ABSTRACT

In this talk, Jackie Marsh draws upon data from a number of studies of young children’s (aged from birth to 8) literacy lives in the United Kingdom in order to consider the nature of their online literacy practices over the past decade and to examine some of their current practices. She argues that the key developments in young children’s engagement with online multimodal texts over the past ten years relate to the extent of this engagement and its nature in terms of how far it involves interactions with others and offers opportunities for creative design. Dr. Marsh contends that technology matters. Further, how the activity itself enables and structures engagement with others is important, since it offers opportunities to use the imagination and foster creativity. She then reviews potential future developments in this area and reflects on what these developments might mean for researchers who are interested in young children’s literacy learning in the digital age.