‘Once upon a time there was a mouse’: Children's technology-mediated storytelling in preschool class

With the current expansion of digital tools, the media used for narration is changing, challenging traditional literacies in educational settings. The present study explores what kind of activities emerge when six-year-old children in a preschool class write a digital story, using a word processor and speech-synthesised feedback computer software. Empirical material was collected in a primary school that participates in a larger community project on writing with digital technology. The focus of the study is on how the storytelling activity is mediated by the technologies and the participants (teacher and children). The results show that the digital tools used, in part, directed the children away from narrating, instead turning their attention to negotiations of division of labour and literate conventions. The latter were also at the forefront of the teacher's contributions to the children's activity. Despite these circumstances, the children succeed in accomplishing the instructed task of collaboratively composing a story.

"To conclude, the situated literacy event studied offers a shared space for ideas and exploration of the written language, and several learning processes are simultaneously taking place. The children managed to write their stories by using the computer devices. However, much effort was directed at operating the technology and conventions of writing, in order to perform the instructed task. Thus, despite the facts that the technologies make the children attend to literate conventions, and the teacher also directing their attention thereto, they manage to establish collaborative stories." (Authors, in Abstract and 1595)