Learning to Read by Playing Club Penguin?

Children use keypads and touchscreens on a broad range of technological devices to browse, view, interpret, navigate, interact, and produce original texts. Guy Merchant suggests that reading online texts requires a knowledge of concepts specific to screen-based text (e.g., keyboard use, the mouse–cursor relationship, screen navigation) and new understandings about the organization of space and image on screens that extend Marie Clay's concepts about print.

In our chapter on children's screen literacies published in Anne Burke and Jackie Marsh's new book, Children's Virtual Play Worlds, Tolga Kargin and I documented children's cursor moves, finger jabs, and other ways of reading computer screens as they played side-by-side and navigated in and out of snowy locations in Club Penguin. And we found that there's a lot of reading and writing going on!

Computer Handling in Physical Space		Digital Literacy Practices in Screen Space
Mouse-handling	Double-Clicking (to select options)	Reading	Searching/Scanning: Clicking to open a pop-up or drop-down menu
	Clicking (to open or confirm options)		Independent Reading: Gazing or pointing at screen with words or phrases or images
	Hovering (to see drop-down menu)		Partner Reading: Reading words aloud while gazing or pointing at screen
Keyboarding	Tapping (e.g., finding and pressing one key)		Reading Aloud to Self (inner speech): Reading words aloud softly while gazing at screen
	Toggling (e.g., between keys on numeric pad, arrow keys)	Messaging	Selecting & Combining Pre-set Words or Phrases to Send Messages
			Rereading Own Message/Confirming Action