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

suggests that learning happens through action, it is about doing, and ultimately about
taking risks. Alongside this, the sensory coding-orientation of the game environment
visually links play with learning, and learning with pleasure.

At the sub-level of the ‘city street’ action continues to be foregrounded in the
multimodal representation of the city (figure 5.2). The concept of ‘rule’, condition
and action are introduced implicitly at this sub-level of the game, for instance as the
user ‘lands’ the helicopter (condition) the character jumps out (action). The
multimodal design of the animated character functions to firmly locate the
subjectivity of the user within the game system. The character represents the action of
the user on screen within the city environment. The modal salience of the animated
character at this sub-level, its visual proximity to the user (via the constructed point
of view of the user), and the introduction of the toolbox represent the increased
potential engagement of the user with the system. The multimodal representation of
the toolbox as being subservient to the animated character is a sign of the user’s
control of the tools and the system more generally. It signals that the tools will ‘do as
they are instructed’.

At the sub-level of the ‘city house (standing)’ the visual resources of social distance,
attitude, contact and setting signify the increased potential for user action (figure 5.3).
The physical salience of the floor is realized at this level: it occupies the most area of
the screen, the use of sound effect, the use of colour and texture. For young users of
Toontalk its cultural salience (being in the right position to work) combines with
these physical features to foreground the condition for programming (action) - that is,
in order to program in Toontalk the user has to be in a house. The condition and
action of a rule is again implicitly realized.

At the sub-level in ‘a city house (kneeling)’ the notion of rule is represented through
action; as the user instructs the animated character to kneel (condition) the toolbox
opens to reveal its contents (action). Condition is represented as something that the

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