Abstract:
As part of their leisure many children are spending increasing amounts of time engaged in playing technology-based games. Such games come in a number of forms and use a range of technologies. These require game players to use a variety of different literacies in order to participate in this culture and to interpret the dynamic flow of texts. As part of this process the players engage in ongoing learning opportunities that have their foundations in numeracy understandings. This presentation focuses on the Pokemon phenomena as an example of multimodal text and highlights examples of numeracy learning within this popular culture in naturalistic learning contexts. The case study investigations encouraged children to share their learning about texts that are generally marginalised within the traditional school culture, but that are part of children's everyday experiences. It provided evidence that numeracy learning was established in both deep and authentic ways as the children navigated their way thought the technology-rich environment. This work has important implications for stakeholders who want to support children and their numeracy learning.