Towards an Initial Semiotic View of the Interactive Graphic Organiser

This paper presents a first approach to understand a visual software application, named Interactive Graphic Organiser (IGO), from a semiotic point of view. The paper begins with the original conceptual background review, which came from both component software engineering and visual learning. The paper then moves to describe the technology and its impacts; the visual technology developed are IGOs, that allows cognitive skills development, and IGO based applications. Next and under the working hypothesis that the use of graphic organisers significantly improved involved cognitive skills, the paper describes some results from experimental research conducted to measure some of the visual technology’s impacts. The paper concludes that, although initial treatment cannot claim to be comprehensive, it does provide a conceptual view and provides insight into the practices of those involved around IGOs and their applications.