Several of the researchers connected to Textmöten research project attended the nordic educational conference NERA in Copenhagen, Denmark. As part of the conference we arranged a symposia with two sessions called “Smartphones and laptops in classrooms: reading, writing and talking in rapidly changing educational spaces”. We invited several researchers to present their perspective on the use of mobile phones in the classroom.

The first presentation was Antti Paakkari, doctoral student in the Textmöten research project. His presentation, “Tracing movements in the enhanced classroom space. Students’ smartphone use during lessons”, raise an interesting perspective on the relationship between online and offline spaces.

Fritjof Salhström and Verneri Valasmo from the Textmöten research project gave a presentation together with Marie Tanner from the Uppkopplade klassrum research project at Karlstad university. Their presentation focused on “Some interactional consequences of smartphone use during plenary teaching”.

I was the one giving the third presentation with the title “Exploring competencies through interaction with images in social media”, based on visual material from the Textmöten data.

Oystein Gilje, associate professor at the University of Oslo, was giving the fourth presentation and thereby providing the discussion with a Norwegian perspective. The title of his presentation was “Smartphones and laptops as boundary objects in lower secondary classrooms”.

The fifth presenter was Fredrik Rusk, associate professor at Nord University, and the topic of his presentation was “Mobile phones as a resource for co-constructing multilingual identities in monolingually oriented classrooms”. He is planning to write an article based on the Textmöten data on this topic due to his earlier collaboration with the researchers from both research projects.

The final presentation was another joined presentation between the Textmöten research project and the Uppkopplade klassrum research project. This time it was Anna Slotte together with Christina Olin-Scheller and Marie Tanner with the topic “A paperless class- room? Changing literacy practices due to the digitization of Swedish and Finnish up- per secondary schools”.

The discussion during the symposia was fruitful and we can now better position our research in a nordic educational context. Thank you NERA and Aalborg University Copenhagen for having us and arranging a great conference. We wish to thank all our presenters for contributing to a rewarding symposia and we look forward to future forms of collaboration!

Matilda
Doctoral student in the Textmöten research project