Building: BUILDING C
Room: Posters C1.35 Reception
Last modified: 2022-11-27
Abstract
The second edition of Teaching with technologies, by Jennifer Howell and Natalie McMaster, is an invaluable resource for all educators interested in pedagogies for collaboration, communication, and creativity. The book is a helpful guide for pre-service teachers and educators, to explore and develop their digital pedagogy. The book is packed with inspirational ideas about integrating digital technologies into, and across, the Australian curriculum. The book offers a cross-curricula guide that enables educators to develop their own digital literacy, while also targeting educators’ ability to confidently use digital technologies or their digital fluency. The authors have carefully crafted a guide to exploring current issues and developments around teaching with digital technologies. The authors frame these experiences of digital literacy and digital fluency through the three phases of schooling – early years, primary and secondary years. Importantly, the book provides a scaffolded pathway to available resources that educators can use to explore their digital pedagogy and enhance their digital fluency.
The thirteen chapters of the book are divided into four parts, covering topics that include: digital pedagogies, creative technologies and learning, developing digitally fluent learners, and digital technologies. The authors provide a masterful balance between theoretical understandings that underpin digital pedagogies, with local and global issues that are shaping schooling and society. Threaded throughout the book is the focus on digital citizenship and online safety. Each chapter is bookended by the front sections that outline learner outcomes and key terms, and back sections that summarise the chapter and provide further readings, QR code links to a website which contains weblinks to a vast number of resources, and references. Within the chapters, the key terms are helpfully defined in the margins, and highlighted within the text. Additionally, there are useful case studies and questions, and critical reflection and personal reflection activities throughout. Collectively, the book is arranged to incorporate content knowledge, skills, ideas and resources, and reflections that guide and support the educator in developing their digital fluency and enhance their confidence when teaching with technologies. An outcome of using Teaching with technologies is that the book enables educators to focus on developing children’s and young peoples’ opportunities to develop their creativity and creative practice through technology-rich learning environments.
An invaluable book that will help pre-service teachers and established educators alike, to navigate digital literacies across the Technologies curriculum and the information and communication technologies (ICT) general capability.