This presentation reports on results from two studies of uses and potentials of digital pencils in grade 4 and 8 in Sweden. Digital pencils were provided to the students and their teachers and the teachers integrated the pencils in a number of projects. The didactic design of teaching and learning were performed by teachers and their students, without direct involvement by us as researchers.

The broader background to these studies is a dichotomization of the resources used for contemporary teaching, learning, and meaning making that is present in many schools today, but also in the public debate. In this discourse, a simplified division of learning tools prevail: they are either “digital” or “analogue”. Our presentation addresses this dichotomy, and understandings of semiotic technologies more broadly, by analyzing the potentials of the digital pencil for connecting “analogue” meaning making to “digital” meaning making in middle school and high school. We look at how writing and shaping by hand – still to be considered fundamental skills and competences in society today and with a history that goes back thousands of years – can be performed in digitalized Swedish classrooms.

Based on data from the two studies carried out in 2022 through 2024, our analysis provides knowledge of the semiotic potentials and actual uses of digital pencils in school, something which is lacking in previous research, with the exception of a few recent studies (Riche et al, 2017). The overall methodological framework is multimodal ethnography (Björkvall, 2012). This methodology combines tools and techniques from ethnography with those from semiotics and designs for learning.

Two main results stand out. First, the digital pencils can actually be effectively used to draw on analogue practices in the classroom. We will provide examples. Second, the digital pencils have other affordances (Lindstrand, 2022) than just functioning as “digital ink”: they are multifunctional in the sense that they can be used as tools for an array of tasks that analogue pencils cannot. Thus, the analysis concludes that not only can the digital pencils be used to resemiotize analogue practices; they also afford new ways of writing and shaping by hand. These latter need to be further integrated in the didactic practices of Swedish classrooms.