Computer Mediated Multimodal Text Production: Children Crossing Semiotic Boundaries

In any school class there will be a wide range of learning style preferences. To develop a writing curriculum that meets the needs of each style is a pursuit that has been only superficially explored. This report addresses issues involved in understanding the writing needs of a wide range of styles. The author studied one class of ten-year-olds, becoming their full-time teacher for one year, and implementing a programme of text production that took the students from monomodal, handwritten texts to fully multimodal computer-mediated texts. By observing the changes over a ten-month period and analysing in detail the learning environment that was the same for all 26 students, it has been possible to see strong patterns emerging from the data. This patterning has been matched with the cognitive styles of the students as assessed by a cognitive styles analysis. By invoking the theory of transmediation or transduction it has been possible to deduce that a student?s style affects the way that material is transferred across the semiotic modes.