The article describes and discusses the learning potential of unofficial techno-literacy activities in the classroom with regards to Swedish 7—8-year-olds’ exploration of semiotic resources when interacting with computers. In classroom contexts where every child works with his or her own computer, such activities tend to take up a substantial amount of time. The children have access to a wide range of sites and programs and show an interest in discovering these resources. The article thus explores a previously often neglected site for learning, located in the official classroom context but involving self-chosen activities with contemporary technology. In terms of theory and methodology, social semiotic ethnography is introduced into the field of young children’s techno-literacies. It is illustrated how a social semiotic approach allows for a more detailed analysis of the semiotic resources, whereas ethnographic data are necessary for an understanding of how such resources are put to use.

In classrooms where computers are used as tools for text-making, images and photographs from e.g. Google, here called "prefabricated images", can be selected and copied into texts and combined with writing. In this article children's use of prefabricated images as resources for personal texts is investigated with specific focus on cohesion between the modes of image and writing. When prefabricated images occur in combination with writing about a personal experience the specific motifs shown in the image are unrelated to the text-maker, but the results of this study show that cohesion may still be obtained, for example via colour, naturalistic modality or decontextualization of the motif in the image via a close-up or a distant perspective. Copying and recontextualization of photographs are common not only in schools but also in professional settings as image banks supply images to, for example, news editors and journalists, and contemporary text creation is often characterized by "representation-as-selection" (Adami and Kress, 2010). The ability to obtain cohesion across modes can be regarded as a defining feature of success in multimodal text-making (Wyatt-Smith and Kimber, 2009), and also for the interpretation of contemporary texts.

In this small-scale study young students' digital writing as it unfolds in real time via screen recordings is discussed. The students attend the first and third year of schooling in Sweden and are recorded during lessons. The aim is to describe students' digital writing as they use computers to create texts, with a specific focus on the changes the students make. The type of change, its cause, whether the change results in correct or incorrect language use, and the semantic and syntactic consequences of the changes are analysed. The results show that changes are made locally, and that the students focus on dealing with software underlining that indicates problems with spelling or grammar. Revisions on deeper meaning-making levels, such as additions, insertions or reorganisations, are generally not performed even though such operations are easily accomplished with digital tools. Seven different strategies when dealing with underlining are identified, and how the students' linguistic knowledge about spelling, rules for writing and digital literacy skills are used in explorative ways to avoid underlining is described. The students' responsiveness toward following a correctness norm affects the semantic depth of the texts as misspelled words get erased or exchanged for more non-specific words. Syntactic structure is also affected resulting in non-conventional punctuation due to misunderstandings concerning the reason for software underlining. The outcomes show a close relationship between operational literacy and meaning-making as the content of the students' texts often changes when underlining shows up on the screen. Identity formation is also at stake when a misunderstanding positions student as unaware of punctuation when the problem concerns the software's rule of spacing after full stops. Different aspects of operational literacy and their significance for a social conception of literacy is suggested to inform teachers' planning of text creation using digital tools in the classroom.