Closing Comments
Although the editors of Bridging the Multimodal Gap: From Theory to Practice effectively connected theory to the praxis of multimodal teaching, the collection is digital-focused. Most of the chapters discussed either visual or aural multimodal assignments; the collection could have benefited from the inclusion of some of the other media variations (gestural, spatial, and linguistic). Nevertheless, the way in which Bridging the Multimodal Gap: From Theory to Practice aimed to promote a comfortable and positive hue around multimodality that seems to be lacking in certain spaces and populations of our discipline instantly drew us in not only as readers, but also as educators who strives to teach multimodality in future semesters. Although several of the pieces discussed possible barriers to and complications of multimodality, the overall optimistic tone of the collection encouraged us to want to create more multimodal curricula for the classes that we teach in the future. Given our students' growing dependence and reliance on technology, this collection provided pedagogical illustrations that could assist any writing educator in building a connection between students' out-of-school and in-school literacy practices.
The act of composing this multimodal review drove home the ultimate takeaway from this book, which is to be patient with yourself and your students when experimenting with multimodal composition. Oftentimes, we have high ambitions, yet once we undertake the task, we are humbled by the practice. This is indeed what we experienced as there were so many compositional aspirations that we had for this webtext until we began to put it together and realized it was more of an overwhelming task than we had anticipated. Nevertheless, the lessons we learned from reading Bridging the Multimodal Gap: From Theory to Practice helped us persevere and realize that any movement forward is good movement, even if it is just across one link of the bridge to becoming fully multimodal.