Comunicar 39-ingles - Revista Comunicar

84Comunicar, 39, XX, 2012media through different tools; the huge quantity ofinformation at the user’s disposal in each frame, image,sound or their sequence; the necessity to close or openthe structures of multimedia systems in order to establishdifferent possible pedagogical patterns and exploringways. So, the user of a filmic multimedia material,in front of such phenomena, has always the possibilityof playing different roles in interaction with thosematerials and that is why the user, teacher or student,needs specific training and adequate literacy to playthose roles.We are now obliged to analyze the possible risks of the lossof this collective property, which is often incrediblyinsubstantial and for that reason all the more valuable. Todo this, we must also preserve, articulate and systematizesome of the main features of the processes of culturalcommunication as phenomena of collective memorizationand learning. As so many scientists and researchers havestated over the years, in the exercise of their scientificirreverence and theoretical restlessness, the scientist ishardly ever able to take a step back and view science, inspace and time, in such a way that he can see it move,«and yet, it moves».3. Films as textsOne of the most important roles is the role of thereceiver decoding the filmic message through the specificdevices of the multimedia materials. He is generallyno longer the abstract spectator taken from thecollective darkness of the movie theatre, nor is he, anymore,the single manipulator of a non-intelligent videocassette recorder with rather limited possibilities ofintervention upon the original work. The user/receiverof the filmic multimedia material is, indeed, a reader ofmultiple texts, but his role will not only be that of a reader,as Umberto Eco (1979) has presented him to usbefore, creating meaning through his mental capacityof recognition, interpretation and association. He willbe a much more active reader and especially a muchmore powerful one. So powerful that, probably, hewill not confine himself to the role of a reader and willbecome, in fact, a new creator with almost unlimitedpossibilities to manipulate the original work and evenpreserve his manipulation as a new work to be watchedand studied, i.e., the user may easily become anauthor and a creator. Such a phenomenon necessarilyimplies, from a pedagogical point of view, a vast rangeof complex literacy problems: towards the materialsand their language systems (hardware and software);towards the pre-established working strategies to inter -act with the materials; andmainly, towards the structuresthose combine and integrate allthose items. In principle, wemay say that an open structurewill always be more effective,from a pedagogical point ofview, than a closed one, inspite of the many exploringways that a closed multimediafilmic material may offer to itsuser, these will always be in alimited number, while thequery patterns and manipulationpossibilities of a materialwith an open structure are, infact, unlimited. This fact, only,implies a great demand of filmand media literacy.Besides these textual andcontextual aspects there are, ofcourse, also problems of legaland authoral character thatneed to be addressed. Theuser should never forget theauthorship implications of the original work. Althoughwe will not approach these problems here, since froma strict pedagogical point of view they are not relevantin this context, these aspects should be properlyaddressed within other curricular contexts.4. The question of InteractivitySome of the main questions regarding pedagogicalstrategies to approach the different multimedia filmicmaterials present, generally, a common keyword:Interactivity. Nevertheless, interactivity does not meanexactly the same in all materials and its possibilities ofmanipulation may be quite different according to thestructure of the material. A more open structureusually offers a higher degree of interactivity than a ra -ther closed one. In my opinion, and again from a peda-© ISSN: 1134-3478 • e-ISSN: 1988-3293• Pages 81-89