Multimodal Media and Digital Technology in Early Childhood Education

Running head: MULTIMODAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Multimodal Media and Digital Technology in Early Childhood Education
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MULTIMODAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
1. Approach of Australian Government in multimodal media in early childhood..............3
2. Use of Multimodal media in early childhood education and its impact..........................5
2.1. Use of multimodal media and digital technology in early childhood.......................5
3. Teaching Pedagogies for multimodal media and digital technology education..............8
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................9
References..........................................................................................................................11

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MULTIMODAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Introduction
Integration of the technology and interactive media in the early childhood programs is
generally done with an intention of building a solid developmental foundation for the students.
The use of technology in education is not new and it is quite contrast to the traditional learning
process. The use of multimedia technology in learning process is capable of improving the
understanding and skills of the young students. Moreover this process makes the learning
procedure even more interesting (Donohue & Schomburg, 2017). The use of multimedia invokes
creativity in both student and the teacher. The report gives an overview of the current Australian
Government’s approach in promoting media and digital technology in early childhood and
school curricula. This process is promoted since the contemporary young children are a part of
the generation of digital natives. Children nowadays are enveloped by technologies and the use
of technologies in their daily life and therefore it becomes very important to evaluate whether the
use of the same technology in education can make the learning process easier. The report gives
an overview of the impact of technology on the impact of the children’s learning and digital
technology education (Keengwe & Onchwari, 2009). Multimedia can be defined as the content
that makes use of different content forms including text, audio, images and animations in
displaying an idea. Use of multimedia in the classroom generally includes power point
presentations that can be created by the teacher for teaching the students. Multimedia is vital in
everyday life and therefore, it is very interesting to evaluate whether the same can be used to
make the education process easier.

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MULTIMODAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
1. Approach of Australian Government in multimodal media in early childhood
With increase in use of multimedia and smart learning across the world, Australian
government has embarked on including multimodal media and digital technology in early
childhood and school curricula (Bird & Edwards, 2015). This section of the report discusses the
impact of this approach of Australian Government.
The Australian Government has quite recently made it mandatory to ICT devises in early
childhood education to gives the students a practical knowledge about the real life things. In the
current scenario of the educational institution in Australia, multimedia has overcome the barriers
of time and space to promote anywhere anytime education. Use of multimedia in early childhood
education is promoted since the multimedia facilitates the mastering of the basic skills of a
particular student by means of drill and practice (National Association for the Education of
Young Children, 2012). The use of multimedia in education helps in problems solving by
following and understanding the abstract and real life concepts. The use of multimedia and ICT
devices can help the teacher in reaching out to the students of remote locations as well in order to
facilitate the process of individualized and co operative learning. Therefore, Australian
government has made it mandatory to use multimedia in the learning process of early childhood
and in school curricula as well.
In order to identify the approach of Australian Government to the multimodal media and
digital technology in early childhood, it is essential to evaluate the concept of multimodal
education (Mills et al., 2015). Multimodal generally refers to the interconnection between the
different mode and representation of media (Hsin, Li & Tsai, 2014). Reading and writing in
multimodal encompasses the digital media, which includes print or digital text.