Touching, tapping … thinking? Examining the dynamic materiality of touch pad devices for literacy learning

As touch technologies such as phones, tablets and touch screen tables become more present within classrooms there is a need to examine the relationship between literacy and physical action, particularly non-linear reading paths. This paper presents data, that is part of an ongoing international study, to provide some insights from classroom observations of Year 5 students using iPads as well as traditional paper-based texts within their literacy lessons. This is ongoing research with a large corpus of data being analysed. We use specific examples to examine the reading and writing process for some students as they interact with the physical interface of the touch pads through the mode of gesture. Our goal was to investigate the cognitive and interactional processes that take place when the students read digital texts on a touch pad and to understand the processes used to render hybrid, multimodal 'texts' meaningful. We employ the concept of dynamism to interrogate the embodied iterative explorations students demonstrate through their learning, scaffolded by their teacher's pedagogical adaptation to the potentials of the touch technology.

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