Through their gesture in relation to the screen itself the students create a space for
making meaning which enables them to bring together their everyday knowledge of
bounce and the Toontalk system. This space created by the gestures of the students on
the screen serves to connect the students’ activity, their imagined game (the trajectory
of bullet), and the Toontalk program. The space is one in which the students can
display their intentions without having to engage with the constraints of the program.
This space is produced through the gaze and gesture of the students and is a space
focused on outcomes - like a visual∕gestural blueprint. In this space the vagueness of
their gestures realises their recognition of a problem.
As I discussed in the first part of this chapter the Toontalk bouncing behaviour shapes
the multimodal construction of the concept bounce and the potential for what students
can do with them. The students’ confusion about what game element they should
attach the bounce behaviour to was, as I have shown, the result of their everyday
understanding (and experiences) of bounce and ‘agency’ and the modal affordances
of the Toontalk programming system. Within this there appears to be a confusion
about ‘what it is that produces bounce’ and ‘what it is that bounces’. In other words,
the students appear to understand something bouncing as a ‘result’ of their everyday
experiences and knowledge.
In terms of mode, at this point in their game-design the students are working and
designing by looking at the modes on screen - what is visible on the screen is
important for the process of designing the game. The representation of the entity
bounce is visual - the bounce is in the image of the spring and they are looking at the
game to decide where to ‘attach’ the bounce. The ‘sticks’ (bars) are visible on screen,
however, the bullets are not visible - they are only visible when the game is being
played. In this visual mode of working the system did not make the bullets available
as a potential object that the students could specify as the object that the T bounce...’
refers to. In short, when working in a visual mode agency depends on visual presence.
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