Chasing literacies across action texts and augmented realities: E-books, animated apps, and Pokémon Go

Abstract

In this chapter, mediated discourse theory is used to compare how changing models of literacy learning reflect and shape educational expectations for children’s engagement with new technologies. Video analysis of children’s actual iPad interactions with an e-book app, an animation app, and an augmented reality app identifies the literacy practices in each model that interpret, create, and share a range of action texts. An action text is a played text that also supports an imaginary co-constructed context, negotiated among multiple players across digital screens and physical environments. Analysis of action texts created during app play identifies three prevalent models of literacies that circulate notions about who, what, and how children should use iPads: (1) digital literacy, (2) participatory literacies, and (3) socio-material literacies Each model is justified by educational discourse that prepares children to participate in particular ways in different conceptions of learning spaces: • digital literacy in the skills mastery discourse of educational standards in school cultures • participatory literacies in the social practice discourse of situated and connected learning in digital cultures and global networks. • socio-material literacies in post-human discourse of entangled assemblages of actions, bodies, and machines in converging realities.