Observing and Assessing Children's Digital Play in Early Childhood Settings

Title
Observing and Assessing Children's Digital Play in Early Childhood Settings
Publication Date
2014
Author(s)
Bird, Jo
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3345-1815
Email: jbird21@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:jbird21
Edwards, Susan
Editor
Editor(s): Trudy Sweeney and Sue Urban
Type of document
Conference Publication
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Australian Council for Computers in Education (ECCA)
Place of publication
Brunswick, Australia
UNE publication id
une:18809
Abstract
In early childhood education children increasingly have access to digital technologies to play on and with. Research often centers on using traditional play theories to understand what is occurring, but some theorists are now using a social-cultural lens to explore digital play in a way that is meaningful for the children and educators involved. In this paper we present a new conceptual framework to understand how children learn to use technologies through play. The framework is called the Digital Play Framework and is informed by the sociocultural concept of tool mediation (1997) and Hutt's (1966) ideas about explorative and ludic play. The framework is pedagogically useful because it explains the relationship between technology-as-tool and children's play-based behaviours. It is important to understand this relationship in early childhood because play is the basis for curriculum provision. With play as the basis for curriculum provision, educators need a way to assess and plan for children's digital activities. In this paper we illustrate the potential of the Digital Play Framework for achieving this goal.
Link
Citation
Conference Proceedings of the Australian Computers in Education Conference 2014, p. 39-49
ISBN
9780646920955
Start page
39
End page
49

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