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

In the lesson analysed in this chapter, the task of the students is to use the
representation of the CD-ROM to predict what might happen when a solid, a liquid or
a gas is heated or cooled. Alongside this the students investigate the arrangement and
behaviour of the ‘particles’ on cooling and heating. The CD-ROM offers the students
the potential to ‘pause’ the representations of the transformations, and to move easily
and quickly between the two viewing options (with or without ‘particles’) and the
different ‘states of matter’.

The interface of Multimedia Science School draws on the modes of writing, image,
movement, and their arrangement on screen; in other words, it is multimodal. The
way that these modes are organised visually (designed) on the screen serves to create
two distinct areas of the screen: a ‘frame’ and a ‘screen within the screen’. Although
the ‘frame’ is slightly larger than the ‘screen within the screen’ (the ‘frame’ occupies
55% of the screen space as compared with the ‘screen within the screen’ that
occupies 45% of it) due to its centrality, the latter dominates the screen. These two
areas of the screen attend to quite distinct kinds of activity. The ‘frame’ attends to
scientific classification and labelling and presents the means by which scientific
phenomena such as ‘states of matter’ can be explored. The ‘screen within the screen’
attends to the empirical world that is to be the subject of scientific investigation that
is made visible on the screen. These two aspects of school science - scientific theory
and the empirical world, are marked through the visual composition of the screen, as
well as modally. The ‘frame’ relies on the mode of writing and the visual resources of
layout and composition while the ‘screen-within a screen’ relies on the modes of
image and movement. Both employ the mode of colour; however they do so in quite
different ways. In the following section I describe the designed arrangement of modal
resources in the ‘frame’ and in the central screen and discuss how each contributes
differently to the construction of the entities of the science curriculum, and to
learning more generally.

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