presents the content of the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ for the reader (Oren et al., 1990).
The sequences of the guide also serve to break up the text, to literally stop the reader
and ‘make them think’ beyond the text, about what the author is trying to do, or the
author’s motivation for setting the story where it is, for example. These sequences
‘model’ the work of analysing a text: the character guide, like the characters in the
‘Novel as CD-ROM’, is meant to make the reader think and act.
Student Interaction with the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’
This section focuses on how some students interacted with these resources, and
describes their ‘reading’ of the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ as a visual text. In the novel the
entity character is realised through the written mode. The ‘Novel as CD-ROM’
represents character multimodally. A character’s voice is heard, bringing voice into
play as a mode and with it a set of semiotic resources for meaning making - voice
quality, rhythm, tenor, pitch, and so on (van Leeuwen, 1999). A range of actional
modes are also made available visually via video, including facial expression,
posture, gesture, movement, and clothes. These visual and aural resources shape the
re-presentation of character. These potentials are selected, and ‘designed’ (configured
and arranged on screen) into texts which shape (re-present) the entity ‘character’ in
specific ways. Multimodal texts such as these provide new resources for students to
engage with in the their construction of character (Goodwyn, 2000).
It has been suggested that CD-ROMs enable learners to determine their own route
through materials (Andrews, 2000), and that reading from screen offers a less
alienating experience of a text (O’Donoghue, 2000). This multimodal analysis shows
that interaction with the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ in this instance extends the notion of
reading.
The ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ ‘read’ as Video
Here I give an account of two students’, Justin and Ben, engagement with the ‘Novel
as CD-ROM’. Justin and Ben ‘open’ it, and quickly close the first video clip (as the
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