DigIQ Module 1: Interactions and the digital
Focus
High-quality interactions are a leading contributor to children’s outcomes. We know a lot about what these interactions look like in non-digital play contexts, but once digital technologies are introduced there is often a reduction – in amount and/or quality – of conversation while it is in use.
This sits in stark contrast to the immense affordances of digital technologies for interaction, communication and connection. However, we need to ensure that high-quality interactions are maintained even when digital technologies are in use.
High quality interactions with adult-child-digital technologies occurs when:
- Digital resources are used in ways that align with what educators believe about children’s play and learning.
- Digital technologies are used to offer new (and potentially transformative) ways to actively engage with play and learning.
- Digital technologies are used in ways that are purposeful, intentional, relational and contribute to sustained shared thinking to support children’s learning and development.
Listen
Lisa and Steven discuss the roles of children and adults in interactions and play that involve, in small or large part, digital technologies.
They offer some ideas for creating technology-enhanced experiences for quality interactions and share central ideas for quality interactions when using digital technologies:
- Digital technologies were used to pursue children’s interests
- Children were able to take an active role in the digital aspects of the play
- The digital technologies enabled children to create
- The digital technologies did not impede high-quality interactions, but rather enabled, advanced and sustained quality of conversations and educator-child and child-child interactions.
Listen to Lisa and Steven in the Digital Interactions podcast episode Interactions and the digital.
View a practice example
This practice example from UOW’s Discovery Space follows the experience of children going on a bush walk during Early Learning Matters Week. Footage was collected to virtually share the bush walk experience. Lisa narrates the experience.
Consider:
- What did technologies enable that would not otherwise be possible (e.g., photos so the discoveries could be revisited, digital microscope to look closer)?
- What conversations did the digital aspects of the experience enable (e.g., for sustained shared thinking, pursuit of children’s interests)?
- How were the digital technologies seamlessly and complementarily integrated into the learning experience, rather than digital technologies as the focus or bolted on (e.g., to capture children’s interests and experiences and enable revisiting, to further explore early science concepts that would otherwise be difficult)?
Watch the bush walk practice example from the UoW Discovery Space.
Action
Below are some ideas you might like to try in your own practice.
Digital footage – experience, capture, talk
Educators and children use the iPad camera to capture something the children are interested in – nature around the playground, children playing sports, dancing to music, or creating an artwork. If the children consent, mirror the capture of footage as it is filmed. Talk with the children about what they are focusing on, what they can see and the choices they make. Later, review the footage and invite the children to talk about the experience, ask questions and share key learnings. Share the experience of being the videographer! For a more advanced version of this: You could follow up with children embellishing their media by editing or adding sound effects, music, etc.
Animate – investigate, build, share
Research a topic of interest (e.g. bugs) using books and Internet searches. Invite the children to create a 3D model of their investigation (e.g. using playdough or making a diorama). As the children create, take photos. Help the children put the photos together using iMovie to create a stop-motion video. This will reveal the process of construction, showing the stages of building. Share creations with other children, educators and families. For a more advanced version of this: You could support children to find examples of stop motion videos online that could inspire their own compositions.
This video shows some stop motion videos of children’s Lego bridge building.
Explore
Is the research on what constitutes high quality interactions new to you?
Listen to Steven discuss high quality interactions, especially between educators and children, and the crucial role they play in shaping the foundation of early childhood development. Steven shares insights from a comprehensive systematic review he led with a team of researchers, covering a vast sample of over 100,000 children.
Some more resources:
Reflect
So, what does quality look like in interactions and experiences that involve digital technologies?
Below are the additional characteristics and considerations, in addition to what we know about high-quality interactions more generally, that we believe are necessary to ensure full benefit from these experiences.
Reflect on your own practice to self-assess to what extent you use digital technologies in the following ways.
Digital technologies contribute to conversations during learning and play. What we don’t want is that digital technologies are used in ways that stand between the child and educator, or in ways that limit conversation or quality interaction. Rather, at a minimum, we want to ensure that conversations and interactions are of a comparable frequency and quality as they are outside of digital contexts. Even better, we can use digital technologies to instigate novel verbal interactions and/or sustain, extend and enhance existing adult-child or child-child interactions (e.g., to explore and discuss things not immediately available, to ask and answer questions, to connect with others not present).
Digital technologies are used to enable more, or more diverse, high-quality interactions. We need to ensure we are engaging in high-quality interactions across all of a child’s learning experiences, and contexts – the digital aspects of learning and play are no exception. Rather than permitting a decline in the amount or types of high-quality interactions we engage in while digital technologies are in use, we instead want to use the unique affordances of digital technologies to engage in more, and more diverse, high-quality interactions with children.
The connection and communication affordances of digital technologies feature in aspects of learning or play experiences. Beyond using digital technologies to support, sustain and enhance our own interactions and learning experiences with children, we also want to make explicit, explore and exploit the connection and communication affordances of digital technologies with children.
For example, watch the video to see how digital communication sustains and supplements children’s lego bridge building.