modal constraints of the written page the student is often under no illusion of what
they are supposed to attend to, although in the case of young children learning to read
and write the question of what to attend to is central to their learning. In the case of
multimodal texts, however, the question for students of what to attend to is amplified.
In the classroom students working with new technologies are involved in the complex
task of transforming information across and between modes, for example they may be
working with a multimodal entity on screen to produce a written account of that
entity - what Kress (2003) has called ‘transduction’. For example, the students
working with the Steinbeck CD-ROM are engaged in the task of producing a sign of
character drawing on the multimodal signs offered by the CD-ROM. The work of the
student is to select the Criterial aspects of the entity ‘character’ to make their own
sign, drawing on the affordances of modes, and based on their interest and the
framing of the task by the teacher. Such tasks demand the remaking of signs and
involve the student in the transformation of knowledge in order to remake the sign
‘character’ according to their interests and knowledge. The multimodal environment
of the screen provides students with a range of resources for meaning making and
these multimodal representations are then ‘taken in’ ‘internalised’ and become tools
for thinking with. As each mode shapes knowledge differently modes attend
differently to the aspects of meaning being made and modes therefore provide the
students with different tools for thinking with. Given the multimodal character of the
resources of new technology and students engagement with these, a language centred
approach to learning and assessment therefore fails to attend to the complex activity
(creativity) and learning of the students in the classroom.
The multimodal resources and facilities of new technology can reconfigure the work
of the student. There are, as I have demonstrated through the analysis of instances of
technology mediated learning in English, Science and Mathematics, losses and gains
for learning in the change of technology and mode. However, as I hope I have shown
it is not that one technology is ‘better’ than another but rather that technologies
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