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

is realised visually and in written mode, and action is realised through the mode of
movement and/or sound-effect.

In the move from page to screen the entity ‘bounce’ is transformed from the
representation of everyday experiences of the material qualities of an object to the
behaviour of an object in interaction with other objects. Toontalk overlays the
material ‘reality’ of children’s everyday experience with other kinds of possibilities:
bounce can be attributed to any object in Toontalk, a pig or a brick can be as bouncy
as a super-ball. The modal affordances of animated movement and image require the
students to move from thinking of bounce as a general kind of quality to a specific
kind of movement. In doing so, the students are ‘forced’ to consider units of speed,
angle and direction, and to consider what and how objects will interact to ‘produce’
the bounce.

The affordances of writing as a mode do not require the student to define or specify
bounce or rule in their design on paper in the same way as Toontalk does. ‘Bounce’ is
represented as the interaction of elements, realised in the transactional clauses of the
written narrative and the sequencing of events as a linear narrative. The students
named the elements of the game, the ‘little figure’ and the alien, but the affordances
of writing enabled these elements to remain relatively open. When drawing a picture
of the game, however, the affordances of still image as a mode demand that the
students specify the size and shape and features of the game elements and the spatial
relationships between them. The entity ‘bounce’ is represented visually in the
students’ drawing through the genre of ‘time lapse imagery’ but the affordances of
image do not enable the direction, speed or cause of the movement to be represented.

The affordances of image and writing on the page constrained the representation of
the final outcome of the game in which the ‘little figure’ explodes the ‘sound’ and
‘effect’ of which was represented visually as a wiggling wavy line engulfing the little
figure. Through the spatial non-linear affordances of image the students represent the

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