Abstract:

This paper will explore how digitally enhanced (Prensky 2009) learners and digitally enhanced teachers can connect across the boundaries of formal schooling to achieve their aspirations for learning in the 21st century by combining analogue and digital learning attributes. Much of digital engagement is located in the surface of things, in communication and social practice, much of it is perishable, by connecting with the realities of the analogue it becomes meaningful and deep. This is a role and identity for teachers in the digital age, not ‘harnessing technology’ but connecting the disconnected, allowing learners to use the digital tools at their disposal to lead creative and productive lives.
This paper will draw on a current action research project around the impacts of netbooks on developing independent learning within two primary schools in Telford UK and explore how researchers and practitioners working together can bring about improvements in practice within a legitimised space for experimentation and change. It will document the research process and present early findings from teachers, learners and parents’ experiences of the netbook project using a variety of media. The paper will also draw on recent research into the use of ICT in initial teacher training by trainee teachers Hadfield et al (2009) for the Training and Development Agency for schools. It will also highlight an evaluation of learners’ digital habits of primary age children Royle et al (2009).

It will provide a conceptualisation of independent learning and illustrate how that can be developed and supported by teachers integrating technology effectively into pedagogy. It will draw on the theoretical perspectives of communities of practice Wenger (1998), activity systems theory (Engeström, 1999; Somekh, 2001) and indivudual, personal and collective agency Bandura (2001). As Fisher,(2006 p301) notes, “Digital technologies provide the tools or mediational means to be used by teachers and learners. The key to this approach is that neither the teachers or the tools may be understood in isolation.”
This paper will show that, as with any other tool for learning, technology needs to be integrated into existing analogue systems but at the same time, those systems need to adapt themselves to the digital realities of children’s lived experiences. Digital technology today has the pervasiveness and ubiquitous influence of broadcast television in the seventies, the role of teachers needs to adapt to these social influences and mediate the use of technology through creative pedagogy for learning purposes.

Keywords:

Digital Vs analogue learning, mobile technology, netbooks, creative pedagogy, digital habits, learner and teacher agengy, independent learning.