Empower early childhood educator's multimodal learning experience

Information Communication Technology (ICT) has become an essential part of the learning environment in pre-school settings. Examples of new technologies and media used by young children have already providing multimodal learning experience for young children’s learning in the technological world (Yelland, 2011). In order to prepare the current pre-service and in-service early childhood teachers to support young learners in the digital age, this project aims to 1) develop an interactive e-platform to demonstrate, share and redesign teachers’ innovative ICT-related pedagogical practices in local pre-school settings, 2) update course contents and learning resources to promote learners to adopt variety of technologies in the classroom practice and their teaching. In this project, ICT will go beyond the desktop computer and also include different new digital technologies to offer multimodal learning experience, which may combine the written, visual, gestural, aural, linguistic and the tactile. Be aim at learner’s feedback in the previous years, the use of mobile technologies and digital toys will innovatively update the pedagogical content, and create ICT-related pedagogical strategies. This project will facilitate early childhood teachers to share exemplars of pedagogical design and the experience of ICT innovation in the pre-school settings. It is expected that outcomes of this project will include an interactive e-platform, which will create and share multiple ICT-related practice experience for local practitioners. In addition, the e-platform will take active role to improve learner’s ICT skills and knowledge, and share multiple media resources. Reference: Yelland, N. (2011). Reconceptualising play and learning in the lives of young children. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 36(2), 4-12