Facilitator, Functionary, Friend or Foe?

Abstract

We present the findings from a longitudinal study of iPad use in a Primary school classroom. While tablet devices have found their way into classroom environments, we still lack indepth and long-term studies of how they integrate into everyday classroom activities. Our findings illustrate in-classroom tablet use and the broad range of learning activities in subjects such as maths, languages, social sciences, and even physical education. Our observations expand current models on teaching and learning supported by tablet technology. Our findings are child-centred, focusing on three different roles that tablets can play as part of learning activities: Friend, Functionary, and Facilitator. This new perspective on in-classroom tablet use can facilitate critical discussions around the integration and impact of these devices in the educational context, from a design and educational point of view.

Construct-A-Vis: Exploring the Free-Form Visualization Processes of Children

“…Shared Interactions. Shared and collaborative interactions with peers are an important and beneficial element of elementary school classroom activities [22,29,36], and they often occur spontaneously [1,9,24]. In the context of visualization where multiple visual mappings of a single data set are possible, peer discussion and reflection can facilitate visualization literacy.…”

“…While young children can be competent technology users [24], introducing specific visualization concepts incrementally can be important [1,10]. Construct-A-Vis provides a configuration screen for teachers, separate from the main application, to configure the tool for all participants according to their learning objectives and children's abilities [P4].…”