Using technology as an educational tool

 This is research from a recent essay i wrote for my degree, that shaped my beliefs on teaching pedagogy in the 21st century. Enjoy and learn ^^. (I took out most in text references to make it more readable).

According to Ross and Baily (1997) and McLellan (1997) there has been a shift from the Industrial age to the Information age. Access to information, information management and a rapid changing world in which the children are growing has created new needs for the student of today. Children go through childhood receiving information multimodally through television, multimodal books, computer screens and electronic games. In this view “technology becomes an in-dispensable set of tools for knowledge construction” (Salmon & Perkins, 1996 pp.126). Most of today’s children have not lived in a non-computerised society and therefore are curious and knowledgeable about technologies of today and tomorrow.

Using technology is a positive and enjoyable process for children. Wolf (2006) mentions that using technology to learn is highly enjoyable for children and children learn more and are keener to do so when they are having fun in the learning process. Children react so positively to technology in their learning because it can cater for so many needs of the children. The CEO forum on education and technology 2001, in Bitter and Pierson asserts that when technology is used to support learning objectives, improved student achievement can be anticipated in the form of; Improved language and literacy skills; Increased application and knowledge of the real world; Increased ability for students to manage learning; The promotion of achievement in special needs children; And access to information that increase knowledge, inquiry and depth of exploration and investigation.

Technology can also cater for different learning styles of the children helping children to learn to their individual preferred method and enhance learning. Students preferentially take in and process information in different ways. When mismatches exist between learning styles of students and the teaching style of the educator, the students may become bored and inattentive in class, do poorly on tests, get discouraged about the schooling, the curriculum, and themselves.Technology allows children to answer their own questions through inquiry of technology and do so with enthusiasm as the topic is of interest to them.

Research also suggests that using technologies is arguably a social process. When used appropriately, technology use allows greater opportunities for grouping children resulting in a more social nature to learning, where student expertise are used to benefit the entire learning of a group rather than one teachers’ expertise.This supports a collaborative socio-cultural approach to language learning as the learning and teaching is co-constructed by all stakeholders.  Technology then, allows children to use an ‘adult tool’, empowering them, giving them increased self confidence and self worth. Allowing the children this empowering use of an ‘adult tool’ gives the children some autonomy and they are not restricted from the world in which they are growing up in.

Technologies provide an opportunity for children to communicate with children and the educator about using these technologies and the information found on or by using the technologies as they construct knowledge.This communication can play an impressive role during language learning, comprehending, and practicing literacy in and out of the classroom and help children become effective citizens of society. The social nature of technology use promotes these language skills.

Technologies also allow children a wider range of forms to communicate and express thoughts through multimodal appearance. This is especially helpful for children who have difficulties communicating and expressing their ideas through other literacy forms. This increased communication leads to technology being used to help students express themselves, allowing community and language sharing to happen in the process through the use of graphics animation, sound and video all at once, promoting personal, cultural and social relevance to students work. Cope and Kalantzis (2000) agree asserting that pedagogies of multiliteracy broadens learning of young children as it differs according to culture and context and has specific cultural and social effects, which are consistently being remade as the children interact with the technology. This can all occur if children are grouped and allowed time to discuss when using technologies for learning rather than children using technologies on their own with no support and room for discussion.

There are great benefits for the social use of technology for learning of young children although other issues still arise. Honan (2008) explains there is a gap between children’s use of language in the home and in the classroom, due to the differing interaction with Information Communication Technologies (ICT) in the two settings. Research from Hill and Mulhearn (2007) revealed that, independent of location, children had access to and could use ICT far in advance of the technology practices in many schools and early childhood settings. Contrasting views of what constitutes meaningful literacy teaching has made the gap more problematic. Technology is being sidelined for the more traditional literacy practices and education systems are denying the technological cultures of the home. Due to economic restrictions and uneducated teachers, society does not know how to deal educationally with the new technologies and the day to day business of education is restricted to the conventional practices. Early childhood centres and schools cannot afford appropriate levels of new technologies, thus children inationally are receiving differing levels of access to digital technologies.

In addition, uneducated teachers also fear using new technologies and the educators who try do not use effective pedagogy (strategies) to promote significant learning through technologies. Educators often promote how to use technologies rather than using them to teach content and enhance discussion, which is how children are using them at home. Bitter and Pierson (2005, pp. 93) state that “Teachers actions influence their students achievement”. Thus an understanding of the technology being used by the children in the home and a push to universal access is necessary to use effective pedagogy in teaching children using digital technologies.

In addition to these issues, there is also the pressure society places on accountability of education, that is forcing technology use in the wrong direction for learning of young children. As a society “we value what we can measure. When we measure literacy; textual skills are easy to measure and compare” (Vincent, 2006, pp. 52).  The quality of an educational system is said to be judged from at least three perspectives: the inputs to the system, what happens within the system and the outputs from the system. All aspects of education are as important as the next and should not be judged from a one perspective. However, recently there have been increasing calls in Western societies for greater attention to be paid to the outcomes of education so the investment in education could be evaluated. These calls for accountability have lead to the rapid spread of the outcome based education system in countries such as UK, USA and Australia. Not only in schools, also effecting some early childhood settings, which use an outcome based curriculum for programming and planning. These developments were closely related to federal government’s push for national economic efficiency, and worldwide emphasis on accountability. Society’s anxiety about the performance of students in our schools has lead to management that stresses uniformity of content, of assessment procedure and of outcome. This is desired because we are then in a position to compare at a meaningful level the performance of education. If this is challenged then the ability to make these meaningful comparisons will be compromised.  

This leads to politicians, bureaucrats, administrators, teachers, parents and students focusing their attention and efforts towards the results of education. Therefore assessment and accountability restricts the use of technologies in the classroom. Due to the preferred traditional methods of standardised testing there is no agreed schema for assessing multimodal texts. This leads to educators not assessing them, leading to teachers not accepting them as a normal means for meaningful knowledge production. Thus many children are denied a pathway to effective learning across the board of technology use.

Educators then must use new technologies in ways that promote the benefits of these technologies towards learning whilst limiting the issues associated with them. An important starting point is to remember “it is the way technology is used rather than the actual machines themselves that contributes to learning” (Bitter & Pierson, 2005, pp. 91). Pedagogy must include a variety text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies in order to overcome the restrictions from the past and in the present and break down the dominant discourses of teaching. To achieve this, educators need to use a variety of technologies which promote oral literacy learning and draw on the links between the children’s learning and popular culture of media texts and the socio-culturally specific funds of knowledge of the children.

Society is constantly changing and children are immersed in this ever changing world. In order for children to learn in this world there has to be educators who take responsibility and utilise new technologies to teach new knowledge. Until this is realised and acted upon, education will fall behind in producing effective learning specific to socio-cultural needs of the children. In this light technologies play a major role in the language learning for young children now and into the future.