VCE,
there has been a growing trend of teachers teaching to the test. This naturally
involves following the recommended textbook stringently to cover all testable
knowledge. While this is an effective means of remembering information, using
new media Literacies will increase the students learning and not just
remembering of content, as well as their ability to make meaning out of the
information and apply it.
Though there are many positive attributes associated with the introduction of
multimodal pedagogy, Knobel and Healy (1998), caution that a cultural and
social sensitivity must accompany critical literacy practices and expectations in
the classroom. Care must be taken to analyse an issue from multiple points of
view and listen to all opinions at the risk of teachers being accused of political
manipulation or bias about certain topics that may arise. Healy notes that
critical literacy has been seen to bring up temporary, controversial and volatile
issues which could lead to deeper social implications regarding the classroom,
the institution and home life.

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Reference List (APA)

Burn, A. (2013). The Kineikonic Mode: Towards a Multimodal Approach to Moving

Image Media. London. UK
Healy, A. (2000). Visual Literacy: Reading and the Contemporary Text
Environment. Literacies and Learners. Prentice Hall, Australia. NSW. Pp 155-172
Knobel, M. & Healy, A. (1998). Critical Literacies: An Introduction. Critical
Literacies in the Primary Classroom. Primary English Teaching Association.
Newtown, NSW. Pp1-12
Mills, K.A. & Levido, A. (2011). iPed: Pedagogy for Digital Text Production. The
Reading Teacher: A Journal of Research-Based Classroom Practice. Issue 65, Vol
1. Pp 80-91
Walsh, M. (2011).Literacy in a Changed Communication Environment.
Multimodal Literacy: Researching Classroom Practice. Primary Teaching
Association. Newtown, NSW. Pp5-14
Wyn, J., Turnbull, M., Grimshaw, Lydall. (2014). The experience of
Education: The Impacts of high stakes testing on school students
and their families. Whitlam Institute. PP 30-33

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