Under the teacher's radar: Literacy practices in task-related smartphone use in the connected classroom

Abstract

In this article, we explore the role of smartphones in the classroom and how they interact with teaching. Drawing on examples of literacy events, we show how the students use the smartphone as a resource to exercise power and influence in the literacy practices in which they participate in the classroom, in relation to a teaching content. These actions take place without the teachers being aware of them, and thus these processes dismantle the teacher's authority in terms of access to, and overview of, the diversity of texts that are managed by the students in the classroom. The article concludes that it is evident that digital tools in general, and smartphones in particular, change the role of the teacher and the school, and that the students' design of texts places new or altered demands on students as well as teachers.