The Case of the iPad: Mobile Literacies in Education by Cathy Burnett

This book brings together an international group of literacy studies scholars who have investigated mobile literacies in a variety of educational settings. Approaching mobility from diverse theoretical perspectives, the book makes a significant contribution to how mobile literacies, and tablets in particular, are being conceptualised in literacy research. The book focuses on tablets, and particularly the iPad, as a prime example of mobile literacies, setting this within the broader context of literacy and mobility.
The book provides inspiration and direction for future research in mobile literacies, based upon 16 chapters that investigate the relationship between tablets and literacy in diverse ways. Together they address the complex and multiple forces associated with the distribution of the technologies themselves and the texts they mediate, and consider how apps, adults and children work together as iPads enter the mesh of practices and material arrangements that constitute the institutional setting.

Cathy Burnett is Professor of Literacy and Education at Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University, where she leads the Language and Literacy in Education Research Group. Her current research interests focus on the relationships between technology, literacy and education. Co-edited collections include New Literacies around the Globe: policy and pedagogy and Literacy, Media, Technology: past, present and future. She is also Vice President of the United Kingdom Literacy Association.
Guy Merchant is Professor of Literacy in Education at Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University, and is a founding editor of Early Childhood Literacy. He specialises in research into digital literacy and the interrelations between children and young people, and new technologies of communication. He co-authored Web 2.0 for Schools with Julia Davies, and co-edited collections including Virtual Literacies, New Literacies across the Globe, and Literacy, Media, Technology: past, present, future.  Alyson Simpson is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney's Sydney School of Education and Social Work. Her research interests include the role of children's literature in education, dialogic learning and the impact of digital technology on reading practices and pedagogy. She has served as a consultant to numerous state and national education bodies, and is the author of The use of children's literature in teaching: A study of politics and professionalism within teacher education.  

Maureen Walsh is an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University (ACU) and an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney's Sydney School of  Education and Social Work. She has published in the areas of TESOL, children's literature, reading education and visual literacy. Her research has focused on the impact of digital communication on literacy education and she has developed a theoretical framework based on multimodal literacy in several publications.