This paper describes how young children together with their preschool teachers are developing digital competence/literacy in everyday activities in a Swedish preschool.

Introduction

The European Parliament points out Digital Literacy as one of the Key Competences for Life long learning. A digital competence is built on basic ICT skills. Skills you can develop any time during life, weather you are young or old. Recent Swedish research on young children and digital competence points out the preschool teacher’s insecurity regarding using ICT (Information and Communication technology) in the preschool´s daily activities (Ljung- Djärf 2004, Klerfelt 2007).

 There are an amount of new social and cultural gaps in our modern society  with regard to literacies and learning. Fear of the digital gap, or divide, is confirmed by researchers such as Buckingham (2000), Tapscott (1998) and Kress (2003). The digital divides can be built on factors such as gender, ethnicity, class, generation and geographical divides, but also about dichotomies in the capacity of learning in a digitalized milieu.

Today’s children are the first generation born into a world of Internet, cell phones, and Ipads. They are often referred to the Digital Natives, and they take the new technology for granted (Prensky 2010). The rest of us are Digital Immigrants and we try to adapt to the new society. Where does that leave the teachers of the pre-digital age? The first risk of a digital divide can perhaps be found in the daily meeting between “the natives” and “the immigrants”?  

Aim of study

A contribution to research with young children and digital literacy.

Research question

How can design and setting make affordances for developing digital literacy in a preschool?

Theoretical framework

From the view of a design orientated perspective, built on a socio-cultural theoretical framework, key words like design, settings, tools and affordances become important in my study.

 Didactic design elaborates understanding of learning from semiotic activities. Learning is to be seen as meaning making in social contexts. These contexts are called institutional settings. The teacher and /or the child can be designers of and actors in the setting. Every act and mode of design is meaningful ().

 A central idea is that learning is a process of mastering different tools. These tools can be physical and/or psychological, and they can mediate thinking, acting, and communicating. These tools are not biological but cultural (Vygotskij 1999, Wertsch 1998). The cultural tools have affordances that make it possible for different tasks to be performed. Affordances could be defined as possible relationships among actors and objects (Säljö 2005).

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