Shift to the Future Rethinking Learning with New Technologies in Education

New technologies are dramatically changing early childhood education in the 21st century, as well as the of face childhood itself. Access to new technologies - in the western world at least-provide young children with a myriad of possible activities and explorations that were not possible even a few years ago. But how can we explain and understand the nature of these differences and explore their implication for education? And how are the broader personal and social experiences of young children affected by these new classroom technologies? Focusing on the range of technologies that are available to children and exploring what they think of them and how they use them, childhood expert Nicola Yelland considers research that illustrates the was in which learning and engagement with ideas is made possible by creative interaction and uses of information and communications technologies (ICT) and the ways in which these technologies have opened up the world so that young people are able to extend the boundaries oftheir social interaction.

New technologies are dramatically changing the face of education and the nature of childhood itself. In Shift to the Future, Nicola Yelland examines the ways in which these technologies are reshaping the social, personal, and educational experiences of childhood, and explores the curricular revisions such changes demand. With a focus on the various information and communications technologies (ICTs) available to young students and the possibilities these ICTs offer for teaching and learning, Shift to the Future provides inspiring examples of teachers who have innovatively incorporated new technologies into their classrooms to engage their students in contemporary times.

Chapter One – The Millennials Chapter Two – New Contexts for Learning Chapter Three – Making Meaning: Technology as Play Chapter Four – Thinking and Knowing: Informal Learning at Home and in Communities Chapter Five – New Ways of Learning in School Chapter Six – New Learning in the Third Millennium Chapter Seven – Where Next? Supporting Learning and Understanding Learners in the 21st Century Appendices References

Nicola Yelland is Professor of Education in the School of Education at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. She is series editor of Routledge's Changing Images of Early Childhood series.