António Moreira | The Digital Literacy and Multimodal Practices of Young Children: Engaging with Emergent Research (pp. 212-224)
Abstract:
“The aim of this keynote address is to give an overview of how pedagogy and teaching approaches have been (mis)used in the early stages of learning – pre and primary school children – in formal and informal digital learning contexts, and examine ways of transforming these into adaptive/productive strategies that foster motivation, creativity and digital skills development in learning, while adopting selected digital tools that are not perceived as intrusive and/or displaced from the contexts of childhood education, with a view to foster and set the foundations for the development of digital literacies from an early age.
Issues that have to do with advocating or rejecting digital tools appropriation by children will therefore be addressed, based on recent research findings, allowing for the emergence of voices that are in favour or against the introduction of ICT in the early years of schooling, thus providing us with the means to equate a balanced view of the pros and cons of such introduction, be it in the form of social and economic aspects, cognitive development, parental involvement, teachers’ attitudes, institutional policies, and so forth.
A few principles will be equated towards the use of the right tools for the right task at the right time.”
