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

mean that to some extent the user has to determine what is condition and action for
her∕himself. Rule is represented as a holistic entity and the path for reading this is less
fixed than in other computer programming systems such as Imagine Logo and
Pathways.

Genre and Realism

The genre of Toontalk is that of the animated cartoon. Bammer is an everyday
cartoon representation of ‘add’, that is, banging things together, squashing them into
one form. In this way, the robots and Bammer (and the other tools in Toontalk)
mediate the mathematical world represented in numbers and sensor positions and the
everyday world of the child user through the form of animated cartoons.

The genre and the form of realism of Toontalk offer the user two ways of thinking
about movement, one, an ‘everyday’ concept of movement, and the other, as a
mathematically expressed concept. The entity movement is constructed both through
the conceptual resources of science∕physics and children’s everyday experiences. The
modal affordances of Toontalk do not require the user to imagine the movement (as is
the case in other programming applications such as Imagine and Pathways), the user
can see the movement. Phenomena are represented through the iterative interaction
between the everyday and the mathematical. In Toontalk the representation of things
that have significance in children’s everyday worlds are represented as being
significant alongside that which is significant within mathematics. The user is able to
attend to the mathematical code via its actional realisation. This iterative move
between concepts and the modal affordances of the program mode provide a potential
for the user to make links, to come to understand ‘rule’ as both a mathematical and an
everyday entity.

The representation of the elements of the rule ‘move 15 units to the right when the
control key is pressed’ in Toontalk program mode discussed above, are summarised
in table 5.2.

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