first video clip opens automatically when the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ is selected they
have seen the scene many times). Ben has memorised the rough location of the video
clips via the ‘page numbers’ displayed in the top right corner of the screen. He and
Justin use this information to find the first video clip that they watch. Ben types in
the page number on the computer keyboard and instructs Justin to move backwards or
forwards using the icons on screen until the video clip is found and opened. He has
memorised the elements in sequence (what goes before and what comes after) to
locate the video clips: he has internalised the structure of the visual narrative. Having
located the video clips the two students sit back, hands off the mouse and keyboard
and watch the video. Later they realise that the video clips are always at the start of a
chapter and they switch to using the Chapter Menu Bar to find them.
The use of the Chapter Menu Bar as a navigational tool enabled the two students to
move almost seamlessly through the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ as a series of video clips.
The students by-pass the novel as a written text (i.e. they do not engage with it) and
instead engage with it as a (multimodal) video.
The ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ ‘read’ as Comic
Two students, Natasha and Holly, first watch the video clip described earlier. As the
video clip closes the screen of the first page in the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ automatically
opened. Holly instructs Natasha to “keep going along”, and she clicks the forward
icon with the mouse. As the character guide Bindy appears she clicks to move on,
but cannot. The two students watch the screen and Natasha holds the mouse. As
Bindy closes, Natasha clicks the forward icon every two or three seconds and moves
through the next 12 screens in this way. Both students lean forward to the screen and
look directly and intently at it. The next clip of Bindy opens, the students watch him,
and then Natasha clicks the forward icon to move through the next nine screens of the
‘Novel as CD-ROM’. As the next Bindy clip opens, Natasha appears to try to close it,
and failing that, to try and leave the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’, Holly instructs her to stay
in the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ area and to “keep going”. Natasha clicks on the forward
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