Future educators' explaning voices

Teacher education programs must offer pre-service students innovative technology-supported learning environments, guiding them in the revision of their preconceptions on literacy and technology. This present paper presents a case study that uses podcast to inquiry into future educators’ views on technology and the digital age. Results show future educators present rather conservative views on technology use and few of them relate to the theme from their future professional identity. Courses aimed at preparing future educators to make pedagogical use of technology should explicitly address students’ preconceptions so as to favor the educational approaches required for the development of the twentieth century skills.Postprint (published version

Interactive multimodal narrative as an approach to developing emergent literacy in early childhood education

At present, the Portuguese education system promotes the development of new literacies in all education levels in response to new requirements of the digital world which imply changes in children’s education. In fact, reading and writing are no longer limited exclusively to books, rather they are associated with diversified digital media integrating text, sound, image, and video. In this context, we developed an exploratory study in a kindergarten with the children and their family members. Data were collected through participant observation, children conversational interviews, and digital narratives produced by children. Data analysis is based on content analysis with NVivo software support. The emergence of literacy is evident in verbal interactions in peer-group work, in contact with the written text, in “writing” in various media, and in sharing knowledge, discoveries, and digital narratives produced in an online community http://janelajardim.ning.com). This paper presents: (1) a systematic literature review in the field of digital narrative and emergent literacy; (2) the description of children’s activities concerning interactive multimodal narrative; (3) the results of this work; and (4) the conclusion about contribution of multimodal narratives to the emergence of reading, writing, and digital skills

Praxis of design education to the current digital culture student

If “Design is shaped by the community and community shapes design” (DEFSA 2013 brief author), then how do we teach design to a culture that is engrossed within the ever-­‐changing information age, what is the impact of this ethos on the current day designer and design? Today’s student is inclined to have an ethos that is different to students from as short as five years ago; post 2007, the year that social media started to be commonly used by South Africans, thus changing their ethos of design and continues to change as the digital information age develops. This paper looks at a design class, on third year level, as the Design Culture described by the conference outlines; understanding the dualism at play on the design process and the class group as the community. It investigates the culture that does not hold onto information, but has access to information at the press of a button. This investigation aims to understand the nature of this constantly changing culture and the influences the information age has on the ethos of a design culture. It investigates how teaching has to adapt to serve this digital culture and how learning happens within it. The paper considers the changes to the praxis of design; process of design, the nature of creativity and the communication of design within this ethos, the challenges and potential for growth that the information ethos brings with it. It aims to contribute to the discourse surrounding praxis of design teaching to today’s constantly changing, network driven design culture. In conclusion this investigation considers the influence of the digital culture on design cultures and aims to act as a catalyst to design educators to enrich the understanding of the cultures they are involved with and aims to contribute to the praxis of teaching design to a continually changing culture on the fringes or outskirts of the educator’s own culture

Exploration of Learning Gained Through CoderDojo Coding Activities

In an increasingly digital world there is a considerable and growing divide between those who are considered to be digitally literate and those who are not. In addition, among those who are digitally literate, there is a divide between those capable of engaging with technology end products and applications as competent users and those capable of developing software themselves; between users and creators. As technology becomes more pervasive in our society it has impacts in most aspects of life, including education, health, culture and work. In terms of the workplace impact it is clear that the currently reported skills deficits, gaps and mismatches are generating significant demand for skilled information technology workers across many sectors and the ability to meet this demand can have substantial impact on economic development. Developing appropriate technological skills and competence among young people has been the focus of many government, industry-led and voluntary schemes and has given rise to a diverse set of initiatives around Europe. However, little has been published on the attainment of knowledge, skill, competence and evidence of learning outcomes through these initiatives. This research has focused on the efforts to support development of coding capability among young people through the CoderDojo voluntary initiative and sought to identify the skills which are potentially transferable in an education and workplace context. CoderDojo is a global movement of free, volunteer-led, community based programming clubs for young people between the ages of seven and seventeen. The movement was founded by James Whelton and Bill Liao, an entrepreneur and philanthropist. From the first Dojo founded in Cork in Ireland in 2011, the movement has grown significantly and by May 2015 there were over 675 verified Dojos in 57 countries globally [1]. Through a review of the extant literature and the development of a potential skills acquisition template, this research seeks to identify and evaluate the knowledge, skills and competence that may be developed by participants in the CoderDojo movement. Before seeking to identify the skills that might be attained through programming activities, consideration of the broad themes and language of digital skills attainment is presented. The actual skills that are attained are considered in relation to the context within which the learning takes place. A research instrument is developed in association with project collaborators in the CoderDojo volunteer coding movement. The findings from the research are analysed and some preliminary recommendations are considered

Praxis of design education to the current digital culture student

If “Design is shaped by the community and community shapes design” (DEFSA 2013 brief author), then how do we teach design to a culture that is engrossed within the ever-­‐changing information age, what is the impact of this ethos on the current day designer and design? Today’s student is inclined to have an ethos that is different to students from as short as five years ago; post 2007, the year that social media started to be commonly used by South Africans, thus changing their ethos of design and continues to change as the digital information age develops. This paper looks at a design class, on third year level, as the Design Culture described by the conference outlines; understanding the dualism at play on the design process and the class group as the community. It investigates the culture that does not hold onto information, but has access to information at the press of a button. This investigation aims to understand the nature of this constantly changing culture and the influences the information age has on the ethos of a design culture. It investigates how teaching has to adapt to serve this digital culture and how learning happens within it. The paper considers the changes to the praxis of design; process of design, the nature of creativity and the communication of design within this ethos, the challenges and potential for growth that the information ethos brings with it. It aims to contribute to the discourse surrounding praxis of design teaching to today’s constantly changing, network driven design culture. In conclusion this investigation considers the influence of the digital culture on design cultures and aims to act as a catalyst to design educators to enrich the understanding of the cultures they are involved with and aims to contribute to the praxis of teaching design to a continually changing culture on the fringes or outskirts of the educator’s own culture

Digital Competence in K-12 : theoretical models, assessment tools and empirical research

Over the last years the theme of the digital competence in its different aspects has been object of a growing interest. In a number of official documents and communications, international bodies underlined the significance of this competence for lifelong learning and to participate in the so-called 'information society'. Within this context, education research has the duty to provide realistic conceptual models coherent with the school's objectives and which can be put into practice within the school curriculum. In the present paper, we shall introduce a theoretical model, education oriented, to represent this competence and a set of tools to assess it in the school context, i.e., the Instant DCA (iDCA) and the Situated DCA. Then we shall focus on iDCA and on the results of the testing carried out over the last two years in the Italian secondary school.Durante los últimos años el tema de la competencia digital en sus diferentes aspectos ha sido objeto de un creciente interés. Los organismos internacionales han destacado a importancia de esta competencia para el aprendizaje permanente y la inclusión en la sociedad de la información en una serie de documentos oficiales. Dentro de este contexto, la investigación educativa tiene el deber de proporcionar modelos conceptuales coherentes con los objetivos de la escuela y que se puedan poner en práctica dentro del currículum escolar. En el presente trabajo, introducimos un modelo teórico, orientado a la educación, para desarrollar esta competencia y un conjunto de herramientas para evaluarla en el contexto escolar

Empowering students as champions in technology enhanced learning (TEL) to improve digital literacies

We explore the usefulness of developing frameworks to allow students and staff at universities to improve their digital skills with respect to education, and to develop strong authentic partnerships for the benefit of universities and their students. We use examples from two universities with very different models of delivery and discuss some of the issues that arise in the development of such frameworks, focusing on Harvey’s iChamps mode

The effectiveness of the blended learning approach on digital literacy of middle school students with different daily Internet usage patterns

This study examined changes to middle school students’ digital literacy after engagement in a blended, technology-rich, project-based learning (BTP) environment. Guided by the social constructivist epistemology and the European Union’s DigComp 2.0 framework, this study attempted to understand how students’ digital literacy changes in a BTP environment differed, with respect to participants’ levels of daily Internet access time, and daily Internet usage purposes. Thus, this study applied a cross-sectional case study approach to middle-school participants of a BTP after-school program, across the spring and fall semesters of 2017 and 2018. Eighty middle school students completed the whole program and provided valid pre- and postdigital literacy questionaries’ responses, which presented different degrees of digital literacy changes. To investigate such variation, 58 out of the 80 students further completed an Internet use questionnaire and indicated a non-significance between (1) the students’ daily Internet use (access time and usage purposes) and digital literacy changes as well as (2) the students’ daily Internet usages purposes and digital literacy changes

DIGITAL NATIVES AND DIGITAL IMMIGRANTS: TOWARDS A MODEL OF DIGITAL FLUENCY

Recently it has been suggested that \u27digital natives\u27, a generation of young people born into the digital age, are inherently technology-savvy. If this suggestion is correct, there could be profound implications for Information Systems research, which traditionally has conducted empirical research on \u27digital immigrants\u27. This paper looks at whether there are significant differences between digital natives and digital immigrants. Our findings suggest that there is a continuum rather than a rigid dichotomy between digital natives and digital immigrants. We propose that \u27digital nativity\u27 can perhaps best be conceptualized as \u27digital fluency\u27 Digital fluency is the ability to reformulate knowledge and produce information to express oneself creatively and appropriately in a digital environment. We propose a conceptual model that outlines factors that have a direct and indirect impact on digital fluency, namely demographic characteristics, organisational factors, psychological factors, social influence, opportunity, behavioural intention, and actual use of digital technologies