Examining how digital literacy practices are situated: Young children's computer use in the home

Young children's digital literacy practices are integral to contemporary understandings of the changing face of literacy. Children engage in a range of practices including computer activities such as game playing, use of the Internet, and desktop publishing. While we know what young children like to do on the computer, we know rather less about how they do it. This workshop will enable participants to examine how young children accomplish their activity during computer use at home. The workshop examines a recording of two children aged four and seven. Participants will use the recording, and a transcript of it, to examine the children's interactions with each other while playing a computer game. The specific focus for analysis will be on the ways verbal and non-verbal actions situate their computer activity during turns-at-talk. Questions that will guide analysis are: What aspects of context do the children orient to and use? How does this contribute to the course of their computer activity? Analysis will enrich understandings of digital literacy practices, including how talk indexes prior knowledge and experiences and situates these in the here-and now of digital literacy practices.