Hands, fingers and iPads

New touchscreen technologies have drawn attention to the materiality of literate behaviour. Reflecting on the concept of handiness, this chapter looks at meaning making as a kind of ‘engaged material consciousness’ (Sennett 2009) that depends upon but always exceeds the complex coordinations of hand and eye. Interrogating empirical materials gathered in a study of iPads in the early years, it shows young children and the adults that care for them engaged in complex negotiations and interactions that continually remake literacy, technology and learning