ABSTRACT
Guy Merchant’s talk addresses the role of new mobile devices such as Smartphones and tablets in everyday and educational settings. Mobile devices have rapidly infiltrated all walks of life. They are used by administrators, scholars, and students, but also in everyday life in the home, in restaurants, and in a wide range of retail, service, and tourist industries. There is a pressing need to understand the mobile literacies associated with such devices and their take-up in different contexts. Educational literacy practices have fallen under the sway of devices like the iPad, which appeals to educators because of its size, portability, and intuitive touch-screen interface. This widespread availability of portable digital devices, and their increasing use within educational settings, suggests a need to redraw maps of literacy development to account for emerging forms of semiotic representation and patterns of interaction – the new mobile literacies of the twenty-first century.
