The digitalization of schools in Sweden is extensive, with approximately one laptop or tablet per learner in compulsory school (years 1- 9) (Skolverket, 2022: 42-43). These laptops and tablets offer great opportunities for exploring, learning and making meaning. However, in combination with discourses which construe these activities as either digital or analog, interconnections between digital and analog tools are at risk of being downplayed. More precisely, classroom practices are presented and enacted as either digital or analog, making either analog or digital tools relevant (cf.

Schrey, 2014). While in some cases relevant in relation to issues of a technological nature, the educational practices of thoroughly digitalized environments may be at risk of downplaying skills and practices primarily connected to the analog world: creating, shaping and writing by hand. We argue that a dichotomization of the resources used for teaching, learning, and meaning-making as either digital or analog may result in a simplified – and sometimes counter-productive – division of such processes.

However, there are material artefacts with the potential of traversing the digital and analog spheres, thus offering potential to also connect them. One such artefact is the digital pencil: a specific analog tool for digital free-hand shaping and inscription used in relation to an iPad, a computer or a drawing tablet together with compatible apps or software. The pencil has a long educational history, symbolizing the virtues of schooling through its key role in handwriting, calculation and drawing. Henry Petroski writes that ‘although the pencil has been indispensable, or perhaps because of that, its function is beyond comment and directions for its use are unwritten’ (1988: preface). However, in an era where shaping and writing by hand must find a way into digitalized schools, the (digital) pencil and its affordances (Gibson, 1979; Kress, 2010; Lindstrand, 2022) for meaning-making and learning can no longer remain ‘beyond comment’, but need attention from, for instance, literacy studies and educational research. Beyond the stricter technical research (e.g. Park et al., 2012; Hammond et al., 2019; Hochhauser et al., 2021), digital pencils – just like their analog counterparts – have received scant attention from researchers in these fields. Recent research also points to the many advantages of shaping by hand, both in terms of cognitive and embodied learning (e.g. Mangen et al., 2015; Askvik et al., 2020), which further motivates thorough analysis of pencils used in digital learning environments.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the semiotic potentials and learning potentials of digital pencils in Swedish middle school, specifically in a fourth-grade class. Three research questions are addressed:

1.    Which affordances of digital pencils are picked up and which are left untapped when fourth-grade learners are equipped with digital pencils and explore their potentials in an eight-week history project?

2.    To what extent can digital pencils index (Silverstein, 2003) and recontextualize (Linell, 1998) potentials of other sociocultural resources for the freehand creation of shapes and letters?

3.    What are the implications for teachers when designing learning activities in the classroom involving digital pencils?

The chapter draws on data collected during a pilot study in which learners and their teachers were equipped with digital pencils to use with their iPads.