At school, pedagogic and policy debates have seized upon the ubiquity of new digital devices and contents to speculate about changes far wider than the mere import of technologies into the classroom, transformations in the nature of learning and literacy, the relation between students and teacher, and the positioning of curricular knowledge and pedagogic practices in the wider community. In the home, public and policy debates are often more pessimistic – bemoaning the loss of authority between parent and child, the array of risks associated with screen and networked cultures, the sense of changes happening too fast for social and ethical norms to keep pace. Yet in the home too, there are excited predictions about new informal opportunities for children and young people to learn, participate, create and connect.

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