Virtuality and digital culture in Children's school experiences: A visual ethnography in context of poverty

Abstract

This paper presents partial results from a research centered on children's social inclusion/exclusion processes in a marginalized school of Santiago de Chile. We realized an interpretative and visual school ethnography, focused on a 4th grade. The data produced are journal diaries (observations and ethnographic interviews); children's visual productions (photographs and drawings); and children's group interviews transcriptions. These data reveal the centrality of the virtual universe and the digital references in children's experiences and in their subjectivations. The digital culture would extend the field of real for children, allowing them to subjectivize and produce new knowledges. It appears as a medium to deploy the virtual experience, a "transitional object" that enables to connect the internal world with the external world. The virtual space seems fundamental for children's subjectivations and should not be considered as a negative or threatening aspect for school, rather as a potential space to bring the children to school knowledges. This depends on its exclusive mediation by digital technologies or its mediation by the other adult, through the inclusion of virtuality -digital as no digital- in the intermediate space of communication.