Anne Campbell
Faculty of Education, University of Canberra

Grazia Scotellaro
Faculty of Education, University of Canberra

This paper describes an innovative pilot project at the University of Canberra aimed at providing pre-service early childhood teachers with the skills, confidence and ideological change required to include technology-enhanced learning as part of the early childhood curriculum. The impact of the project was evaluated through participant observation, and a thematic analysis of entries in student learning diaries, student feedback and transcriptions of semi-structured interviews with staff involved in the delivery of the program. The analysis demonstrates that an intensive learning program can successfully change the attitudes of pre-service early childhood teachers toward the integration of technologies in the early childhood curriculum, and that the scaffolded learning process in the intensive program enhanced the learning and retention of the students' technological knowledge and skills.

Introduction

When my grandson turned three I made the mistake of giving him a toy mobile phone for his birthday. He was excited enough when he opened the parcel, but obviously very disappointed when I showed him that we only have pretend telephone conversations. He examined the toy phone very carefully, then looked at me sympathetically and explained in a somewhat patronising tone, 'They should have sold you a sim card when you got this, Nana. They don't work without sim cards, you know.'

Welcome to the world of the 'digital natives' (Prensky, 2005), the 'millenials' (Howe & Strauss, 2000; Oblinger, 2003; Wiethof, 2006; Zemke, 2001) or the D-generation (Jukes & Dosaj, 2006) who were born into a world where technology is a given and where mobile phones and computers are tools you have used since your fingers were big enough to press the keys or the touch screen. Digital technology is so much part of their lives that they barely notice it is there. They can use DVD and CD players to select their favourite movies and music, use the remote to channel-surf, use a microwave to heat up their snacks, a mobile phone to SMS their friends, the internet to email their grandmother, and the family computer to play and to learn (Zevenbergenen & Logan, 2008).

It is a technological world in which children are often more comfortable than their parents and teachers. Until very recently has been regarded as anathema to effective early childhood education, where the emphasis has traditionally been on the development of interpersonal social skills and physical coordination (Ferguson, 2005; Miller, 2005).

Zevenbergen and Logan (2008) have pointed out that this has led to a 'digital divide' between the learning experiences encountered in a child's home environment and those experienced in early childhood educational settings. This situation is especially worrying when there are significant gender differences among even four- and five-year-old children in terms of access to computers and in the ways computers are used.

It is also disconcerting that some children still do not have access to computers at home and therefore do not have the opportunity of developing the skills my grandson and other 'digitals in diapers' like him take for granted – skills such as using a mouse, finding letters and numerals on a keyboard or screen, typing letters, navigating websites, retrieving files, using pull-down menus, loading CDs and DVDs, uploading photos from a digital camera, using toolbars, saving files, printing documents and files, using drawing software and typing words (Zevenbergen & Logan, 2008, p. 42).

Although some of these skills are used for playing games, this is still an impressive array of digital literacy skills, even more so when they have been acquired more through independent learning and experimentation than through an adult providing instruction. I cannot help being impressed when my grandson gives me a Christmas card he has made himself by inserting a photo of his new guinea pig into a word template and adding the text, even though I know his mother told him how to do this. That children as young as this have the capacity for learning such a sophisticated array of skills and practices has significant implications for early childhood educators.

If we are to take seriously such principles as student-centred learning, providing equity for all learners and preparing them for future roles in a technological society (ACTDET, 2007; DEST, 2007; MCEETYA, 2006), we cannot ignore findings that tell us that children in early childhood centres who have access to computers at home are the ones who have highly developed IT related skills (Zevenbergen & Logan, 2008). Nor can we ignore the fact that early childhood educators need to know how to make effective use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in their classrooms, and need to be convinced that doing so will enhance the learning of their young students.

In Australia it seems that it is easier for early childhood teachers to accept the role of ICT as an assessment tool than as a way of enhancing student learning. For example, Boardman's (2007) innovative use of digital cameras and voice recorders in early childhood environments is limited to describing the effectiveness of using ICT to document the learning journeys of young children for the benefit of teachers and parents, and so the children themselves can see what they have learned. This is an excellent use of ICT, but it is not using technology to enhance student learning.

Signs of an increasing acceptance of the role of ICT in early childhood learning are encouraging, although less so in Australia than in other countries such as the UK (O'Hara, 2008; Sarama & Clements, 2001), USA (Bradley, 2007; Ching, Wang, Shih & Kedem, 2006; Estrella, 2006; Hong Kong (Leung, 2003) and Finland (Kankaanranta & Kangassalo, 2003). Despite these changes, using ICT to enhance the learning of children in early childhood environments still needs a major change from traditional beliefs about 'quality education' for this age-group (Miller, 2005; Ferguson, 2005), and an early childhood centre with an IT hub for the children's use is still the exception rather than the norm in Australia. As one early childhood teacher explained:

We don't want them sitting in front of a computer screen or a TV. They probably get enough of that at home. What they need at the centre is to run around, do something physical. Learn how to interact with other children. In early childhood that's what's important. The human touch.

The current emphasis on the provision of 'quality' early childhood education by the Australian Federal Government has brought the debate about the inclusion of ICT-enhanced learning for young children into the limelight, with considerable resistance from practitioners who value more concrete activities (Shazia, 2000; Turnbill, 2001). As Downes, Arthur and Beecher (2001) found, one difficulty is providing funding for the hardware and software needed to support the introduction of ICT in early childhood education, but an even more urgent need is the professional development of early childhood teachers.

Context of the study

The development of ICT skills relevant to teaching and learning is a required part of the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Canberra. Students choose tutorials to suit their individual non-academic commitments, and those in early childhood courses are often placed in Learning with Technology (LwT) tutorials with students from primary or secondary courses. Given the diverse teaching contexts of their potential professional destinations, the LwT curriculum therefore needs to be broadly relevant to all students, although there is some option for them to shape assignments to their own specific contexts.

As the use of ICT for learning at the early childhood level is quite different from its use for the same purpose at primary and secondary levels, feedback from the early childhood students who had completed the subject indicated they were not satisfied that LwT was meeting their needs. It was obvious that 'integrating ICT in the early childhood curriculum' meant something completely different from integrating ICT in the primary or secondary curriculum. As one of the lecturers explained:

Most of the literature on the integration of ICT in education is related to a secondary or college level context. There is very little that is relevant to an early childhood context.

Evidence for the accuracy of this statement can be found in the ICT competency policy documents produced by the various state and territory Departments of Education in Australia (ACTDET, 2007) and 'technology in the classroom' texts published for teachers (John & Wheeler, 2008; Roblyer, 2004), as well as in the literature (Downes, et al., 2001; O'Rourke & Harrison, 2004; Swamithan & Yelland, 2003).

Unlike older early childhood teachers, most of the students enrolled in LwT were themselves 'digital natives' and were not resistant to the idea of using ICT to enhance learning in early childhood classes, but felt marginalised by the predominance of secondary students in their tutorials: There are so many secondary students in our tutorial that they always get their way. Even when we try to have a say, they're louder than we are. And I don't know – they seem more confident than us. It's not that we're not confident, but there's more of them and somehow they just dominate the discussion. Their lecturer concurred:

We try to accommodate the early childhood group but, for example, the issue of plagiarism, students plagiarising assignments, that's something that's more relevant to high school and college, but it's not very relevant for an early childhood student. Hopefully, five-year-olds haven't got to that yet! Looking for resources on the internet, using the internet for research, preparing worksheets is also more relevant to high school level. The early childhood students are looking for online games, learning activities that can involve that age group.

Both the students and the subject convenor felt that the early childhood students needed a more targeted program to provide them with the confidence and expertise to use the technology creatively to provide quality learning experiences for young children. They also indicated that developing expertise in using relevant hardware and software over a semester frequently meant having to re-learn skills that had not been used for some time.

In response to this feedback and after consultation with the convenor of the early childhood teacher education course, the convenor of Learning with Technology decided to offer the subject specifically for early childhood students as a two-week intensive program during the class-free period between semesters:

This would kill three birds with one stone. It would separate the early childhood students from the primary and secondary students, take some pressure off the computer laboratories, which during the semester can barely accommodate the 245 students enrolled in the subject, and let me try out the new mobile laptop trolley.
Although there were online versions of the subject available, feedback from the early childhood students indicated that they were far more comfortable with a face-to-face learning situation. Comments in the formal student feedback collected at the end of every semester included:
I didn't like learning online. I wasn't sure what I had to do.
I felt abandoned. Confused. It was hard to agree on what we were supposed to be doing.
The online discussions weren't relevant to what I wanted to do. The secondary students dominated.
It was very lonely out there.
I missed meeting with my friends.

The solution was to offer a two-week intensive program of two hours per day for three groups of early childhood students, with a total enrolment of 60. Independent assignments were to be submitted during and after the completion of the intensive program. The content of the program was similar to that delivered in the regular and online versions, but examples and skill development were directly related to an early childhood environment and there was an increase in the amount of hands-on practice with software relevant to the creative use of ICT with young learners.

Method

The research was located within an interpretive research framework of narrative inquiry, as interpretive research can be sensitive to individual meanings and explore a diversity of meanings, whereas 'massive surveys with pre-coded slots to be ticked and computer analysed will not tap into this information' (Wearing, 1998,188). To provide some predetermined focus for the study, data was obtained through semi-structured interviews with the lecturer of the intensive LwT program and the course convenor of the Early Childhood program. Participant observation of the tutorials was used during the intensive program. Thematic analysis of the weekly entries in the learning diaries of the 60 Early Childhood students enrolled in the intensive program, and formal feedback surveys completed by these students provided additional data for the study (Patton, 2002; Braun & Clarke, 2006; Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2007).

The intensive LwT program was delivered to three groups of 20 Early Childhood teacher education students enrolled in the first year of their pre-service course. The intensive program consisted of 10 two-hour sessions per group over a two-week period, using individual wireless laptops with internet access (PCs in the first week and Macs in the second week) provided by the university. The laptops are stored on trolleys and can be borrowed by any lecturer for tutorials anywhere on campus that has wireless access, although to date the early childhood intensive LwT program is the only group to have done so. Seating in the room used for the intensive program was around a large table so that direct eye contact could facilitate interaction between students and lecturer. As the laptops are fully portable, it was possible for the lecturer to send students out of the boardroom for activities that needed a quieter context, such as recording a voice-over for a podcast.

'Lectures' dealing with specific issues relevant to the early childhood context were available online through a mixture of videos, podcasts, interviews with experts, Powerpoint presentations and links to online teaching resources. The face-to-face sessions concentrated on increasing the students' confidence in using both Mac and PC laptops and developing expertise in using software such as Microsoft Office, Hotpotatoes, Audacity, Garage Band, iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, Smartboard Notebook and online resources such as Google Docs, Vixy Net , Zamzar, Youtube, Teacher Tube and Wikispace.

In the face-to-face sessions students learned:

• how to create and insert sound and video files into Word documents and Powerpoint presentations (using Audacity to record the sound) and to add both embedded and hidden hyperlinks
• how to simplify saving documents in a variety of formats such as pdf and html using Zamzar
• how to create drag-and-drop quiz activities with Hotpotatoes with text images, sound and video; use digital cameras
• how to use iPhoto and Garageband to produce simple podcasts
• how to use iMovie and Powerpoint to create and edit a short movie and turn the movie into a podcast using Garageband
• how to create a short educational activity using the Smartboard suite
• how to create a learning space for students using Wikispace, with links from a home page to resource page and activity pages.

Although these skills are similar to those taught in the LwT program for primary and secondary pre-service teachers, having a separate program enables the lecturer to use examples of content relevant to early childhood students.

Findings

Early childhood course convenor's perspective

From the interview with the early childhood course convenor it was clear that the intensive program had been extremely effective in promoting a positive attitude among the students towards the integration of ICT in the learning experiences of young children.

It was fantastic. The student evaluation of the program was so positive that I'm thrilled. I think we'll stick with this. I'd even recommend it for practising teachers.

One of the main advantages from the perspective of the course convenor was that the program could be tailored to meet the specific needs of her early childhood students. Although the early childhood group learned the same ICT skills as primary and secondary students, and did basically the same assignments, the fact that they could apply them in ways relevant to the early childhood environment – such as creating a 'talking' story-book – made the learning much more valuable and immediately relevant.

Completing most of the LwT assignments by the beginning of the following semester also had the advantage of reducing some of the pressure usually experienced by students struggling to complete a large number of assignments in a short timeframe during the semester, as well as having other responsibilities such as part-time work and/or looking after a family. The unit content, delivery mode and timing were therefore all innovations that led to the very positive response to the program.

The early childhood centre at the university already uses ICT to record the children's learning, and it is one environment where students completing the LwT intensive program can put their newly acquired skills and knowledge into practice.

Lecturer's perspective

The lecturer found the intensive program provided scaffolding opportunities that were not possible in the normal program:

I could start off with really easy applications of the software that built up the students' confidence and over the days increase the complexity of the activities until they were being really creative.

This is not possible in the normal delivery modes used in the subject, as, even during the face-to-face tutorials, tutors interact with their students only once a week. The lecturer explained that many students forgot the skills acquired if they did not have opportunities of consolidating them regularly.

More than half of them have part-time jobs, and even the full-time students rush off to their next lecture after my class, and by the next I have them, they've forgotten what they learned the week before. There's no time to practise. They spend more time working, going to other classes, socialising or looking after their kids if they're mature age students or friends, or just doing all their other assignments than using their IT skills. They take it all in, but it doesn't stick. It's not like my subject is the only thing they have to concentrate on.

The learning environment in the intensive program was tightly controlled by the lecturer, so it was possible to give the students experience in using both PC and MacIntosh platforms, and convincing most of the students that the transferability of IT skills and knowledge from one platform to another presents no major difficulties. This was a major breakthrough, as many practising teachers (and teacher education students and their lecturers) have a deep-seated belief that IT literacy skills do not transfer between platforms. Showing the students that this was not the case by using the platform with which they were familiar in the first week and then switching to the unfamiliar one in the second was far more valuable than telling them their IT skills were transferable. As the lecturer observed:

They started off with something they knew, but throughout the first week I kept pointing out that the differences were not so big. I'd say 'well, you're doing this on the PC, but next week you'll be doing it on the Mac, and it'll be a bit different, but you do it like this'– and so when it came to using the Mac it wasn't all that difficult for them. They knew a lot of the Mac skills already. And after the first day of just getting used to the way you did the same things as on a PC in a slightly different way on a Mac, it was no big deal.

The lecturer commented that she was frequently surprised at how many teachers became quite stressed when presented with unfamiliar technology such as a Smartboard, or an unfamiliar educational software program such as Hot Potatoes. As a number of researchers have pointed out, much of the reluctance among teachers towards adopting new technologies lies in their fear of the unknown and their lack of confidence when confronted with unfamiliar technology (Downes, et al., 2001; Shazia, 2000).This was also a point made by one of the students enrolled in the intensive LwT program:

When the school [the school at which the student was based for field experience] introduced the Smartboard the teachers refused to use it because it was too complicated, or because they couldn't see why it would be useful for whatever they were doing in their classrooms. There was this attitude of 'the last thing I need right now is having to learn another technological thing'. It made me think about whether there was such a thing as too much technological change, especially for early childhood teachers. After all, it's the kids that matter, isn't it?

A particular reluctance among students enrolled in the intensive LwT program noted by the lecturer was changing from a MacIntosh to PC.

Students told me 'I've been a Mac person or a PC person all my life, so why should I have to change?' It's a funny attitude to have these days, because if you go to a school where they have Macs and you're a PC person, you have to change. And in reality they're really not so different, and once you've mastered the differences, you wonder why you ever made such a fuss about it in the first place. That's what the students said too after day two. They all sat there in amazement and said, 'It's not that difficult. We did this on the PC and it works exactly the same way on a Mac.'

One of the most rewarding outcomes of the trial project for the LwT lecturer was that the intensive program enabled her to see the progress the students were making:

There was an observable change in attitude from the first day where the students were all somewhat fearful of using the wireless laptops facilities. Then on the second day they'd come in all enthusiastic and say, 'Oh, yeah, we did that yesterday and it wasn't so hard. Yeah, I can do that.' And then I'd say, 'Well, now we're going to do this activity, but part of this activity is what you already learned to do yesterday, so it's not that different', and they'd just go.

I wasn't expecting this. But when I think about it, because they didn't have this gap of a week between what they learned, with all the other things in between — other lecturers, other assignments, work, whatever — in the intensive program there was none of this, and no loss of learning. Whether they'll still remember everything we've done in six months' time, I don't know, but I could see that their learning was a lot quicker and with a lot deeper understanding than with the students in the normal semester, who by the second week have forgotten what we did in the first week.

Teaching the entire cohort of early childhood students was also an advantage for the lecturer, as she could be confident that they were all receiving the same learning experience, something not necessarily the case when using sessional staff as tutors. Monitoring individual student progress was also easier in the intensive context, a process aided by the location which enabled the lecturer to see all of the students, quickly help those who needed it, and modify activities if it was clear that a number of students found them too difficult:

I got to know the students really well. I could pick up the ones that were having difficulties, who needed more assistance than others, the ones who knew more than the others, and I could see when I needed to simplify things.

In fact, that's what I did. I planned an activity and it worked fine on my computer at home, but then I got here and it didn't work, so I had to switch to Plan B and by the time I took the second group I could incorporate parts of Plan A, and by the third session it was mostly Plan A again, because I'd fixed the problem.

The lecturer's confidence and flexibility in dealing with unanticipated problems in using ICT was an excellent model for the students; and her enthusiasm for trying out new technology in creative ways was contagious, as the entries in the students' learning journals demonstrate:

My confidence in technology is bigger now and I feel OK in just playing around and exploring with technology.
I'm amazed at how much I've learned. We've explored features of programs that I use every day, but that I'd never even dreamed would exist.
I'm shocked at what the children would be deprived of if I hadn't done this course.

The lecturer admitted to the students that the intensive program was a collaborative experimental learning journey. 'I told them, ''Look, I'm trying to do new, more creative things with this technology too, so I'm learning along with you. That's what makes it exciting for me''.' This admission gave the students the confidence to be creative themselves, to experiment, to 'play around' with unfamiliar technology in much the same way young children do — a process the lecturer clearly found liberating and enjoyable. As the lecturer observed:

That's what was so great. The freedom to experiment. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't, and you try something else. That's what was great. And to do so free of the usual administrative things that you have to do during the semester. It was so focused. My whole brain was braver and I tried things I'd never do during the semester, like podcasting, and it was a big success.

Students' perspective

The overwhelming response of students to the intensive program as revealed in an analysis of the comments made in their weekly learning journal was that it was an excellent way of learning and retaining knowledge and skills essential for the effective use of ICT in early childhood education. The main reason for this positive response was the scaffolding provided through the intensive structure of the program. The only negative comments related to the lack of university facilities available during the intensive program, such as access to the computer laboratories for follow-up work and the completion of assignments, although this was balanced by parking being more readily available than during semester.

The initial shock for the students was that they would be expected to use both PCs and Macs during the program. Almost all students were regular PC users and had little experience in using a Mac. Their trepidation at having to do so is almost tangible in their learning journal entries:

I'm a PC girl, have been brought up a PC girl, and my parents are both against Macs. I never expected to have to use a Mac.
I was reluctant, almost fearful of Mac computers. I'd avoid them in the IT labs, and if I had no choice, I'd fumble around on them and get nothing done.
When we were told we'd be using Macs, I inwardly groaned … LOUDLY!
I thought the world of the PC was the only one worth living in.

The level of prejudice against Macs among students seems based largely on ignorance, and by the end of the second week of the program most students had accepted that changing platforms was not a problem:

I liked that the laptops we used were both PC and Mac, as it got me comfortable with both.
It was a true pleasure to learn to use the applications on a Mac.
The Mac tutorials are particularly useful to us, as many schools use Macs, therefore we need to learn to use them and to take advantage of all their great features.
I now feel that I could confidently use both Mac and PC.

This change in attitude is a major breakthrough, as the tendency to prefer one platform and exclude another is extremely prevalent among many teachers (and teacher educators). As the students realised, this attitude disadvantages those who are unable or unwilling to concede that moving from one platform to the other is not a major problem and can actually have advantages.

As students became more familiar with the range of applications available to them and the potential for the creative use of features within the applications, there was also a marked change in attitude toward the perceived benefits of using ICT as a teaching/learning resource in early childhood contexts:

You can create files/documents that you want to use and then link them together and allow children to explore them at their own pace, allowing children to be active in their own learning and to control the pace at which they engage with the activity you have set for them.
The Smartboards use many different modes of learning — visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and written, which engages students with different learning styles.
The idea of allowing children to create their own podcasts appealed to me as it is such a good way of allowing the students to in their own learning and to motivate children. I was also impressed by the idea of using digital cameras to have children take their own photos and then centre lessons around these photos.

The use of ICT to record student learning was mentioned by some students — you could make podcasts to give you a new and exciting way of demonstrating children's learning — but it was the creative use of ICT in helping young children to learn that most excited them:

I learned that there are numerous ways in which information can be presented to children.
I'm constantly thinking of all the learning possibilities that utilise these new discoveries.
It's been a real eye-opener to explore programs that I didn't know existed and had right at my fingertips, such as the Paint program.

One concern expressed by some students was that the children they would be teaching might know more about ICT than their teachers:

I realise that I need to know what the children already may know and where their minds are with technology, because technology is normal for them, but harder for me.
My greatest worry is that the children will know much more about technology than I do, although maybe this means that I can learn from them.

If this is a concern for pre-service teacher education students, it might well be an even greater concern for practising teachers, and could be another factor linked to the lack of uptake of ICT in early childhood education in Australia, as mentioned by Zevenbergenen and Logan (2008). It was a concern also mentioned by the students in this study:

Having just left the system, I am surprised how little teachers use these technologies.
I found the Smartboards fascinating, yet am disappointed, as very few schools in New South Wales (where I will be teaching) have them.

It is to be hoped that the enthusiastic response of these students towards using ICT to enhance the learning of young children will not be dampened by a lack of ICT hardware and software in the early childhood classrooms where they will be teaching.

Conclusions

The analysis of themes emerging from student learning journals and interviews with the LwT lecturer and early childhood course convenor, supplemented by covert observation, indicated that the intensive mode of delivery of the subject was very successful in making these early childhood pre-service teacher education students aware of the possibilities of enhancing the learning experiences of young children by using ICT in the classroom (Chen & Chang, 2006). The responses of the lecturer, the course convenor and the participating students indicated that the intensive program was perceived as more successful than the normal program in doing this because it facilitated the use of scaffolded learning and gave the lecturer and students greater freedom to experiment with the technology than is possible in the normal or online program.

If the skills, knowledge and confidence gained in the intensive program are to be retained, these pre-service teachers will need to have access to adequate ICT hardware and software in their own teaching environment so they can continue to apply their learning. Their attitudes have clearly changed as a result of the intensive program, and their increased knowledge and skills have given them digital confidence, but their practices cannot change unless appropriate ICT resources are available in the early childhood educational environment.

References

ACTDET (2007). Every chance to learn curriculum framework. Canberra: ACT Department of Education & Training.

Boardman, M. (2007). ‘I know this child has learned: I have proof.' Employing digital technologies for documentation processes in kindergarten. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 32(3), 59-66.

Bradley, A. (2007). New center to explore role of digital media in learning. Education Week, 27(15), 5-5.

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101.

Chen, J., & Chang, C. (2006). A comprehensive approach to technology training for early childhood teachers. Early Education and Development, 17(3), 443-465.

Ching, C. C., Wang, X. C., Shih, M., & Kedem, Y. (2006). Digital photography and journals in a kindergarten – first-grade classroom: Toward meaningful technology integration in early childhood education. Early Education and Development, 17(3), 347-371,

Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2007) Research methods in education. (6th edn) Milton Park: Routledge.

DEST (2007). Partnerships in ICT Learning Study. Canberra: Department of Education, Science & Technology.

Downes, T., Arthur, L., & Beecher, B. (2001). Effective learning environments for young children using digital resources: An Australian perspective. Information Technology in Childhood Annual, 2001(1), 139-153.

Estrella, S. (2006). Teaching toddlers. Music Education Technology, 4(2;2), 38-39.

Ferguson, S. (2005). How computers make our kids stupid. Maclean's, 118(23), 24-30.

John, P.D., & Wheeler, S. (2008). The digital classroom: Harnessing technology for the future. New York: David Fulton.

Kankaanranta, M., & Kangassalo, M. (2003). Information and communication technologies in Finnish early childhood environments. Childhood Education, 79(3), 287-292.

Leung, W. M. (2003). The shift from a traditional to a digital classroom: New possibilities for early childhood pedagogy. Childhood Education, 80(1), 12-17.

Jukes, I. & Dosaj, A. (2006) Understanding the digital kids. The InfoSavvy Group Retrieved 8 August, 2008. http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/Jukes+Understanding+Digital+Kids.pdf

MCEETYA (2006). Learning in an online world. Carlton: South Curriculum Corporation.

Miller, E. (2005). Less screen time, more play time. Principal, 85(1;1), 36-39.

Oblinger, D. (2003). Boomers, gen-Xers and millennials: Understanding the New Students. EDUCAUSE Review, 38(4), 37-39.

O'Hara, M. (2008). Young children, learning and ICT: a case study in the UK maintained sector. Technology, Pedagogy & Education, 17(1;1), 29-40.

O'Rourke, M., & Harrison, C. (2004). The introduction of new technologies: New possibilities for early childhood pedagogy. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 29(2), 11-18.

Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (3rd edn.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Prensky, M. (2005). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-5.

Roblyer, M. D. (2004). Educational Technology in Action. New Jersey: Pearson.

Sarama, J., Clements, D. (2001). Computers in early childhood mathematics. In developmentally appropriate technology for early childhood (DATEC): An interactive symposium. Seattle: AERA.

Shazia, M. (2000). Factors affecting teachers' use of information and communications technology. Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education, 9(3): 319-342.

Swamithan, S., & Yelland, N. (2003). Global perspectives on educational technology. Childhood Education, 79(5), 258-260.

Turnbill, J. (2001) A researcher goes to school: Using technology in the kindergarten literacy curriculum. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 1(3): 255-279.

Wearing, B. (1998). Leisure and Feminist Theory. London: Sage.

Wiethof, C,. (2006). The millenials, the next generation of students and how to motivate them. Retrieved 22 August 2008, http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:q_1-iDFfbKYJ:www.cofc.edu/orientation/Millennials in the classroom.ppt+wiethoff+carolyn+the+millennials+the+next+generation+of+students&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=au&lr=lang_en

Zemke, R., (2001). Here come the millenials. Training, 38(7), 44-49.

Zevenbergen, R. & Logan, H. (2008). Computer use by pre-school children: rethinking practice as digital natives come to school. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 33(1), 37-44.

Australasian Journal of Early Childhood – Volume 34 No 2 June 2009, pp. 11–18.

Don't forget, Australasian Journal of Early Childhood is tax deductible for early childhood professionals

You can purchase this issue of the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood now.

Back to the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood Vol. 34 No 2 June 2009

Back to the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood

Other editions of the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood