The Multimodal Character of New Technologies
As I have shown through the analysis in this thesis, a central characteristic of new
technologies is the complex interplay of still image, colour, movement and gesture,
writing, sound-effect and speech. This multimodal character of new technologies
mediates school learning and curriculum knowledge in English, Mathematics and
Science differently than do print technologies. The ‘non-linguistic’ modes go well
beyond the function that they are most often associated with of directing and
maintaining student attention. These modes as they appear on the computer screen
contribute to the construction of curriculum entities (ideational meaning), as well as
positioning the student users in relation to knowledge (interpersonal meaning) and
realising the coherence of a text (textual meaning).
Different modes offer different sets of semiotic resources and these resources shape
meaning in particular ways. In each of the computer applications analysed in this
thesis, for example, images offer students different resources for making meaning
with than do written signs. In each case, what is displayed in image is always
different than what is told in writing, even when the basis of the meaning is similar
its material realisation reshapes it in particular ways. Due to the different affordances
of modes each mode used in the computer applications contributes to the construction
of knowledge in specific ways. From this perspective the choice of mode is a matter
of ‘interested design’. This makes the question of which modes are used to represent
elements on screen in a text a central question. As my analysis has shown, for
example, the decision of which elements in a game or CD-ROM are given a ‘voice’
or a visual appearance, or which are given permanence on the screen, and what the
user can and can not change are all important in the shaping of knowledge. The
semiotic resources of modes offer students different resources for engaging with
curriculum knowledge, different resources for thinking with as each mode demands
different kinds of cognitive work in the task of understanding and transforming signs.
For this reason, modes can not be looked at in isolation and the meaning potentials of
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