The connected child: tracing digital literacy from school to leisure

Abstract

This article directs attention to how young students make sense of the connections and disconnections of digital practices between school and leisure. By using New Literacy Studies as a frame of reference, we study how students' conceptions of digital literacies and their positional identities are defined across school and home. In contrast to most other studies of similar issues, we study children in the age range from 9 to 13 years old. The methods used are qualitative interviews and video observations of these students at three Norwegian primary schools. The analysis shows how various digital practices in the classroom become meaningful in the translation to leisure time. We discuss how digital practices initiated in the classroom may be relevant to students' out-of-school worlds, based on how they get opportunities to unite and translate practices between these two contexts. This has to do with how school's digital practices may be important in connecting identities across contexts. We argue that the issue of identity must be understood as connected to digital literacy. Our main thesis is that the school context plays a prominent role in introducing youngsters to new digital practices that might be important in developing their digital literacies.

Digital Games as a Context for Children's Cognitive Development: Research Recommendations and Policy Considerations

“…Media literacy has been generally defined as the ability to “access, analyze, evaluate, and create messages” (Livingstone, , p. 3). The impact of media literacy instruction during middle childhood, and adolescence (see Powers, Brodsky, Blumberg, & Brooks, ), should remain a priority for future research, particularly among developmental psychologists, and for policy recommendations at all levels (Bjørgen & Erstad, ; Disney, Connelly, & Waterhouse, ). This need will become increasingly pressing, as access to media for instructional and recreational purposes continues to expand, and the lines between games and apps designed to educate and persuade are further blurred.…”

Shaping Future Digital Citizens in Aotearoa/New Zealand Schools: Vision and Challenges

“…Although the nature of many of these studies were initially regarded as oppositional (i.e. home versus school), they are increasingly becoming complimentary as the boundaries between technology use at home and school become less distinct [11,12].…”

Bilingual families and information and communication technology at home

“…Bilinguals who use ICT may develop certain kinds of literacies in school with scaffolded instruction, or on their own time and terms (Torralba, 2015). Sometimes the students take learning practices that were initiated with experts and transform them for their own purposes (Bjorgen & Erstad, 2015). Bjorgen and Erstad (2015) used qualitative interviews and video observations to inquire about the meaning the children made with their computers at school and at home, and to understand more about how the children's perception of digital practices at school.…”

“…Sometimes the students take learning practices that were initiated with experts and transform them for their own purposes (Bjorgen & Erstad, 2015). Bjorgen and Erstad (2015) used qualitative interviews and video observations to inquire about the meaning the children made with their computers at school and at home, and to understand more about how the children's perception of digital practices at school. The authors saw that some of the children who were exposed to digital practices at a Norwegian school later transformed the practices for their own purposes at home.…”

“…Research literature and the participants' stories serve as a reminder that ICT users, especially younger ones, tend to use the technology for play and leisure (Ballesta et al, 2015;Bjorgen & Erstad, 2015), and playing is conducive to learning languages (Cook, 1997;Ledin & Samuelsson, 2017;Sullivan & Wilson, 2015). Therefore, literacy programs may do well to provide a more knowledgeable other, plus a time and place to learn by playing around.…”