Resource+-+Carly


 * Source taken**


 * Interactive Website**: [] (Retrieved, October 6, 2009)

This resource, a multimodal interactive website, includes easy to understand information on the solar system in particular how day and night occurs and how the four seasons occur. This website begins with general information on the solar system and goes into brief detail about how day and night occurs and the seasons. This website then goes on to give students the opportunity to interact with the earth whilst they send "Max" (a character on the website) to various countries, but they need to place the Earth in the right hemisphere and in the right position according to the Sun, based on Max's instructions.
 * Description of resource:**

This interactive website is not only relevant to Science & Technology but also English. This website is a great example of a multimodal text as it uses various forms and modes to engage its given audience. Students can interact with this website and gain a first hand understanding on how texts are created for specific audiences and are designed and set out to engage that audience. Students can, through this website, reflect on what made this website engaging and as this website includes brief factual explanations students can use this information to further their knowledge of scientific concepts on the solar system, and create a multimodal text and develop their literacy skills.
 * Relevance to the outcomes:**

Explanations tell how and why things occur in scientific and technical terms (Board of Studies NSW, 1998, p. 231). This website explore's how and why day and night and the seasons occur in scientific and technical terms. Students will be able to explore explanations through the interactive website given and will have the opportunity to write their own within their own based on using this websites structure as a model. Students also have the opportunity to explore an available design of a multimodal text and its arrangement, features and structure.
 * Aspect of Literacy suitable to be explored:**

Students will have the opportunity to identify through this resource general information about the phenomenon which is in this case solar system. Through the multimodal nature of this resource students will witness through moving labelled diagrams and verbal explanations the sequence of the main phases of the Earth as it moves from day to night and the processes the Earth must go through to cause each individual season: summer, winter, autumn and spring.
 * The aspects of literacy suitable to be explored include:**

Students will be able to first hand witness the appropriate language and terminology suited to an explanation i.e. action verbs e.g. the earth //moves// ; time conjunctions to sequence events in order e.g. //First// the Earth; general, abstract, technical and non human nouns; adjectivals to describe phenomenon; causal conjunctions, connectives and adverbials (as themes) in casual explanations; use of passive voice and use of nominalisation to summarise a process of events included in the Earths changes (Droga & Humphrey, 2005, p. 142).

Cope & Kalantzis (2000) states that to find our way around this new and emerging world of meaning, requires a new multimodal literacy (p.6). "Design of meaning" is referred to as the sort of creative intelligence one needs to be able to redesign activities in the very act of future practices (p. 20). Through this interactive website and task given students are given the opporunity to interact with a dynamic "available design" which includes a mixture of different semiotic systems e.g. visual and aural with a combination of language. Students will then be able to practice "redesigning" a multimodal resource in which they will remake meaning themselves using the design elements of a multimodal task (p.23). Students will have opportunities to reflect on the websites presentational features and how this website is successful in educating its audience about the processes of the Earth. Students can use this website as a scaffold for structuring their explanations within their presentation as well as giving fine detail to presentational arrangement and consideration of different elements/modes used to interest the audience.


 * __References__**

Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Macmillan: London. (Chapter 1: A pedagogy of Multiliteracies. pp. 9-37)

Droga, L. & Humphrey, S. (2005). Grammar and Meaning. //An introduction for primary teachers.// Marrickville N.S.W. : Southwood Press Pty Limited.

N.S.W. Board of Studies (1998). English K-6. //Modules.// N.S.W. : Board of Studies.