ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how a teacher introduces to a class of preschool children the activity of sending an email to a staff member who has recently moved to another town. It focuses on how email as a communication activity becomes talked about, and how it is threaded into talk with the children, as they compose the email. The chapter also investigates an extended video-recorded sequence selected from over 170 hours of video-recorded classroom interaction of teachers and children in nine early childhood centres. This chapter investigates an extended video-recorded sequence selected from over 170 hours of video-recorded classroom interaction of teachers and children in nine early childhood centres. The chapter explores the type of document being discussed is personal correspondence in the form of email communication involving digital resources. Email communication plays an important role as other social forms of interaction, offering the opportunity to communicate quickly, in asynchronous mode, with others at a distance and in different time zones.
