Dylan Yamada-Rice

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Manchester Metropolitan University

Despite the widespread use of YouTube by children, there has been limited research undertaken on the “why” questions of their use. Past theoretical approaches have framed these questions in terms of broader individual needs and their relation to media use, though this work has mainly focused on adults and adolescents. This article presents relevant...

This article examines the research and development of a mixed realities play-kit to prepare children for an MRI scan to be undertaken without the need for a General Anaesthetic. The kit uses three different types of play; augmented, virtual reality and physical to help children become familiar with the look of an MRI scanner, the noises it makes, t...

Two immersive visual story worlds (IVS), Queer Psycho and HE Circus are at the centre of this chapter, one made by each of us. Individually we found our works necessitated the development of new frameworks for IVS construction, namely (1) Brechtian a-effect and queering, and (2) magic and more-than-human theories. These new framings were needed to...

In relation to this Special Issue’s focus on ugly information, this article examines children’s perception of the often invisible interactions they have with sensor-enabled digital devices and, when prompted, their interest in subverting or blocking these sensors to evade surveillance. The authors report on a study of 12 children, aged 8–12 years,...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on a designed research methodology to distil existing research findings from an esrc/ahrc funded japan/uk network on location-based virtual reality experiences for children in order to generate new knowledge. Design/methodology/approach The structured co-production methodology was undertaken in three s...

This article reports on one stage of a project that considered twenty 8–12-years-olds use of Virtual Reality (VR) for entertainment. The entire project considered this in relation to interaction and engagement, health and safety and how VR play fitted into children’s everyday home lives. The specific focus of this article is solely on children’s in...

This paper outlines the key findings of a study developed in collaboration between academics, teachers and children’s media companies. The project was co-produced in that all project partners contributed to the development of the project aims and objectives and were involved in data collection, analysis and dissemination. The aim of the study was t...

This chapter draws on three research studies that have important findings for the design of connected toys. Combined, the findings show how children’s involvement in the design of digital toys/ play needs to be more highly prioritised in both research and commercial processes. Doing so would help to balance the dominant amount of commercial and aca...

This paper gives an insight into safety, security, privacy and societal questions emerging from the rise of the Internet of Toys. These are Internet Connected Toys that constitute, along with the wave of other domestic connected objects, the Internet of Things, which has increased the ubiquity of the ICT within our everyday lives, bringing technolo...

This column outlines key principles that should underpin the use of augmented and virtual reality in the language arts curriculum.

This study is the first to systematically investigate the extent to which apps for children aged 0–5 foster play and creativity. There is growing evidence of children's use of tablets, but limited knowledge of the use of apps by children of children of this age. This ESRC‐funded study undertook research that identified how UK children aged from 0 t...

This article looks at the way in which changes in technology, as well as wider social and cultural patterns, bring about new materials in the landscape of young children’s communication practices and play. This is done in relation to a new form of screen-less digital toy known as Avakai. Avakai are a set of digitally interactive wooden dolls that c...

This article reports on a knowledge-exchange network project that had the core aim of informing the development of a video game for hospitalized children. In order to do this, it brought together hospital play specialists, academics and representatives from the digital games industry to co-produce knowledge that could be used in the future producti...

This paper gives an insight on safety, security, privacy and societal questions emerging from the rise of the Internet of Toys, meaning Internet Connected Toys that participate along with the wave of other domestic connected objects, the Internet of Things in increasing the ubiquity of the ICT within our everyday, closer to ourselves and our childr...

This paper draws on an ESRC-funded study of play and creativity in preschool-aged children’s use of apps in the UK. The main objectives of the study were to collect information about access to and use of apps in the home, establish the most popular apps and identify the features of those apps that are successful in promoting play and creativity. A...

This paper explores the changing roles of families in children’s developing literacy in the UK in the last century. It discusses how during this time understandings of reading and writing have been evolved into the more nuanced notion of literacy. Further, acknowledging changes in written communication practices, and shifting attitudes to reading a...

The focus of this part has been on the relationship between production, meaning making and visual research with children and young people. The part was introduced by Jennifer Rowsell who described how meaning and therefore production can manifest in different ways, through a range of visual media even when the message being communicated is very sim...

This chapter reflects on two ethnographic studies that both necessitated the foregrounding of non-linguistic frameworks, drawing on visual research methods, in order to best understand children’s meaning making. The cultural contexts of these two studies, and the age ranges of the participants, did not fit easily with Western linguistic theory, but...

This article considers the impact of the increasing use of the visual mode in texts found in urban landscapes on two 3-year-olds' understanding of communication practices. The data discussed are taken from a study into a group of 3- to 6-year-olds' interaction with and emerging comprehension of the visual mode and its connection to writing in multi...

This chapter reviews literature that has outlined how many teachers in primary classrooms are using new technologies in innovative ways to develop children's digital literacy skills, knowledge, and understanding. The first section of the chapter outlines the way in which Web 2.0 applications have been used to enable young children to engage with au...

This visual essay provides an overview of a comparative study of visuals in the urban landscapes of Tokyo and London, using Google Street View to make these comparisons. The data were analysed using Visual Content Analysis and colour coding. The findings are that Tokyo has a higher density and diversity of visuals at a wider range of heights. Visua...

This article looks at the way in which the changing visual environment affects education at two levels: in communication patterns and research methodologies. The research considers differences in the variance and quantity of types of visual media and their relationship to the written mode in the urban landscapes of Tokyo and London, using Google St...

This well-documented chapter considers a relatively new and very stimulating idea: the use of signing as a simple means of communication in a multilingual classroom. The author maintains that this language is easily learned by young children as well as teachers, and its use in the multilingual classroom allows communication from the first week of s...

This research focuses on young children’s experiences of the visual mode embedded in new multimodal literacy practices. An enquiry was undertaken into the role of visual and digital images in a group of 11 four-year-olds’ out-of-school lives. The children photographed their use of a range of primarily visual-based media at home, to produce a book o...