Researching Young Children and Mobile Media

Playground Equipment: Postdigital Design and the Mechanics of History, Urban Space, and Play

“…If the postdigital playground is developing anywhere, it is in the home, in and around videogames, and in social media. 10 Like nearly all other public and school playgrounds, Victoria Park is postdigital only at the level of imaginative dynamics brought to bear by the children from their popular digital and networked cultures at home (Burn, 2013), or-now-with the ubiquitous presence of mobile phones (Nansen, 2020).…”

“…In acknowledging the trends toward domestication and virtualization of spatial play, I do not want to either overstate this shift (plenty of children still play in parks) or reinforce prevalent notions of a rigid distinction between play with digital media and outdoor active and imaginative play. As Nansen (2020) argues, the latter is contrasted with digital devices, “[h]ere, outdoor play often enters public discourse as a way of getting children away from the screen” (p. 61). 11 Moreover I would note that the contemporary valorisation of outdoor play often echoes the “improving” motivations and ideologies of the first playgrounds, but now updated with new concerns about solitariness, obesity, inappropriate media, online risks, and so on.…”

“…(Drummond, n.d.) Here then is a microcosmic echo of Foucault's analysis of Haussman's Paris: at once productive of formal aesthetics of space and lines of sight and genteel pleasures of bourgeois and respectable working class people (Figure 1); and disciplinary in its organization of space for surveillance and the formal and informal policing of disruptive behavior. It chimes with contemporaneous playground construction initiatives across the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe, and New Zealand (Brett et al, 1993;Frost, 2012;Lauwaert, 2009;Nansen, 2020;Sutton-Smith, 2016) and their common goals to channel children's movement into physically and morally healthy play. Against Leach's pestilential vision, we can place the Bedminster ratepayers' original appeal for a place where family men could "feel the grass under our feet, or sit with our wives on a summer's eve and watch our children play" (Drummond, n.d.).…”

“… 10. But, as Nansen (2020) points out, public playgrounds are becoming postdigital through the presence of smart phones, games, and locative apps in the hands and pockets of parents and older children. …”

Tra povertà educativa digitale e competenze interculturali: il caso dei figli di coppie miste

“…Si potrebbe presupporre che la presenza di computer favorisca più degli smartphone la cosiddetta digital dexterity (Nansen, 2020), che non indica la capacità fisica, in particolare manuale, di utilizzo delle interfacce digitali e dei dispositivi mobili. Piuttosto la digital dexterity considera l'atteggiamento dominante verso il digitale dei contesti sociali, culturali, affettivi e materiali in cui si vive, le caratteristiche ergonomiche e le affordance dei media e dei sistemi digitali che vengono utilizzati e infine i discorsi pubblici, le rappresentazioni simboliche e le pratiche quotidiane che si verificano negli ecosistemi familiari e di apprendimento in cui si cresce e in cui si partecipa nello sviluppare progressivamente una percezione e una visione del digitale che genera la dexterity, intesa quindi in primis come atteggiamento piuttosto che come capacità manuale e operativa.…”