The world is undergoing rapid change with the arrival of digital technology. The education industry is no stranger to this movement—being at the forefront of transformation with the adoption of new practices that allow teachers to better facilitate an active learning environment for their students.

While iPads and tablets uncover a new dimension of learning for students, valuable frameworks like the Early Years Learning Framework also effectively benefit from the integration of technology.

Here are the various ways technology transforms early childhood education:

1. Using Technology to Become More Collaborative

Teachers can mediate students’ learning and facilitate digital storytelling with apps like iMovie, Explain Everything, and Book Creator. Through those mediums, students will effectively be given the power to communicate their ideas via technology. In this way, teachers become knowledge brokers who filter information for students by guiding them through their learning process.

Teachers can mix learning styles for a more effective result. For instance, students who learn better through visual cues and other senses will be encouraged by rich multimedia elements that can be rendered using technology.

But the best part is that children are allowed to present their understanding of ideas in ways they feel comfortable with, while simultaneously working in collaboration with others.

2. Promotes the Reggio-Emilia approach

The Reggio-Emilia approach is a philosophy that values the child as a capable and competent individual who’s rich with knowledge and wonder. Essentially, it puts the child at the forefront of the learning process. With the new normal shaking up the way education is done, this approach believes in the child’s central authority over their own learning.

This setting promotes encouragement and interaction of others, endorses the explorative aspects of their creativity, and provokes innate curiosity – enabling the child’s ability to become smart and competent future leaders. Grounded on independence, this setting excels with the rapid shift towards technology since the digital age allows the student to explore multiple ways of paced learning through various doors.

3. Opens a New Door with Play-Based Learning

Geoguessr, Kahoot!, and Minecraft are just some of the game-based learning tools that are improving day-to-day teaching methods. With play based learning (you can learn more here), educators take the focus away from structure, and instead let children explore independently. 

For instance, Minecraft can be used to create a world for students and teachers alike to explore and discover new things with each other’s help. Children will enjoy the freedom to make their own choices, while also using this technology as a tool to enhance their creativity.

Kahoot! assists teachers in monitoring students’ progress across a topic by checking their topic understanding. According to Science Direct, 30% of students improved their test scores by up to 55% with competition-style games like Kahoot!

Geoguessr is another great example that can aid students by pinpointing their exact geographical locations, and then asking them to identify the location they are in. With these types of tools at hand, teachers can execute campaigns to provide fresh and dynamic modes of facilitating learning.

4. Disseminate Information Effectively Through Technology

The days of the whiteboard are almost gone, replaced by popular screen casting tools that allow teachers to show students vivid representations of what they are trying to teach.

These tools can help toddlers better understand ideas in a more comprehensive way. The ease of Internet accessibility and the plethora of software that assist the learning process grant teachers the ability to take on more sophisticated techniques in a dynamic learning environment.

For instance, Google Classroom is a cloud-based classroom that gives teachers the liberty to create, organise, and share educational materials with their students. With these tools, they can also develop digital literacy skills by allowing students to work individually or collaboratively in an online environment. 

Transitioning from whiteboards to technology is beneficial for both teachers and learners; it allows them to gain more flexibility and freedom when teaching, while also enhancing their skills in search of answers.

5. Emphasise Social Skills Through Technology

As toddlers are still developing their fine motor skills, they can use technology like touch screen devices as a tool to take turns and work collaboratively with others.  

This provides an avenue for them to communicate with other kids their age and develop new friendships—which is a critical point in their social trajectory and ability to interact with others.

6. Help Toddlers Learn Basic Academic Skills

One of the primary advantages of incorporating technology in regular classrooms, preschools, or after school programs in Owings Mills, MD, or elsewhere, is that it creates a safe and engaging environment for students to learn more effectively.

Technology offers a wide range of educational tools that help young learners develop essential academic skills such as counting, recognizing colors, distinguishing sounds, and matching shapes. These interactive platforms can turn learning into a fun and immersive experience, making it easier for students to grasp foundational concepts.

Moreover, technology allows for individualized learning, catering to each student’s unique pace and needs. If a child makes a mistake or needs additional practice, technology offers the flexibility to review and correct their work without slowing down or disrupting the progress of other students.

 This creates a more customized approach to learning, where students can focus on areas they find challenging, ultimately fostering a sense of confidence and mastery. With these advantages, technology plays a pivotal role in enhancing the educational experience and ensuring effective skill development.

7. Promotes at-home learning

Technology allows toddlers to gain information and sources online.  Whether they are learning about dinosaurs, learning how to spell, or trying to figure out how many seconds there are in an hour—toddlers can access educational content on most topics through apps or research.

While parents must also play a vital role in their child’s learning process, technology has made it easier than ever for toddlers to absorb and learn topics without the teacher’s immediate guidance.

Since the crisis of COVID-19 took hold several weeks ago, our teachers have been embracing different learning platforms while honing their skills with innovative ways of teaching digitally.  In addition to Class Dojo, which is mainly used for announcements and communication with parents, and Google Classroom, which is mainly used for delivering assignments to students, teachers have been trialling other, engaging platforms.  

One of these new apps is the screencasting app, Loom.  For those who are not sure, screencasting is where you narrate a video recording of your computer screen – a very handy skill to learn when teaching online!  The advantage of an app like Loom is that it also records a video of the teacher talking, and this appears on the side of the screencast, making the teacher’s explanation much more intuitive to follow.  I have found the app to be particularly effective for the purpose of making ‘Read-Alouds’. 

Here’s a quick example I made for a Read-Aloud of the book, ‘Seeds of Change’:

Loom

The second app we have been using a lot of is the video conference platform, Zoom.  Participants can join a Zoom meeting without having the app installed or needing to sign into the app.  It is only necessary to sign up for an account if you wish to host a video conference.  We have been using this platform mainly for “meet & greet” sessions with students and parents.  After many days in quarantine, this platform can provide a brilliant way for teachers and students to touch base with one another.  Kahoot quizzes complement this platform well and could be used at the beginning of a lesson.  Likewise, Zoom works particularly well at the end of lessons, for example for a Q & A session after students have completed an online task.

As this app involves two-way communication, it’s really important to ensure that everyone is aware of key netiquette rules to follow (that are unique to video conferences) – I explain these netiquette rules for students in the tutorial video below:

Zoom

The teaching of boys  and young men deserves special consideration; for at least the last two decades, there has been increasing concern that boys are falling behind in formal education.  Instinctive differences between boys and girls are well documented in various educational, psychological and sociological studies.  Among the many differences, it is widely recognised that, generally speaking, boys are more challenging to discipline than girls – and boys are less interested in formal education.  Simply put, boys tend to be more restless, disruptive and prone to distraction than girls.

Year after year, for example, statistics show that the majority of school exclusions tend to be boys.[1]  As well as behaviour problems being more prevalent with boys than girls, it has been demonstrated repeatedly that girls outperform boys in school (e.g. Mieke Van Houtte, 2004).  International data shows that in 70 percent of the world’s countries, girls outperform boys in every curriculum subject – even including countries where women’s liberties are severely restricted.[2]  This would explain why female university students and graduates worldwide now far outnumber their male counterparts – a trend that shows no sign of changing.[3]

For the most part, these facts and statistics about this “boy crisis” are well-known.  What is not so widely acknowledged though, is how modern life can be more problematic for boys than girls – particularly within the formal education system.   The problem, according to Sue Palmer (2009) in her book, 21^st Century Boys, is that nowadays we live in an ‘electronic village’ – a marketing and screen-based culture, which inhibits healthy eating, good sleep routines and free play – from an early age.  While these trends affect all children, they tend to more negatively impact boys.  Many youngsters, especially boys, seem to be pursuing what Sue Palmer calls a ‘loss of the mind’ – the erosion of conscious identity through technological fixes, for example.

The issues for boys in particular, are very real. This is important for teachers to realise, in order to have greater levels of empathy and understanding for the boys they teach.  Boys have a greater likelihood of suffering not just from purely academic and behavioural problems, but also ‘developmental disorders’.  For instance, the ratio of boys to girls experiencing the following developmental disorders shows a marked disparity:

– ADHD & dyspraxia             4:1

– Reading problems                3:1

– Asperger syndrome              9:1

Evolutionary biology might help to explain some of the differences that we see in the classroom in terms of behaviour.  Naturally, over time, males have proven to be significantly more competitive than females, more violent and more likely to take risks.  In the classroom of course, these tendencies manifest themselves as more rambunctious and restless behaviour on the part of the boys.  In terms of emotional problems, Sami Tamimi (2005) notes that:

‘The big difference is that boys externalise their problems and it comes out as bad behaviour – girls tend to internalise it, as sadness.  Boys’ issues are therefore issues for others, not just themselves.’   

This externalisation of poor behaviour matters not just in the classroom, but for society in general.  As Sue Palmer (2009, pp. 4) states ‘if boys aren’t reasonably civilised, confident and able to exercise self-control by the time they reach their teens, they can become a problem for society: four out of five criminal offences are committed by males.’  It has been calculated by policymakers in the United States for example, that if just 5 percent more boys completed secondary school and matriculated to college, the nation would save $8 billion a year in welfare and criminal justice costs (Reichert & Hawley, 2010, xi).

There are several strategies teachers can initiate, to at least mitigate the particular issues facing boys in the classroom.  First and foremost, when issues do arise, it is important that teachers coach parents on appropriate measures to take at home.

At a minimum, parents ought to provide the following:

• Nutritious food
• A safe home
• Plenty of sleep and exercise
• Attention and love
• Discipline that teaches (and is not permissive or punitive)

This might sound like common sense but sadly, it cannot be assumed that all parents are doing these things.  Most parents for instance, in my experience, do not put limits on their children’s use of screen-based devices.  Many children, I know, have a computer and/or television in the bedroom – with no restrictions on their use.  It is also normal for a great many children to gorge on fast food and sugary beverages.  Teachers must therefore use workshops and parent-teacher conferences, to advise parents to limit their children’s use of screen-based entertainment and to make sure healthy food is regularly provided for them.

For teachers’ lesson delivery, there are at least four approaches, which I have found boys respond particularly well to:

Activities that involve physical movement – During my several years of teaching first graders (6 to 7 year olds), I would periodically get them jumping up and down for 2-minutes at least twice a day.  I would play music during this activity and make it a competition to see who could jump the highest!  The idea of course, was simply to get the children (specifically, the boys) to expend as much energy as possible.  Immediately after such an activity, the children would approach their classroom activities much calmer.

Competitions – Boys naturally tend to be more competitive than girls – and nothing gets them more excited and engaged than a good competition.  Quizzes, games and projects can all be easily embedded into the teaching process.  Online resources such as Quizlet and Kahoot are good choices to use at the beginning of the lesson or as part of the plenary.

Hands-on learning refers to learning by doing.  Activities that get students making can help them to think critically about what it is they are learning while teaching them the design process and how to solve problems.  STEAM activities and Makerspaces offer good places to start with hands-on learning.

Flexibility – as with all learners, irrespective of gender, it is important to remain flexible.  It tends to be boys in particular, who do not appear to be natural learners in the formal educational setting.  These boys may show little interest in completing worksheets, working kindly with others or reading the class text.  Differentiation, however, is an important aspect of teaching.  By teaching successfully, you will adopt flexibility in your teaching approach, to differentiate according to the needs of all the students in your classroom.  Having taught boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) for example, I know first-hand what frustrating challenges these issues can present for the teacher.  In such situations, I have found it necessary to establish special learning stations, in which certain students can work freely on tasks and challenges that interest them.  Although these students may not always work on the same learning objectives as others in the classroom, this is precisely what it means to be flexible and differentiate.

[1] Statistics from the UK Department for Education show that boys tend to be excluded three times more, on average, than girls: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-exclusions

[2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150126125015.htm

[3] Across OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development) countries show greater female to male ratios in higher education: http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/

Flipped learning is a pedagogical model in which the teacher delivery during in-class time is flipped with the homework elements of a course.  As a type of blended learning technique, students can watch relevant videos at home, which have been prepared by the teacher, while using their in-class time to focus on exercises, projects or discussions.

My own transition to a flipped learning classroom has been a gradual, organic process.  Although I still believe there is a place for the traditional (“sage-on-the- stage”) teaching approach, I’ve come to recognise the many advantages of a flipped learning model.   Sharing relevant tutorial videos with students and colleagues, both from my own YouTube channel and links elsewhere on the Web, enables me to spend more time as a facilitator of learning.  This simply means that learners spend less time passively listening at the beginning of the lesson and more time engaged in activities to develop their skills.  By doing away with the traditional classroom, which is very teacher centred, it also means that I have extra time to provide valuable one-on-one assistance to students who need it the most.

According to Eric Sheninger (2016), author of Uncommon Learning, there are two main components associated with the flipped learning approach:

1.  Students watch lectures and consume other forms of content outside of school at their own pace whilst communicating with peers and teachers using online learning tools.  In my opinion, this point about students working at their own pace cannot be understated.  The ability for students to pause, rewind and fast-forward a tutorial video means that they are in a much better situation to assimilate new learning.

2.  Students apply what they have learnt during in class time with assistance from the teacher.  As there is more time freed up during the lesson itself, there are more opportunities for small-group work and one-to-one contact with lower-performing students.

In order to make the lesson time itself more engaging while integrating formative assessment, there are many web-based tools that can complement the students’ main in class activities:

– Poll Everywhere

– Plickers

– Kahoot

– TodaysMeet

In addition, there are also some fantastic tools out there for students themselves to become authors, teachers and collaborators, working together to teach content to each other.  Some of the best of these tools include:

– Adobe Voice 

– VideoScribe

– Explain Everything

– Quizlet 

– Google Slides 

As well as giving my students opportunities to use these tools, I have used each one of these applications myself as a medium in which to share information with students for them to learn at their own pace.  As Sheninher himself states though, ‘pedagogy always trumps technology’.  For digital learning to be implemented effectively, we should focus on pedagogy first and technology second.  When integrating technology, we need to remember that it is less about the tool and more about what students can do with the tools handed to them.

That being said, with all these web-based tools and other digital applications available, it makes sense that a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or 1:1 technology initiative can radically enhance the flipped learning model.  By providing students with access to their own device, it can bring out the best of what flipped learning has to offer.  According to Sheninger (2016, pp. 117),

The flipped classroom is an excellent first step in making students’ in-class experiences more active, more student centred, and more meaningful. Combining the best aspects of the flipped classroom with the power of 1:1 technology would allow for an even more radical reshaping of the classroom. School should become a place where students can learn at their own individual paces, become active creators instead of solely passive content recipients, and learn in an environment that they “own”, which adjusts rapidly to meet their learning needs and interests.