It may seem a trivial matter but in fact, deciding on
the position of an audio-recording button in a children's story-making app
might lead to some larger questions about the importance of sounds in
meaning-making.
If we place the audio button at the same level as the
text-writing option, does it mean that we assign the two modes equal power in
multimodal stories? Perhaps children should be first given the opportunity to record
their story and then translate it into a written text. Or perhaps the very first option should be the possibility
to draw and take pictures? Maybe we should offer all options as a
set of tools in a magic ipad box, in the spirit of 'let the children pick and choose, be creative
and artistic'. Would this put the writing option on the back burner? Perhaps we should let the parent/ teacher choose individual story-making modes, depending on the child’s ability. In the spirit of 'let the more knowledgeable
others scaffold children's learning opportunities'.
Has someone ever tested the choices children make
when they access different modes in multimodal story-making? And what about
adults, do we have a preference and what does this preference reflect?
