Modal bubbling is a way of thinking about modal density in a more fluid way to better represent the significance of tiny and transitory moments of nexus revision. I have created animated maps of modal density to capture the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t, slippery resistance of imaginative recontextualization. Here's a visualization of what modal bubbling, excerpted from a classroom video where a child is coloring her arms to use her hands as duck characters in a child-produced film.
It’s possible to put modal density bubble maps in motion by calculating modal density for smaller, fixed time segments, then pasting each bubble map into a PowerPoint slide. A presentation with multiple slides creates a series that can be easily animated through manual progression of the slides or using automatic timing and transition tools. This animation will reveal changes in modal density moment to moment.
Return to the video you analyzed in Inquiry #22
1. Consider smaller segments of time to compare within a moment of collaboration.
2. Look for places where a mode grows and then disappears.
3. Consider this mode in relation to other modes in use at the same time. How do their relationships change throughout the sequence?
4. Does the use of this mode or the interrelationships among modes in this moment have any relevance for the meaning-making in the overall sequence? If so, why? Does the change or even disappearance of this mode have an impact on someone's participation?
To annotate and animate screenshots using PowerPoint, as in the example above:
Open a blank PowerPoint presentation. In the side bar, click on the thumbnail of the title slide, and hit the return key to add as many blank slides as you need (1 per screenshot). The default slides will have 2 text boxes: a small caption box at the top and a large box where you will paste or drag in a screenshot.
Drag each screenshot into the large text box (don't crop the screen shots or resize the text box to prevent the images from bouncing around). PowerPoint will automatically fit the screenshot into the empty frame and keep the margins consistent so that you will mostly notice the changes in content from slide to slide (like a stop-motion film). This will make the movement of bubbles more noticeable.
I added modal bubbles prominent in each moment and sized and positioned each shape manually.
Under the "Insert" tab on the top toolbar, I chose "Shapes", which opens a drop-down box of shape options. Click the circle and then click and drag on the slide to create and size a bubble. Click on the finished bubble and use the crossed arrows icon to drag the bubble and place it on the screenshot image. The bubble map sizing and placement conventions are:
larger bubble size represents more intense modal attention.
placing a bubble in the top half of the screenshot means the mode is foregrounded (intentionally considered or used) while a mode in the bottom half is more backgrounded.
placing a bubble on the left indicates a mode was used occasionally while placement on the right means the mode was used more continuously.
Clicking on a shape opens a new tab in the toolbar: "Shape Format". In this tab, click open the drop down menu next to the "Shape Fill" paint bucket. This opens a palette of color choices that you can use to give each mode a unique color for easier tracking
The final step is to run a slide show that moves through the 4 slides and simulates animation. Each screenshot is a different moment so either manually clicking or automatically running the slides will show how modes change with the actions. In this example, when the child shifts from coloring her hands to using them as duck puppets, gesturing to mimic a duck's quacking bills and quacking along to her own melody, and finally moving her hands very close to the camera lens, prompting the child who is filming to protest, "Too close!"