A Multimodal Framework for Computer Mediated Learning: The Reshaping of Curriculum Knowledge and Learning

classroom via the computer applications in each chapter I go on to analyse student
interaction with these resources. I examine the ways in which these multimodal
resources reshape knowledge, their impact on the practices of students and more
broadly what this might mean for technology-mediated learning. I develop the themes
outlined in Chapter One throughout this analysis.

4. The MultimodaI Reshaping of Curriculum Entities in School
English in the Move from Page to Screen

In Chapter Four I focus on the use of the CD-ROM Of Mice and Men (1996) of the
Steinbeck novel OfMice and Men (Steinbeck, 1937) in a secondary school English
classroom. I explore how, in the move from page to screen, a range of
representational modes (including image, movement, gesture, and voice) are available
as meaning-making resources. The concept of ‘character’ is one of the central
concepts in the National Curriculum for English (DFEE, 1999) and working with this
concept I show how the shift from the written page to the multimodal screen entails a
shift in the construction of ‘character’. Through detailed multimodal analysis of
several students’ engagement with the CD-ROM I argue that student interaction with
the resources of the CD-ROM as a visual multimodal text demand that ‘reading’ and
the process of learning within school English be thought of as more or other than a
linguistic accomplishment.

5. Mathematics and the Multimodal Construction of ‘Rule’ and
‘Bounce’ on Screen

In Chapter Five I focus on a computer programming application ‘Toontalk’ and its
use in a Primary school computer club. Toontalk aims to give children access to a
conceptual understanding of maths through the process of building computer games.
In the first part of the chapter I analyse the modal resources that the application
makes available to the user. In order to demonstrate that these are the result of a
designer’s choice from a range of available potentials, not an automatic consequence

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