Maureen Walsh

• Australian Catholic University

This article profiles the use of the iPad (a tablet) in classroom literacy activities in three different instructional environments in different parts of the world: Toronto, Canada; San Diego, United States; and Sydney, Australia. This two-year, qualitative study included observational fieldwork filming students' interactions with tablets in the mi...

The rationale for the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded research study, which informs some of the papers in this Special Issue, was based on two driving forces. One was growing international interest in the increased usage of touch technologies in schools. The second was the researchers’ growing concern about t...

In this paper we explore how the use of gesture and touch with digital technology fits into an overall scheme of meaning making. We investigate the concept of dynamic materiality by looking at examples of cognitive, socially situated and technologically mediated experiences of literacy. Dynamic materiality refers to the constant shift between modes...

This paper reports a study that examines the integration of tablet technologies such as iPads into literacy lessons to investigate how reading and meaning-making occur within this digital medium. Specifically in this paper, we discuss the concept of reading paths as applied to physical and cognitive planes of meaning-making. The paper reports on da...

Changes to literacy pedagogy are gradually occurring in classrooms in response to contemporary communication and learning contexts. These changes are diverse as teachers and educational researchers attempt to design new pedagogy to respond to the potential of digital technologies within existing curriculum and assessment policies. This paper discus...

Contemporary commentary notes that students are frequently ahead of their teachers in their ability to manipulate and be creative with the internet, digital programs, and mobile technology. In this context it is important to ask, ‘What knowledge do teachers need to teach in the contemporary context where texts are elaborately multimodal, constructe...

Debates continue in public and in educational policy forums about the ‘basics’ of literacy while many have not recognised that these basics may never be the same again. Rapid changes in digital communication provide facilities for reading and writing to be combined with various and often quite complex aspects of music, photography and film. At the...

This paper reports the findings of a project—‘Lifelong learning and teacher education’—undertaken by the Centre for Lifelong Learning, Australian Catholic University, under the auspices of the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. The study was designed to investigate the operationalization of lifelong learning in A...

This article reports the findings of a project â–“ Lifelong Learning and Teacher Education â–“ undertaken by the Centre for Lifelong Learning, Australian Catholic University, under the auspices of the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. The study was designed to investigate the operationalisation of lifelong learn...

What does the ‘reading’ of pictures reveal compared with the reading of print? The researcher examines aspects of visual literacy through the responses of young children to two picture storybooks. The findings emphasise how images can evoke different levels of response. The study confirms that we need to reconsider the nature of reading and reading...

This paper examines the differences between reading print-based texts and multimodal texts within the context of changed literacy practices. The author closely analyses aspects of a novel, a picture book and an internet site to determine the similarities and differences in the way readers would process each text. The 'affordances' of modes are cons...