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

game elements as happening simultaneously and in a sense the drawing became a
display of the combined process and final outcome of the game. Through their use of
visual and written representation the entity ‘bounce’ is represented as a general kind
of movement or quality.

When the students designed and constructed their game on screen using the
multimodal resources of Toontalk, in particular movement, a different kind of
epistemological commitment was demanded of them. The move from page to screen
and the potential for movement reconfigures the temporal dimension of the written
game narrative and the spatial dimension of the visual depiction of the game. As a
result the entity bounce is transformed through the representational resources of
movement in space over time. The character and function of the game elements is
realised through the use of movement. For example, the little figure attempts to flee,
its movement constrained to moving right and left, as the alien stands still and
attempts to shoot it. In short, the mode of movement is a sign of the power of the
alien, and the weakness of the little figure. The point here is that movement
demanded that the ‘agents’ of the events be clearly defined by the students and the
entity ‘bounce’ is constructed as the conjunction of agency, movement, speed, and
angle, which moves the concept of bounce beyond the inherent quality of an object.

At the level of Toontalk behaviours, ‘bounce’ is realised multimodally in written
mode, image, and movement. Behaviours, as I described in Chapter Four, have two
‘states’ (sides), the ‘action-state’ and the ‘edit-state’. In the action-state the mode of
writing lexically names the behaviour, in this case ‘bounce’, the mode of image
classifies the kind of movement through iconic signs (a spring) and movement is used
to display the behaviour itself, the movement of bounce, its direction and speed. The
edit-state consists of a written explanation of bounce in mathematical terms, the
Toontalk code for bounce, and the iconic image of the spring. In this way, the bounce
behaviour offers both an everyday representation of bounce in the ‘action-state’ and a
ScientificZmathematical representation of bounce in the edit-state. The shift in the

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