Animation and the remediation of school physics – a social semiotic approach

ABSTRACT

This paper opens by proposing a model for the holistic study of design software that emphasises user operations. It then examines the affordances of Explain Everything, a popular interactive whiteboard software, for animating concepts that play a crucial role in the Australian Year 7–10 physics curriculum. Building on earlier work on animation by Leão [(2012a). “Movement in Film Titles: An Analytical Approach.” Unpublished PhD, University of Technology, Sydney], the meaning-making resources of animation, in general, are presented as a stratified system (of choices), which is then deployed to explore the animation operations that Explain Everything facilitates. It is found that Explain Everything can animate some of the Year 7–10 physics concepts but has limitations with respect to others and is not able to realise all the options which the animation system generalises. In this way, the paper seeks to contribute to the growing body of social semiotic studies of multimodal semiotic technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Animation
• physics
• social semiotics
• semiotic technology

Acknowledgements

The research of this paper formed part of “Optimising teaching and learning with mobile-intensive pedagogies”, a research project directed by Professor Peter Aubusson and Professor Sandra Schuck, of the University of Technology, Sydney, and funded by the Australian Research Council (grant number: DP150101214). We would also like to thank the Explain Everything team for kindly permitting us to use the screenshots of videos on the Explain Everything portal in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yufei He is a PhD candidate at the Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney. Her research interests and publications are in the areas of multimodal discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics. She has published in journals such as Linguistic Research and The Journal of Chinese Sociolinguistics.

Theo van Leeuwen is Professor of Multimodal Communication at the University of Southern Denmark and Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. He has published widely in the areas of social semiotics, multimodal communication and critical discourse analysis. His books include Reading Images – The Grammar of Visual Design (with Gunther Kress); Speech, Music, Sound; Multimodal Discourse – The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication (with Gunther Kress); Global Media Discourse (with David Machin); Introducing Social Semiotics; Discourse and Practice – New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis; and The Language of Colour. He is a founding editor of the journal Visual Communication.

Notes

1 This survey is part of an ARC (Australian Research Council) funded project of “Optimising teaching and learning with mobile-intensive pedagogies”.

2 See https://explaineverything.com/, retrieved on August 8, 2017.

3 See http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PS2y73&PMDBSOLUTIONID=6724&PMDBSITEID=2781&PMDBCATEGORYID=811&PMDBSUBSOLUTIONID=&PMDBSUBJECTAREAID=&PMDBSUBCATEGORYID=23496&PMDbProgramID=115641&elementType=attribute&elementID=1 retrieved on June 12, 2017.

4 According to Systemic Functional Linguistics conventions of system networks, square bracket and curly bracket indicate either/or relation and co-selection relation respectively. A combination of square bracket and curly bracket is used to show a relation of both as alternatives and as simultaneous options.

5 In the system conventions of recursive system, the symbol “||” means stop; the loop coming out from “go on” means that one can go back to select from the system again.

6 See https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-motion-definition-laws-quiz.html retrieved on June 15, 2017.

7 See https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-momentum-definition-equation-units-principle.html retrieved on June 15, 2017.

8 See https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-temperature-definition-lesson-quiz.html retrieved on June 16, 2017.