The globalization and the digitization of society have had a major impact on how we communicate and how we learn in both informal and formal settings (Carlsson (ed.), 2013; Cope & Kalantzis (ed.), 2000; Erixon (ed.), 2014; Jenkins, 2006; Jewitt (ed.), 2014; Kittler, 2003; Olin-Scheller & Lundström, 2014). But while young people today gain a lot of their experiences in multimodal environments where they are both consumers and producers, the schools provide learning environments dominated by verbal modes and writing is highly valued (Kress, 2000:159).
In Sweden, a lot of schools provide their students with computers or tablets as resources, showing the impact of digitization in society today. The technical devices are used for writing, searching for information and to some extent making presentations (SOU, 2014:13), but new possibilities for using audio-recording, movie-making, editing programs etc as tools for meaning-making are poorly explored (Erixon (Ed.), 2014).
In my phd-project I explore one of these new possibilities: the possibility to use the camera as a tool for meaning making and learning. I work in close collaboration with four teachers and their pupils in 4th grade. The study has a social semiotic perspective and the aim is to describe how students make meaning in different school subjects when they experience and represent the world through photography and to explore the learning potential of their meaning making.
