Looking more closely at the Children’s Technology Play Space: Bringing space, bodies, materials and knowing together through investigation with microscopes

Abstract

This paper shares an account of our wonderings, happenings, and learnings emerging from encounters between children, iPads, digital microscopes and found natural materials (and bugs!) in a series of workshops at a children’s museum. Our intention is to build on and disrupt established theories about children’s museums by thinking differently and creatively about new ways of seeing, knowing, and understanding children’s literate practices in these spaces. We have written before about children’s interactions as social practices where material (human and non-human), discursive, and spatial resources come together through physical and virtual interactions. Building on that work, we consider the complex interplay between the emerging identity of the place, the children’s engagement with the experiences, and the connections the children made through their play. The playgroups at this children’s museum have offered us new perspectives on and learnings about young children’s literate practices through digital experiences and the unique opportunities for playing, learning and connecting with technologies.