How do children learn about technology?

Learning in the digital age means that children are coming to school as being enculturated into a world where so much is done with and through technologies.

When my youngest son was only 13 months old, he would go up to the TV and try and enlarge the image as you would do on an iPad. Schooling is changing. Teacher's do 'teaching' reporting, assessment, tracking, timetabling, and so much more, with technology! Schools have Facebook and twitter accounts, and parent-teacher communication can be done online. So this gives implications to how we should be teaching in our classrooms.

So how do learners use technology, how do they learn it? They learn by doing, and being given opportunities to do so. I think children will always be engaged by technology, so there is a definite en internal motivation to try technology out with a process of trial and error. Their learning can be enhanced by teachers who are knowledgeable with technologies, and who can show them how to utilise them at a deeper level, and for specific tasks. Teaching of technology must include knowledge, skills and experiences. Explicit teaching is needed for some elements, then creativity can take over. As a teacher, there must be a level of intentional teaching; explicit teaching of skills.

 A useful study into the pedagogical effectiveness in Early Learning (Moyles et al 2002 cited in Benson, 2012) identifies a number of effective teaching and learning practices for the early years in relation to design, which can be used with technology, including: - ensuring time is available for children to fully explore concepts and ideas and complete tasks to their own satisfaction; - enabling children to make choices, take measured risks, talk and think for themselves and have some responsibility for articulating and evaluating their own learning - making full use of collaborative and co-operative ways of learning - making full use of a range of open-ended, active, hands-on, multi-sensory learning experiences.

I created a Twitter account and my comment to this discussion was:
#EDCU12039 Children learn about technology best when they are able to experience it multimodally; openly and intergrated to other contexts.

Daniella had a similar view, and expressed that opportunity and experience was most important. Her response showed that collaboration was so important when using technology. Isolation breeds no new learning for children!
I could not find any other Twitter comments using the hash-tag.
I really need to collaborate more with this subject. I am probably doing things on my blog that I should be doing on the Wiki. The two sources of communication are a little confusing for me at times, I don't like repeating, but I'd actually prefer to use the blog for everything and have my group log on and make comments. I do understand, however, that the wiki is an -in-time and immediate way to edit another's work.



Benson, C., (2012). Griffith University: Explorations of best practice in Technology, Design & Engineering Education. Griffith Institute for Educational Research. Retrieved from http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/514768/2012-TERC-Volume-1-of-2.pdf