Research Reviews

Researchers and educators are divided on the influence and impact of digital technology on young children’s development. There are two schools of thought on the use of digital technologies with young children. Some researchers believe early use of technologies may impede a child’s cognitive development while others maintain that the use of technologies may enhance a child’s development. This review reports on a study that sought to investigate the influence of technologies on young children’s learning.

Globally, governments have made significant investments in the development of digital curriculum resources as well as funding professional development to ensure teachers are well prepared to embrace the new era of teaching and learning with digital devices. Research indicates that there is hesitation, by some teachers, to include digital technologies in their teaching. Teachers’ changing practices with information and communication technologies: an up-close, longitudinal analysis, a research paper by Joanne Orlando, reports on a 5-year qualitative, longitudinal study on the teaching practices of a small group of Australian primary and secondary school teachers in their use of digital technology.

Computers and technology have changed the way we work, communicate and learn. The current generation of students have grown up with technology; they are accustomed to multitasking and communicating mainly through technology. Given their ability to adopt and adapt to new technologies, for a long time now there has been a popular view that students are more ‘tech savvy’ than their teachers. A recent paper, titled ‘An investigation of middle school science teachers and students use of technology inside and outside of classrooms: considering whether digital natives are more technology savvy than their teachers’, sought to investigate the notion that so-called “digital natives” are more experienced in the use of technology than the “digital immigrants”.

Globally, for reasons including financial constraints, global access and viability more and more graduate and post-graduate courses are being offered online. Technological advancements and collaborative tools are significantly changing the learning and teaching landscape. Online communities and virtual classrooms are enabled to function effectively through the use of synchronous interactive tools. A pertinent paper titled ‘Use of Synchronous Virtual Classrooms: Why, Who, and How?’ looks at ‘why instructors adopt synchronous virtual classrooms as well as how they use them after their adoption’.

Twitter is considered a powerful microblogging tool with many innovative teachers around the world incorporating it in teaching and learning activities. A recent paper in Open Praxis, titled Student Teachers’ Attitude towards Twitter for Educational Aims  looks at student teachers’ attitudes towards technology and social media for educational purposes.

Technology is rapidly changing our world and is transforming learning in many ways. The introduction of laptops, personal devices and learning management systems in schools is changing the infrastructure of learning – it’s only a natural transition that computer-based assessment is implemented to align assessment with learning practices. eExams transforming curriculum describes the eExam System and how it has been used in various degree courses and in the pre-tertiary sector in Tasmania to transition from paper-replacement to post-paper examinations.

The Australian Curriculum promotes the development of 21st century skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity by incorporating them as general capabilities. This study investigated how teachers might use iPads to support the development of creativity and collaboration in an early primary classroom.

Class blogs as a teaching tool to promote writing and student Interaction, an article in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, sets out to evaluate group blogs as a teaching tool. The authors surveyed university students in four different science communication classes that utilised similar group blogging assignments to examine their perceptions of the value of class blogs.

Do students want to use their smart phone for learning purposes? Are tomorrow’s teachers proficient with smart phones? What types of BYOD prototype activities do preservice teachers develop for future students when working on their own? These questions are the focus of a study conducted in a teacher education course.

The publication of a scholarly handbook on blended learning, as the result of a nationally funded project, is a most welcome addition to the research literature. The handbook is outlined on a rich website that is really worth perusing. The handbook describes in detail good online learning design and teaching practices. It is an absolute educational treasure.