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

Teacher:     What do you do at home?

Kate:         Put it in a pot

Teacher:     So I put it in a pot, and what am I doing down the bottom there?

Points at the saucepan/points at Bunsen burner

Kate:         And then you lit a Bunsen burner under it.

Teacher:     Great. You put a Bunsen burner under it.

The sequence of the teacher’s questions and his gestures with the screen serve to
foreground the action of heating the water and to provide a realism of the events
displayed.

Through their talk, gaze and gesture with the screen the student and teacher present
the visual elements on the screen as a product of the teacher’s action (or, I would
argue more generally, the product of the ‘users’ action). For instance, the teacher’s
questions ‘what am I doing now’, and ‘how am I doing that?’ position him as an
active agent in the investigation and the screen as a window onto his actions. In
response the student offers a description of the teacher’s imagined action in setting up
the investigation that produces a procedural inventory of his actions. The description
of the imagined process of the teacher setting up the investigation presents the display
on the screen as an empirical reality akin to the science classroom laboratory. It
introduces echoes of the traditions of the science classroom where students might set
up and conduct such an investigation. The interaction of teacher and student with the
screen serves to connect the screen with the classroom of the past. The connection
that the teacher and student talk into existence between the screen and the classroom
(present and past) is also established visually by the elements and realism of the
screen. This connection glosses over - or put more strongly ‘denies’ - the reshaping of
the student’s agency that takes place in the move from page to screen.

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