New+Literacy+Practice

Through our groups research into funds of knowledge of early learners and observations of early years teaching practices, it is evident to see the increasing examples of technologies that can influence early learners both at home and within the classroom. From the groups interviews with early learners and research into their funds of knowledge, it became clear that most, if not all young learners are exposed to various forms of technology at home. Hill states that “new technologies have already transformed the lives of young people in their home” (Hill, 2006, p 339). The funds of knowledge interviews undertaken by the students our group studies supports this as we found many examples of students interaction with technology at home.

__Examples of this were:__
 * -a number of the young learners had iPod’s with their favourite music
 * -access to iPads and parents iPhones and using interactive applications on these technologies.
 * -several families had computers and internet access which the children enjoyed using occasionally.
 * -some of the early learners enjoyed watching educational programs on television. (Bindi Irwin’s animal adventures.)



While it became clear that the vast majority of early learners had access to various forms of technologies in their home lives, our observations of a literacy program within an early years classroom portrayed several examples of how technology is being integrated into early years classrooms. As students have increasing access to technologies at home, “literacy learning in early childhood education is changing as a result of new technologies”(Hill, 2006, p 339).

__Some examples of new technologies and digital media being integrated into early learners literacy program shown from our results included__:


 * -teachers taking advantages of interactive smart boards was common in most of the literacy blocks observed. The classroom teachers used the smart board in various ways including show stories or model writing to the learners.
 * -one teacher used a sing along tape to aid the reading of the class’s shared big book of poems.
 * -several examples of small literacy groups utilizing computers with the literacy block to research class topics and a group using a program called StarFall, which allowed students to interactively investigate and sound out different words.



While it is essential for students at this level of learning to practice wrote learning styled activities, our reports have shown how the effective integration of technologies into an early learners literacy program excites students to learn and become increasingly enthusiastic towards literacy tasks when an interactive approach is taken.

Different forms of technology obviously enhance learning, in particularly literacy. Technology provides students with greater resources, expose them to different characteristics of learning, supports different learning styles and can individualize tasks.