Projects
Picturing Palau: Multimodal Conversations of Importance (data collected Spring 2019)
This research, conducted with local teachers on the Micronesian island of Palau, includes a critical multimodal analysis of students compositions on what is important about their country and culture.
Creating Multimodal Compositions: Young Belizean Campers Dialogue Across Cultures
Dr. Cappello accompanied nineteen Liberal Studies students to San Jose Succotz, a rural Maya village near the Guatemala border in Belize, Central America. There the team hosted elementary-aged students in an education camp which built literacy and cultural understandings through photography.
R+J Timeless
This Common Experience "Time" project created an interdisciplinary collaborative teaching and performance project that engaged students enrolled in Dr. Marva Cappello’s TE 640 Writing Instruction and Methods and Dani Bedau’s THEA 438 Touring Shakespeare. Students studied Romeo and Juliet through Visual Thinking Strategies, Line Understanding, and other methods. Both classes participated in a unique, semester-long activity where they communicate ideas and images in response to prompts about the play on instagram. Follow #rjtimeless to see the 206 posts created as part of this research.
Imagined Ideas About School
This project created a community and university partnership activity that capitalized on multiliteracies perspectives to encourage students visual communication of their imagined ideas about school.
This research engaged Masters students in Reading/Literacy, Doctoral Students in Education, and local sixth graders who chose photography or drawing to illustrate their imagined ideas in response to the prompt “What should I know about your school?”