“We Need Sound Too!” Children and Teachers Creating Multimodal Digital Stories Together

Abstract

In most contemporary societies there is broad access to a range of digital technologies. However, in the current debate concerning digital technology in early childhood education and care institutions (ECEC), digital technologies are often referred to merely as screens. This paper contributes to the current research by exploring the technology-mediated creation process when groups of young children (age 4–5) create multimodal digital stories in collaboration with a teacher. The theoretical perspectives informing the study are technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) and professional digital competence. The study is a qualitative multiple-case study with two cases. The empirical material consists of video observations of the creation processes, which have been analysed inductively. The analysis shows that recording sound and sharing are the most important for the children. Further, the technology-mediated creation process is characterised by a complex interplay of non-digital and digital activities in which the teachers’ professional digital competence is an important factor.