Rosina Merry

This article reports on a qualitative study exploring the extent to which the Apple iPad can be used to support assessment in an early childhood education (ECE) context. It is part of wider project exploring the educational affordances of the iPad in one ECE context from the perspectives of teachers, parents, and young children. Observations focused on interactions between an early childhood teacher and children as they were using an iPad and teacher interviews informed the study. The findings highlight the potential of using iPads to capture and record young children’s voices in their assessment practice. Teacher recognition and understanding of the opportunities iPads offer, and their deliberate incorporation of these opportunities, can support young children’s emerging learning and interests. Implications are provided for practitioners interested in investigating the iPad’s use to foster meaningful, relevant, and authentic assessment practices for and with young children.

This paper reports on a qualitative study exploring ways teachers can adopt iPads to provide opportunities for young children's learning and exploration in an early childhood education and care setting in Hamilton. Interviews with teachers, children and their caregivers as well as observations of teacher interactions with children and copies of children work produced on the iPad informed the study. The findings focused on two teachers' practice to reveal the different ways teachers can make use of the iPad to expand children's learning opportunities and foster closer home–centre links. In particular, four key iPad-supported practices were observed – use of the iPad as a relational tool, as a communicative tool, as a documentation tool, and finally, as an informational tool for supporting child-led learning. These strategies were however contingent on teachers considering the interplay between the opportunities that iPads 4 offered, their own pedagogical views and childre...

Tablet technologies such as the Apple iPad (iPad) have been garnering interest and increasingly adopted as a potential learning tool and resource to engage children’s learning. Despite a growing literature on the ways educators have attempted to use iPads in their teaching across the compulsory schooling and tertiary sectors, there is a scarcity of studies in the early childhood education (ECE) context. This exploratory qualitative research project, the iPads and opportunities for teaching and learning for young children (iPads n Kids), is intended to inform the current debate on young children’s iPad use. It aimed to better understand the iPad use for educational purposes from the perspective of teachers, young children and their parents/caregivers. It recognises that young children are increasingly exposed to (and to an extent expected to make use of) digital and mobile technologies as members of a digital generation. Teachers and caregivers are further expected to take advantage ...

The iPads and opportunities for teaching and learning for young children (iPads n Kids) project is aimed at understanding iPad use for educational purposes from the perspectives of teachers, young children and their parents/ caregivers. It recognises that young children are increasingly exposed to (and to an extent expected to make use of) digital and mobile technologies as part of a digital generation where such tools are becoming increasingly important and pervasive. The researchers in the project collaborated with two early childhood educators in this qualitative study to investigate the educational affordances of iPads for teaching and learning with children in an early childhood education centre within Hamilton. This presentation reports on the case studied experiences of one of the teacher participants in using the iPad as a communicative tool to allow children to experience communicating with one another in real-time across different locations within the centre. Data was coll...

The use of technology such as podcasts, social networking sites, wikis, and Google docs for communicating information which supports teaching and learning in tertiary institutions is well documented (Bates, 2005). These tools have been shown to enhance traditional lectures and tutorials (Salmon, 2007). Little attention, however, has been given to the use of conversational approaches when using these tools and their potential in developing alternative pedagogical approaches to teaching. This article examines the use of a conversational style podcast in an online pre-service early childhood teacher education programme. The podcasts were initially used to disseminate information and respond to the students’ needs, however, their conversational use revealed a number of unexpected outcomes. Analysis of the podcast conversations that occurred between the two lecturers, and the student feedback to these, were used to identify unexpected outcomes for students enrolled in the programme. Thes...