Students’ use of paper and pen versus digital media in university environments for writing and reading – a cross-cultural exploration

This paper offers a summative cross cultural analysis of qualitative survey data collected to investigate the impact of digital media on writing and reading within universities from different countries. It addresses the particular aspect of the student’s experiences of paper and pen versus digital media. This study is based on the results of individual qualitative research conducted in 10 countries in two continents by members of the COST Action FP1104, Work Group 1 – Customers and Users. The methodological approach used is qualitative content analysis of the reported research and analysis of the individual country surveys. The survey was conducted in the national language of each country using the same research questions. Various survey methods were deployed – online questionnaire; questionnaire and interviews or hand written essays. The principal results show that there are many similarities between the countries studied but that some use pen and paper less whereas others are more prepared to use hand writing, this may link to the availability and use of digital technologies as well as to personal preferences. Reading and writing competencies are changing with the use of digital technologies but students still see benefits of reading and writing with paper which they continue to use, especially to convey private emotions and intimate feelings. This study provides new learning about the contrasting use of paper and digital media within an educational rather than business setting. These surveys provided the basis for the design and analysis of a follow up quantitative study (not examined in this paper) and for further exploration of this important research topic within the countries surveyed, particularly in social sciences and pedagogical studies

From an experimental paper to a playful screen : How the essence of materiality modulates the process of creation

The article seeks to develop a better understanding of the contribution of materiality in a discourse between a creator (content producer) and an interface, dealing with analogue and digital artefacts. Focus is in the materiality of the two different art-creation learning processes, acrylic painting and digital painting. The objective of this paper is to consider especially the affect and meaning of these two different content creation modalities and intra-action within that. Through reflective autoethnographic consideration, the purpose is to consider the essences of materials manifesting and modulating the processes of content creation as a posthumanist phenomenon. It will be shown that the creation processes with paper are more experimental whereas the processes with digital screen are more playful. There is a growing need to deeper understand the cultural change of material cultures and the people's intra-action with the materials also enabling arts creation. This paper will widen our limited understanding and deepen our theoretical perspectives of the essence of materials which then avails confronting analogue and digital when developing teaching and learning in the posthuman era especially in early education. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic There is a growing interest in the new materialism and posthuman thinking amongst educational technology research and development. Reading analogue versus digital is well-documented. What this paper adds New materialist thinking offers a useful perspective in education for looking at the essence of analogue and digital materiality modulating content creation. Characterising the nuances in analogue and digital production can help in evaluating their educational potential. Implications for practice and/or policy As practitioners we should critically question the political vision of education digitalisation especially concerning early childhood education. There is a need to move beyond debates about analogue versus digital to look at more specific examples of their advantages (and disadvantages) in developing posthumanist education and intra-active pedagogy especially for young children.Peer reviewe

What can screen capture reveal about students’ use of software tools when undertaking a paraphrasing task?

Previous classroom observations, and examination of students’ written drafts, had suggested that when summarising or paraphrasing source texts, some of our students were using software tools (for example the copy-paste function and synonym lookup) in possibly unhelpful ways. To test these impressions we used screen capture software to record 20 university students paraphrasing a short text using the word-processing package on a networked PC, and analysed how they utilised software to fulfil the task. Participants displayed variable proficiency in using word-processing tools, and very few accessed external sites. The most frequently enlisted tool was the synonym finder. Some of the better writers (assessed in terms of their paraphrase quality) availed themselves little of software aids. We discuss how teachers of academic writing could help students make more efficient and judicious use of commonly available tools, and suggest further uses of screen capture in teaching and researching academic writing

Early years teachers and digital literacies: Navigating a kaleidoscope of discourses

For many young children in developed countries, family and community life is mediated by digital technology. Despite this, for early years educators, the process of integrating digital technologies into classroom practice raises a number of issues and tensions. In an attempt to gain insights from early years teachers, we draw from semi-structured interview data from ten practising teachers which explored their perspectives on digital technologies within their personal and professional lives, and of children’s use of digital technologies within and outside educational settings. Our analysis builds on previous work that suggests that teachers draw on multiple discourses related to conceptualisations of childhood when thinking about digital technology and young children. In this paper we contribute to these discussions, drawing specifically on examples from the data where teachers articulate their understandings of children’s use of digital technology where this relates directly to children’s literacy practices. We assert that narrow conceptualized notions of literacy, compounded by national imperatives to raise print literacy standards, add another layer of discursive complexity that comes to the fore when teachers are asked to provide a rationale for the promotion of digital literacies in early years classrooms. A broader framing of literacy therefore, is needed if the potential of digital technologies in the early years is to be realized

‘Being stuck’ : Analyzing text-planning activities in digitally rich upper secondary school classrooms

The aim of this article is to develop an understanding of how students use different interactional resources to manage problems that arise in their text-planning processes in digitally rich environments in Finnish and Swedish upper secondary schools. We explore both individual and collective teacher-initiated writing tasks in different subjects and during moments when text-planning seems to ‘get stuck’. Theoretically, we draw on a socio-cultural understanding of the text-planning process, and use multimodal conversation analysis to examine how students display 'being stuck' during their text-planning through their embodied and verbal performances, what role smartphones and laptops play in their process of becoming 'stuck' and 'unstuck', and how different interactional resources are coordinated during the students’ text-planning processes. The data consist of video-recorded face-to-face interaction, students’ activities on computers and/or with a pen and paper as well as simultaneous recordings of the focus students’ smartphone screens. The results demonstrate that students often resort to smartphones as resources to display, negotiate and transform problems in their text-planning process. Our results challenge common claims within the contemporary debate both in relation to digital devices as the solution to pedagogical challenges and in relation to the debate on smartphones as devices that disrupt work.The aim of this article is to develop an understanding of how students use different interactional resources to manage problems that arise in their text-planning processes in digitally rich environments in Finnish and Swedish upper secondary schools. We explore both individual and collective teacher-initiated writing tasks in different subjects and during moments when text-planning seems to ‘get stuck’. Theoretically, we draw on a socio-cultural understanding of the text-planning process, and use multimodal conversation analysis to examine how students display ‘being stuck’ during their text-planning through their embodied and verbal performances, what role smartphones and laptops play in their process of becoming ‘stuck’ and ‘unstuck’, and how different interactional resources are coordinated during the students' text-planning processes. The data consist of video-recorded face-to-face interaction, students' activities on computers and/or with a pen and paper as well as simultaneous recordings of the focus students' smartphone screens. The results demonstrate that students often resort to smartphones as resources to display, negotiate and transform problems in their text-planning process. Our results challenge common claims within the contemporary debate both in relation to digital devices as the solution to pedagogical challenges and in relation to the debate on smartphones as devices that disrupt work.Peer reviewe

Digital Stories with Children: Examining Digital Storytelling as a Pedagogical Process in ECEC

Modern digital technologies have become common in educational settings of all levels. This has made the use of digital storytelling (DST) more applicable in early childhood education and care (ECEC). This paper examines the implementation of DST, aiming to answer the following questions: 1) How to support children’s active participation throughout the DST process in ECEC, and 2) how do 21st century skills manifest in the DST process? The study was conducted between 2017 and 2018, when two cycles of DST projects were implemented in four Finnish ECEC centres as part of a European project. The data consist of interviews with educators (N=15) and children (N=51), as well as documentation of the DST activities (project sheets, N=37, and yearly summary documents, N=18) produced by the educators. The data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Firstly, our results highlight aspects that are important for supporting children’s active participation in DST, divided into the following categories: premises on starting DST with children, interpersonal processes during DST activity, affordances of digital tools and the meaning of DST activity and products. Secondly, we present how the 21st century skills such as digital skills, collaboration and problem-solving manifested in the DST process

Textual reading in digitised classrooms: Reflections on reading beyond the internet

Discussions of digital technologies in education should take into consideration the role of analogue technologies – such as print books – especially when it comes to reading. Empirical research (Delgado et al., 2018; Kong et al., 2018; Clinton, 2019; Singer & Alexander, 2017) shows that paper supports comprehension better than screens, especially when reading longer and more complex texts. PISA 2019 shows that reading performance has declined in many countries, and teenagers report a significant drop in leisure reading. This article reviews and discusses these findings, in light of how reading and literacy have been redefined on the premises and affordances of digital technologies, and calls for a heightened attention to important aspects of reading that are now being marginalized – namely, those that are least compatible with digital technologies.publishedVersio

Constructing social participation around digital making : A Case study of multiliteracy learning in a Finnish day care centre

Abstract: In this article, we present a case study of digital making as an example for constructing social participation around multiliteracy learning in Finnish early years settings. Digital making is explored and evaluated through the practices and experiences from workshops conducted with four- to five-year-old children in one day care centre in the Helsinki metropolitan area in Finland. Reflections scrutinize children’s social interaction with digital technologies and aim to examine shared meaning-making in the design process. We explain how innovative technologies mediate and enable social interaction and what leads children to either collaborate or work individually while making meaning digitally. Our study indicates that although social participation can be intentionally achieved by children themselves, early childhood education and care (ECEC) professionals and pedagogical practices play a pivotal role, especially when the cultural tools used in learning are new and unfamiliar to children, in this case tablet computers and smartphones.In this article, we present a case study of digital making as an example for constructing social participation around multiliteracy learning in Finnish early years settings. Digital making is explored and evaluated through the practices and experiences from workshops conducted with four- to five-year-old children in one day care centre in the Helsinki metropolitan area in Finland. Reflections scrutinize children’s social interaction with digital technologies and aim to examine shared meaning-making in the design process. We explain how innovative technologies mediate and enable social interaction and what leads children to either collaborate or work individually while making meaning digitally. Our study indicates that although social participation can be intentionally achieved by children themselves, early childhood education and care (ECEC) professionals and pedagogical practices play a pivotal role, especially when the cultural tools used in learning are new and unfamiliar to children, in this case tablet computers and smartphones.Peer reviewe