ABSTRACT
In many sectors of society and in many parts of the world, early childhood is now infused with digital technology. A wide range of pacifiers and activity centres designed for young babies have digital components, and so do baby walkers, early games and children’s first toys. Products for the very young, such as those produced by the highly successful specialist company V-Tech, characterise this new shift in edutainment. Digitally reproduced nursery rhymes, counting games and alphabet songs have become commonplace in the lives of many infants and toddlers (Burnett & Merchant, 2012). And these toys themselves are certainly not passive objects—not only are they carefully scripted but they are often programmed to ‘wake up’ after a period of inactivity, to begin an audiovisual action sequence prompted by gentle touch, movement or accidental collision. A proper analysis of these objects would need to account for both their active and interactive properties, as there are no grounds to doubt that their materiality is entangled with children’s playful explorations as well as being ubiquitously located in the broader terrain of contemporary child-rearing practices. Along with this burgeoning of technological toys, it is now increasingly common for adults to use their own smartphones and tablet computers (such as the iPad) as an integral part of their interactions with babies and young children. Here again, apps designed for the very young can be highly interactive, prompting actions and responses from babies and toddlers. Counting games (such as My First Numbers 2 ) and alphabet apps (such as Endless ABC 3 ) are a highly visible part of the early-years edutainment ‘curriculum’. In fact, one could say that literacies, both new and old, are writ large on the digital landscape of early childhood. And since literacies are patterned by the tools that we use to make meaning, there is much change afoot in the early years—so much so that it may well be time to rethink how we describe literacy development. Furthermore, as Wohlwend (2009) suggests, the new ways of meaning-making that young children participate in at home cannot simply be put aside as children enter the more formal institutions of early childhood education.
