Multimodal layering : Students learning with iPads in primary school classrooms

The chapter discusses the concept of ‘multimodal layering’ as both a theoretical perspective and a methodological framework for analysis. It helps the researcher explore points of potential meaning making coherence created through digital platforms such as iPads. Multimodal layering refers to the multiplicative effect (Lemke in Visual Communication 1(3): 299–325, 2002) when semiotic modes closely associated with a text are reframed in new contexts as users make meaning in digital spaces. The effect occurs in the constant shift between the material and immaterial layers of screens, modes and texts through which individual students need to navigate when reading and writing in learning events (Walsh and Simpson in Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 37(2): 96–106, 2014). This layering is made even more complex when meaning is constructed in the social context of the classroom in the dynamic operationalization of iPads/tablets in private and public spaces. We propose that the multiplicative effects existing within the semiotic boundaries of a text alter when multimodal layering occurs as the text is repurposed in a new interaction and the learner is repositioned to respond to the reconfiguring of semiosis.

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