Affordances of writing in digital media in and out of school – Comparing Norwegian 5th graders’ practices in 2005 and 2017

Abstract

At present, young Norwegians are spending more time than ever in front of a computer screen (Statistisk sentralbyrå, 2015; Medietilsynet, 2016). How is this use of digital media affecting their writing in and out of school? In 2017, 5th graders in a school class in Oslo were interviewed about this. In this article, the interview findings are compared with findings of an ethnographic study of media use and writing conducted in the same primary school in 2005. In 2005, the students' use of digital media out of school fostered some extensive writing, yet in 2017 this was no longer the case. Still, certain 2017 students did follow up writing in school with a similar kind of extensive writing out of school. However, the main findings indicate a style of development whereby school-based writing has become more loosely connected to digital writing out of school. In the analysis, the concept of affordance is used to explain this development. In the article's final part, implications for writing pedagogy are discussed.

A review of Scandinavian writing research between 2010 and 2020

“…In four studies, contextual aspects influencing the students' writing of their texts were investigated (Myklebust & Høisaeter, 2018;Nygard et al, 2017;Rødnes, 2012;Skaar, 2020). Myklebust and Høisaeter (2018) investigated how two different communicative situations influenced the argumentative texts upper secondary students wrote in the subject area Social Studies.…”

Online poetry writing at school – comparing lower secondary students’ experiences between individual and collaborative poetry writing

“…Reading and writing develop in interaction: writing positively affects reading and vice versa (Graham et al, 2013;FNAE, 2021). Although writing is a great way to influence others (Graham et al, 2013), students often avoid writing in their out-of-school literacy outputs because they do not consider it to be enjoyable (Skaar, 2020). On the other hand, some students are used to sharing their multimodal creative works and working collaboratively to produce them online during their free time (OECD, 2015;Kovalik and Curwood, 2019).…”