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

figure, the bombs, the ‘place’, and the ‘bars’. Through writing the students represent
the game as a sequence of events and of actional relations between named elements.

The little figure will move around the place and when the alian
finally caches it. It makes an expolshan noise and the bombs go
sid ways by arows and then if you touch the barrs it goes
different ways and when you touch the bar it makes a noies.

The entity ‘bounce’ is realised through the interaction of these elements but it is not
foregrounded. In written mode five actional relations are realised: (1) the alien
catching the little figure; (2) It (the little figure) makes an explosion noise; (3) ‘you’
touching the bars (4) ‘you’ touch the bars again (4) it makes a noise. The alien and
the bombs are represented as agentive - they ‘catch’ or ‘go’ and ‘touch’, and the
agency of the user ‘you’ is merged with that of the bombs. In this way the bombs are
personified, for example “ ...you touch them...’. The actional relations and use of
personification realise different semantic roles for the elements in the game (the
bomb, the alien, the little figure). It establishes (and emphasises) the activity of the
bullet and the inactivity of the bars beyond the ‘reaction/response’ as the goal of the
action of the bomb (and the user). Themes in the game are established through the
students’ different use of modes in relation to the elements in the game, in particular
the theme of strength and weakness. The students’ use of the mode of writing
foregrounds the little figure and its movement (in the theme structure of the first
sentence) and the combination of the descriptive adjective ‘little’ and the vague
‘move around the place’ establish the little figure is the weaker element in the game.
The use of ‘catch’ and the sequence of the sentence indicates that the role of the
players is that of the everyday game-genre of catch∕tag (which exists both on and off
screen).

The entity bounce is linguistically represented as, “the bombs go sidways by arrows
and then if you [the bomb] touch the bars it goes different way”. ‘Bounce’ is
represented as a matter of movement and change of direction when something is

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