Emotion in the design of students' writing.

Latham, Gloria

At home, many primary age children are experimenting with word processing programs, designing web pages, playing computer games, and creating animations and videos. Against this backdrop of invention, innovation, exploration and playfulness is neat and tidy beautifully crafted, accurate school writing. Not only do grammar checks, spell checks, clip art and the like remove the voice of the writer, they also can sanitise the writing.

It appears that attention has turned away from writing as an art form; writing that is made powerful through design--the typography, the shape and movement and invention of the words and images on the page. This article will chart a new path towards the use of design to bring colourful emotions into children's writing!

'Doing school'

When Kelly was asked about her favourite subject in school she replied that it was colouring in. At the tender age of six, Kelly has already learned how to 'Do School', to write neatly to colour within the lines, to follow instructions, to comply, and to draw and write within the margins set. Accuracy counts the most. Some teachers reward the package as much or even more than the contents. Points or grades are awarded for presentation. Learners receive ten out of ten for a beautifully neat and coloured cover page.

If we consider the keyboard as a crayon, Kelly's neat colouring and writing when transferred to a computer becomes shading, clip art, emoticons, grammar checks and spell checks all set within the tools of margins, borders, bullets and frames. Kelly uses the word processor to type up her 'GOOD' copy and colours it in it using many of the programs on offer.

Another story from Bissex (1980) can be told about the use of the crayon. Paul, five years of age, urgently required the attention of his mother who was on the phone. When all of his attempts to attract her attention failed, Sam picked up his crayon and wrote:

RUDF

Although Paul was using his crayon without knowledge of exclamation marks, and question marks and still using some letter name spelling and phonic approximations, his message (Are you deaf?) and its emotion came out screaming. Its power rested in his use of only four letters.

A third crayon user's story concerns Jesse, nine years of age and secretly creating a comic strip version of The Hobbit (2012). I use the word 'secretly' because his series of cartoon strips (nine pages thus far) is kept stuffed in the dark recesses of his school desk. This is clearly not the prescribed writing Jesse is meant to be doing at school. When the cartoons were unearthed Jesse was concerned about being caught and the precious material would be confiscated. Even when this subversive text was praised, Jesse felt a sense of unease about others seeing his work in the light of day.

The new learner

At home, many young children like Kelly, Sam and Jesse are experimenting--designing and inventing web pages with hyperlinks, images, animations, videos, board games, and online chat spaces--making messes (as learning is messy) rather than merely using their crayons to decorate. They are scrambling to discover the mysteries of how writing and imaging can be made purposeful and powerful. Lankshear and Knobel (2007) refer to these hybrid mediums as post typographic forms of textual practice as they are created by people with new mindsets--new orientations to the world.

These home practices are the natural ways in which children learn and meet the needs of learners in the 21st Century. These affective modes need recognition with respect to the visual in literacy, namely fonts, colour and shape with attention to exploration and design.

In the past 15 to 20 years, theorists have been challenging existing notions of functional skills-based education as being deficient in meeting the needs of learners in this digital age of exploration and discovery making. They have been describing and deconstructing the multiple literacies (inherent in children's social practices at home). These educators have been developing frameworks such as Luke and Freebody's (2000) Four roles of the reader--Code Breaker, Text Participant, Text User and Text Analyst--and Bill Green's (1988) 3-D Model of Operational Knowledge--how to operate the Literacy System, the Culture Dimension about meaning and practices, and the Critical Dimension where the learner understands there is no single truth. There is recognition of the interaction of different modes and different means toward expression in multi-modal texts and multimedia productions.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Kress and van Leuwen's (2001) research explores a range of multimodal discourses and their demands. Visual literacy is a focus of their research. Set against this backdrop of research, theory making, and the development of theoretical frameworks of invention of innovation, exploration and playfulness are Kelly's neat and tidy beautifully-crafted, accurate, well-fashioned writing pieces. What then do these technologies offer children at school and what practically can teachers do to support children becoming the designers of texts?

Grammar checks, spell checks, clip art and the like not only sanitise the voice of the writer they also tend to erase the emotion from the writing for the reader. As a teacher educator I became increasingly concerned that I was losing my preservice teachers' voices in their assignments as 'correctness' was overpowering their notions of a polyphonic text. My concern was that pre-service teachers were being required to solely distance their voice and emotions from written assessments. When these people became teachers I felt certain that they would perpetuate these norms.

A breathing, sounding, moving text

Over time, I charted a new path taking a fresh gaze at multi-modal writing in new times. This path examined the art of composing e-motion with emphasis on how the text can be experienced using colour, font, size, text orientation and other conventions and innovations to bring the writer's voice and empathic responses into the writing and how technologies can support these practices.

The myriad roles of the reader as text analyst and the deconstruction of texts are also being considered. Durrant and Green (2000) suggest that we need to emphasise writing further as production and design. Through design, writers have the power to paint words that evoke surprise and delight in their readers.

Temporal typography is the dynamic visual treatment of a text as an extension of written language. It is about sensing a landscape of text from a number of levels and dimensions. For instance, Yin Yin Wong's (1996) work undertaken at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been instrumental in creating computer programs that allow texts to change over time. Wong discusses typographic tone of voice, the visualisation of dialogue and dynamic presentations of texts. Using a program called EX-press the visual affective treatment of texts can be captured.

These forms can embellish meaning by providing the word with inflection, motion and even playfulness. The designers are working to place inflection in the writing, to make language sound rather than merely be read. The designers are also experimenting with the rhythm of a presentation and its motion.

Once we allow and forge authentic purposes to school tasks, the need at Bill Green's operational level is fuelled to fulfil a range of purposes--to get meanings across that are heard and felt and seen.

Texts read today are often polyphonic (multi-voiced and dialogical), multi dimensional, and multi faceted like Glenda Millard's The Duck and the Darklings (2014). Technically speaking, Stephen Michael King's illustrations in Millard's book together with word layout and colour using pen, brush ink and digital compilation fuel 'the coming of hope'. Texts like these can be studied with design features in mind. Then, once children are in control of language conventions, they can be offered opportunities to playfully explore the effects of fonts, colour, position of words on the page and movement and their effects on the messages they wish to convey.

It is necessary to think about notions of experimentation and playfulness in multi-modal ways in school, helping learners make discoveries about how their writing can be made more powerful. In this bountiful time of gadgetry, inventiveness and design, there can be a tendency for students to dart from one new plaything to the next. In order for learners to be helped to make their texts powerful, they need opportunity to focus and practise design techniques and be afforded opportunities to solve meaningful design problems in a studio based environment when they are at the stage of publishing their work. Considerations can be directed towards their audience. How are their design elements read by a variety of cultures? How does their design make readers feel? Is the design tonal as well as visual? What surprises the reader?

This involves teachers assisting children to negotiate their way into new mediums and helping them meet the challenges of these new forms of discourse. Teachers also need to be responsive to the myriad literacies available to them so that a crayon user like Jesse can lift the level and impact of his cartoons and bring them into the light. These opportunities are plentiful where the typographic visualisation lives in the words rather than viewed as an accompaniment.

The crayon Kelly used to colour with is the same instrument Paul used to create a powerful message to his mother and the one Jesse is using to re-image The Hobbit. The differences for children resonate in the means of use, the place where experimentation is allowed, the audiences' responses, the expectations of their teachers and the users' intentions towards more powerful communication.

References

Bissex, G. (1980). GNYS at WRKS: A child learns to write and read. New York: Harvard University Press.

Durrant, C., & Green, B. (2000). Literacy and the new technologies in school education: Meeting the l(IT)eracy challenge? Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 23 (2), 89-108.

Green, B. (1988). Subject-specific literacy and school learning: A focus on writing, Australian Journal of Education, 32 (2), 156-179.

Kress, G., & van Leuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London, UK: Oxford University Press.

Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2007). The new literacies sampler. New York: Peter Lang.

Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (2000). Literate futures: Report of the literacy review for Queensland state schools. Brisbane, QLD: Education Queensland.

Millard, G. (2014). The duck and the darklings. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Tolkien, R.R. (2013). Revised. The Hobbit or there and back again. New York: Del Rey.

Wong, Y.Y. (1996). Temporal typography: A proposal to enrich written expression. Retrieved from http://www.sigchi. org/chi96/proceedings/ videos/Wong/yyw_txt.htm

Gloria Latham is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at The University of Sydney. Email: lathamgloria44@gmail.com