Table 5.3 The modal affordances and epistemological commitments in the students’
written, drawn and Toontalk game designs.
Technology |
Pen and Paper |
Toontalk | |
Mode |
Writing |
Still image (drawing) |
movement, still image, sound- |
Epistemological |
• Names the • Tells the • Names the |
• Displays the • Displays the • Displays the • Constructs |
• Shows the elements and • Shows the action of the • Identifies the ‘agents’ of • Constructs ‘bounce’ as the |
The design of ‘bounce’ in the game occurred over a series of six frames of activity.
The iterative move of the students between playing, planning, and programming
enabled them to recognise and solve problems in the game design. Having identified
a problem the students planing was multimodal, using speech, gesture, and interacting
with the visual objects on the screen. Gesturing at the screen the students were able to
introduce new elements and to produce their imagined game as a ‘gestured overlay’.
These gestures were one indicator of the students’ uncertainty, for example what it is
that ‘produces’ the bounce. At such moments of uncertainty the visual mode is
crucial. If an element is not visually available it can not be easily brought into the
imagined game through students’ gesture and is at risk of being ‘invisible’ in the
problem solving process.
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