Week 35 21/03/2022
Classroom Practices: Using Digital Technology and Practices in the Classroom
Learning in the Digital Age:
We have already discussed Prensky and
the concept of children being digital
natives, surrounded by ICT and with this
they bring pre-existing knowledge into the
classroom. Henry (2014) argues that as
part of this, children learn differently and
argues that the methods and context of
teaching need to change.
Henry (2014) also refers to Tapscott who
distinguishes how different technologies
enable different forms of engagement and
then discusses how both these key
authors highlight how technological
change enables active engagement.
As part of this discussion Henry (2014:3)
states:
 The job of education is to catch up
with the children and use ICT
more.
Challenges:
Challenges and problems with this
include:
 Staff training
 Resources
 Digital divide
 Access – children have different
levels of access to and use of ICT
and this can depend on their
socioeconomic status and their
parents’ attitudes to technology.
 Inclusion – Henry (2014) also
highlight that it is not just if they
use the technology but how they
use it.
 Children are also presented in
oppositional ways.
Development of Critical, Creative and
Collaborative Skills:
Policies and practices acknowledge
children’s use of technology outside of
school and see education as incorporating
this into formal learning.
However, it should be recognised that
technology in the home is used differently
to how technology is used in the
classroom.
ICT can enhance existing pedagogies but
also bring new ways of learning to
develop critical, creative and collaborative
skills.
Wag the Dog – The Nature and
Foundations of Preschool Educators’
Positive ICT Pedagogical Beliefs (Mertala,
P, 2017):
Section 4, the findings, from page 201 of
the article highlights:
 Different types of learning
 Different types of activities the
teacher’s used
 Issues around practitioner
confidence and training were
identified
The different aspects of learning identified
included:
 Socio-emotional
 Academic
These are quotes about different types of
activities, including individual tasks and
group learning learning.
The study focuses on educator’s general
pedagogical beliefs and their ICT related
pedagogical beliefs.
They emphasised the learning of socio-
emotional skills, with children having an
active role in their learning.
In ICT pedagogical beliefs they
emphasised the learning of academic
skills, mainly using individual exercises
using ICT.
Early Years Teachers and Digital
Literacies: Navigating a Kaleidoscope of
Discourses (Daniels et al, 2019)
Discusses issues for early years teachers
and professionals in using technology.
In the findings section:
 The teacher’s views on different
devices
 How they identify digital
technology as a pedagogical tool
 Their views were that often the
school curriculum can be seen as
providing a balance between
children’s experiences at home
and their experiences in school
 Pedagogically they felt that they
needed to provide a balance
between digital practices and print
literacy competencies.
 Digital practices and devices were
felt to be useful for inclusion,
especially to enable participants
through voice recordings and
images.
What Digital Technologies are Used in
the Classroom?
Covid – 19 = Remote
Teaching Provision:
Department for
Education Guidance –
Remote education good
practice (Oct, 2020)
highlights what is
required for effective
remote teaching provision. It highlights
the use of interactive platforms,
innovative, creative and high quality
teaching to continue with the provision of
the curriculum.
The Children’s commissiner – Children
without internet access during lockdown
(Aug, 2020) highlights some of the issues
around access to remote learning.
Using Mobile Technologies for Learning
At School – M-Learning:
Advantages:
 Allows for more authentic learning
and fieldwork in different spaces.
 Allows the learner to capture and
record their experience in different
ways.
 Allows for independent
exploration.
 In the spot access to knowledge.
 It is ubiquitous’ – does no
dominate the environment.
 Provides communicative
interactivity.
(Burden and Maher, 2014)
Most Fieldwork Sites Allow Use of Mobile
Technologies:
Converged activity – producing and
reproducing ideas in the environment.
Three interrelated factors which need to
be considered:
1. An awareness of the mobile
devices and it’s affordances.
2. The individual learner and their
knowledge and experience with
mobile technologies.
3. The social aspects of using m-
technology, including rules for
interaction with others.
(Koole in Burden and Maher, 2014)
Case Study 1: Using iPads in a Primary
School in Australia:
Year 3 class using iPads and
videoconferencing.
Aim of the study: to explore ways in which
using videoconferencing through an iPad
can support learning in the primary
classroom.
 Social interaction
  Educational
 Entertainment
Case Study 2: Mystery at the Museum:
In small groups students collaborated to
solve a mystery related to the museum
exhibits. Students had to interact with
each other through the mobile devices
they were given to solve the mystery
together. Each pupil received a different
piece of information via their device. They
were then required to solve the mystery
collaboratively.
They were some positive learning
outcomes identified from the project;
however the authors’ concern was that
the students’ focus and attention was on
interacting with each other rather than
with the museum exhibits.
What is the Impact of Teachers’ Beliefs
about Digital Technology on their
Classroom Practices?
Connected to learn – survey of 4000 k-12
teachers (pre-school, primary and
secondary education) in Canada.
Teachers’ knowledge and skills with digital
technologies.
Evidence of creative uses of digital
technologies.
(Johnson et al, 2016)
What Did they Find?
Most teachers felt digital literacies have a
place in the classroom.
Most felt prepared to teach these.
Teachers prevalently use those
technologies which have a long history of
being used in the classroom – desktop
computers, smartphones, laptops. New
forms of engagement with digital
technologies are rarely used.
 Social media or social networking
The least likely device to use in the
classroom was the tablet – with the
exception of kindergarten teachers who
use them regularly.
Only 13% used social networking in their
classrooms for educational purposes.
What Did they Find? Knowledge and
Skills:
Topics which teachers considered
essential for students to learn about:
 Staying safe online
 Appropriate online behaviour
 Dealing with cyberbullying
 Understanding online privacy
issues and settings
Teachers’ knowledge and skills with
technology:
 Generally high levels of confidence
in teaching with issues listed above
 Kindergarten teachers significantly
more likely to say that these issues
do not apply to them.
What Did they Find? Creative Uses of
Technologies for Learning Activities:
Creating or accessing content?
 Students were more likely to use
Blogs, Micro Blogs, Videos, Audio
Podcasts, Digital Graphic
Novels/Comics, or Video Games to
access content created by
someone else rather than to
create content.
Coding in the classroom
 Only a small percentage of
teachers 6% used coding in the
classroom.
Compare with coding in the UK context:
 ICT curriculum has been replaced
with a new computing curriculum,
which aims to encourage children
to learn programming.
 Knowledge economy – seen as a
response to the skills gap in jobs
requiring technology knowledge
and people with the skill to fill
these jobs.
A Study of Early Years Educators’
Perceptions of Digital Technologies in the
Classroom (Harwood et al, 2019):
Key premise: teachers’ perceptions of
digital technologies directly affect how
and whether digital technologies are used
in the classroom.
Pre-school classrooms.
One tablet per teacher, ration of tablet to
child quite low (1 tablet per 8-12 children)
Pre-installed apps by the teachers: explain
everything, sock puppets, garageband.
Open-ended, creative, with clear
instructional goals.
Most teachers described an approach to
teaching and learning rooted in co-
constructing knowledge and partnership.
Many teachers were much more cautious,
adopting teacher-directed and structured
pedagogical approaches. They used the
tablet to augment and modify existing
teaching practices:
 Using the tablet to document
children’s learning.
 Differentiating instruction.
 Teacher-directed or guided
activities where the teacher is in
control of the tablet at most times.
Some teachers were more experimental in
their approach:
‘Children loved to explore the apps on
their own and often went through phases
of which apps they preferred the most…
we often used the iPad to enhance
children’s enquiries, for example looking
up videos on how things we made’.
Features to notice:
 Giving children control over tablet.
 Giving children choice.
 Using the tablet for exploration
based on the children’s ideas.
Teachers seem to make an ideological
distinction play and digital play.
New ways of thinking need to be
introduced such as converged forms of
play and thinking of play as a hybrid
between online/offline, concrete/virtual,
formal/informal.
(Harwood et al, 2019)