Abstract:

It goes without saying that rapid developments in information and communication technology (ICT) have prompted educators to re-examine the objectives of traditional educational environments and diversify their teaching methodology in the digital era. Accordingly, the policy makers around the world have demonstrated a clear tendency towards digitizing the educational system, while publishers have responded equally to such challenges by digitizing their print course books. Hence, the traditional paper course books are being transformed into multimodal learning platforms that combine textual, visual and auditory elements, as well as interactive tasks, to represent the subject matter in a variety of attractive formats. This enables the new generations of digitally capable students to develop multiple literacies in the learning process and acquire knowledge more efficiently. Even though these are only some of the frequently highlighted benefits of implementing digital learning materials in the contemporary classroom, there are also practical circumstances that prevent teachers from embracing digitally enhanced learning environments, such as the lack of adequate technological infrastructure in schools, as one of the most frequently encountered obstacles.

Given the context of ELT classroom, this paper aims to examine how effectively digital learning materials are incorporated in English classes in Croatian primary schools. An online survey will be conducted among primary school teachers of English in Croatia, comprising two parts. The first part of the survey focuses on the generic questions determining the teachers’ overall level of ICT literacy and their general attitude towards implementing technology, multimedia and digital tools in their usual classroom routine. The second part of the survey features more specific questions addressing the benefits and drawbacks of the digitized course books accompanying the printed version of New Building Blocks and New Building Bridges, the course book series for learning English in primary schools in Croatia. The digitized versions of those course books, enriched with animated visual and audio content, as well as multimedia content and interactive tasks, were first launched in 2014, and are still work in progress, so the challenges in the development of the digital learning materials will also be discussed in this paper.

With the ongoing comprehensive curricular reform in Croatia, the findings of this research will be useful in showing current technological trends in Croatian primary schools as well as their preparedness for digital learning in the future. In addition to that, valuable feedback about the above mentioned digital course books will certainly generate some recommendations for their improvements in the future.

Keywords:

Digital course books, ELT classroom, digitized course books, multimodal learning, multiple literacies, interactive tasks.