The complexity of teaching internet inquiry with iPads in the early years

Purposefully and effectively locating and reading information on the internet is a crietically important aspect of contemporary information literacy. Increasingly younger children seek to develop skills in internet searching and reading to serve their needs and desires both in and out of school. This paper provides a close-up examination of one teacher's practices as she guides students who are in the second and third year of their schooling to undertake internet research. By providing an analysis of a selection of interactions taken from one classroom session, I illustrate the complexity of practices involved, practices that interweave traditional 'print' and new 'digital' materials and skills. The analysis highlights the interdependence of the traditional and the new as the teacher and her students strategically assembled diverse digital and 'non-digital' resources, modes and channels in mutually-supportive ways through the practice of fit-for-purpose inquiry, reading and composition. This practice is contextualised within the often contradictory popular and public discourses that surround early years literacy education and the place of new digital media, discourses that often fail to recognise and affirm teachers' expertise in these complex undertakings.