ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors provide an example of the ways they have attempted to meet these demands by using touchscreen tablets and digital cameras – tools that are becoming increasingly affordable and available for classroom use. They argue that digital tools can provide new opportunities for children, families, and communities to be represented and valued in school literacy activities. The authors explore the theoretical underpinnings of their work, review research on young children’s digital composing, and describe their work in a second grade, multilingual classroom. They discuss ways to create instructional contexts that support translanguaging and intercultural sharing through e-book composition. Teachers build on students’ myriad, multimodal, and multilingual discursive practices — practices that are a normal part of being and knowing in diverse communities. A number of studies have described how speech recognition software and speech synthesizers can support the transcription of children’s ideas and awareness of sound–symbol correspondence.
