Multimodal Media and Digital Technology Pedagogy

This article explores the Australian Government's approach to multimodal media and digital technology in early childhood and school curricula. It critiques current research regarding multimodal media and digital technology pedagogy in early childhood and how this impacts children's learning and development. It also evaluates teaching pedagogies for multimodal media and digital technology education.

Running head: MULTIMODAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY PEDAGOGY
Multimodal Media and Digital Technology Pedagogy
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]
[Author note]

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Describe the current Australian Government’s approach to multimodal
media and digital technology in early childhood and school curricula.
According to the Australian Government’s approach to “multimodal media and digital
technology”, there would exist various technologies which would be associated with shaping
the future of Technology learning in the schools. This helps in ensuring the fact that the
students would be getting a lot of benefits by learning about the technologies and how they
work in association with the different kind of contemporary, traditional, and the emerging
technologies. All this are responsible for shaping the world in which we live. The
implementation of the technologies helps in enriching the lives of the people along with
having a huge impact on the lives of the people, on the cultures and on the society as well. It
is very essential that the nation create a link between the creativity, technologies and the
enterprise which would be acting as a catalyst for the innovations of the twenty-first century
(Dieterle & Vie, 2015). According to the Australian Curriculum, the technologies would be
associated with contributing to set out the educational goals in “Melbourne Declaration on
Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008 pp. 7–9)”. Besides this vision for children’s
learning was also used along with outlining of the childhood pedagogy in “The Early Years
Learning Framework”.
Along with all this, the students are associated with taking part in the designing
process where they generate, develop and evaluate the various ideas and designs along with
production and evaluation of the different kind of products services and the environments
which are present within the range of the technology. The students are associated taking of
certain actions along with making of ethical decisions regarding the technologies along with
considering the various legal, environmental, economic and social implications (Mercer,
Hennessy & Warwick, 2017). Training is also provided to them regarding the process of
designing in the context of the various kind of technologies. This, in turn, helps them in

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understanding the solutions by making use of the various technological processes and
products as well. By considering the practical applications of eth technological skills in the
design and technologies has been associated with developing manual dexterity along with
fine motor skills and coordination (Leach, 2017).
The Early Years Learning Framework is associated with recognizing the importance
that the children’s are having while being connected to the peoples, places, technologies and
many more. This also helps them become effective communicators along with helping them
use the Information and communication technologies so as to access the information along
with investigating the ideas and representation of the thinking’s (Dezuanni, 2015). In
foundations to the year 2, the curriculum was associated with building the EYLF where the
main results included the development of a strong sense of identity and wellbeing. This also
included the gaining of capability related to getting connected to the world along with making
contributions for the world as well (Nielsen, Hoban & Hyland, 2017). This is mainly focused
upon the play based learning and intentional teaching along with recognizing the rights of the
children’s so as to stay as active participants in each and every matter which are responsible
for affecting their lives. The play has been defined as the creation of imaginary situations for
the personal needs and creation of communications.
Another curriculum known as the F-2 is associated with focusing upon the personal
forms and the usage of the technology in the immediate environment of the children. This
helps in recognizing the diverse experiences that the children’s are having regarding the
technologies especially regarding the various kind of digital technologies. The curriculum is
also associated with providing support to the changes taking place in the perspective, which
are needed for the purpose of engaging the children in the process of design thinking.
Likewise, the technology curriculum which is particularly present in the primary years
is associated with allowing the integration and support to the various learning area knowledge

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so as to have a development of the various kind of concepts and the skills across the entire
learning areas (Churchill, 2018).
For the year 5 and 6, the students have to broaden their scope related to the
investigations so as to make sure that the technologies are being used in a safe and ethical
way. This also includes reaching out to those technologies which are present across the global
and local settings, and this is to be used for various purposes and audiences along with the
end users, clients, and the consumers. This is very helpful in understanding the relationship
that exists between the responsible design and the design which is appropriate, needs of the
end user, clients, and functions and aesthetics (Jones, Chik & Hafner, 2015). Solutions and
the technological ideas are evaluated by the students by considering the ethical effects upon
the local and the global settings. The students are associated with the usage of technology
from the other learning areas which helps them in working in a more formal and collaborative
way.
For years 7 and 8 the Australian curriculum states that technologies would be
provided which would be helping in getting learning opportunities for the students so as to
make them get engaged with the various kind of technologies. The curriculum mainly focuses
upon the including of various personal and local community along with providing
opportunities for the national and for the global perspectives (Greenhow & Lewin, 2016).
This curriculum helps the students in developing capabilities for thinking and acting in a
technological way so as to solve the problems which move in a progressive way from
individual interest toward the problems which are of more concern. This would be helping in
providing a greater opportunity so as to have a collaborative design and opportunity for
getting engaged with the others would also be provided.
According to the curriculum for the years 9 to 10, it is seen that most of the students
are associated with commencing the senior secondary pathways as well as programs.

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Technological curriculums are developed in the years 9 and 10 and this is mainly done for
two subjects which include the Design and Technologies and the Digital Technologies. It is
entirely dependent upon the students if they would choose some other technology to study
about that are provided by the territories or states and are not duplicating any of the
Australian Curriculum (Mapua Lim, Novo de Azevedo & Cooper, 2016). The technological
learning area would be consisting of the students who would be associated with the
implementation of the knowledge’s related to the technologies along with understanding the
various technological processes and the production skills. Besides this, it would also be
including the design or the computational thinking which would be helpful in solving and
production of the solutions needed for the purpose of identifying the various problems or the
opportunities. This type of problem-solving activities are generally considered to be very
sophisticated and along with this acknowledging of the complexities present in the
contemporary lives are done. This is done so as to make connections with the related and
specialized occupations (Miles & Jenkins, 2017). Global perspective would be achieved by
studies which would be associated with the providing of opportunities so as to understand the
interdependencies which are complex and are involved in the process of developing the new
technologies. The students would be associated with the incorporation of the understandings
related to the interdependencies while developing the new technologies.
Discuss and critique current research regarding multimodal media and
digital technology pedagogy in early childhood and how this impacts
children’s learning and development.
Exploration of the digital literacy practices for the young children’s mainly includes
two type of challenges. The first challenge includes the defining and delineating literacy in
the digital age. The second challenge that is faced is considering of the younger learners for

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the related researches (Mirra, Morrell & Filipiak, 2018). But despite of this certain calls have
been made for developing the definitions, which are enough for considering not only the
particular skills and the competence but also considers the situation of literacy in the local as
well as in the broad sociocultural and political contexts, the scarcity of the research both
within the like the theoretical framework and on the young learners has been persisting over
time.
Few of the authors affirmed the fact that while doing research upon the literacy and
on the new or digital technology as well it is seen that the early learners are radically under-
represented as compared to the other age groups (Ilomäki et al., 2016). Besides this, by
making use of the various theoretical constructs it was concluded that most of the studies are
associated with reviewing and promoted the usage of the tokenistic and instrumentalist view
of the digital literacy. In this most of the things were assumed regarding the potential that the
particular technologies were having for advanced literacy and literacy learning.
There also exists computer-based stand-alone technologies that are associated with
facilitating the development of particular aspects related to literacy (Leach, 2015). Idea
gathered from the early year's curricula some of the researchers whose works have been
reviewed have been associated with considering the potential that the particular pedagogical
frameworks for the development of the children’s related to digital literacy include some
assessments. These researchers have been associated with suggesting the need for certain
child-centered and inquiry-based pedagogies which would be associated with the engagement
of the children. This would be having a powerful environment which would be helping in
creating a direct link with everyday lives. In accordance to Bruce and Casey (2012), the
practice of enquiry is to be implemented which would be helping proving support to the
children so as to ask, investigate, create, discuss and reflect in a better way so as to get fitted
in a better way than the traditional pedagogical practices that are needed for teaching and

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learning in the world which is mediated by various technologies. So there is an essential need
of framing the experiences of the children while providing primary education.
In relation to the above concept another author Mills (2010), was associated with
analyzing the cross-disciplinary repertories of the children related to the knowledge that has
been facilitated by the productions of the networked digital media. The author have been
associated with the usage of the Kalantzis and Cope’s framework related to “Learning by
Design” in which he argued about the fact that by making use of the production of digital
media the children in their early primary classrooms would become capable of
experimenting, conceptualizing, analyzing and applying the combination of technologies
which are new (Arnott, Palaiologou & Gray, 2018). This helps in the expansion of the funds
of knowledge along with increasing the possibilities related to success in the new era. By
having a special focus upon the young children digital activities Edward and Bird (2015) also
argued on the fact that utilization of the learner-centered pedagogical framework is associated
with providing support to childhood settings in order to explore, solve the problems and
acquisition of the skills. For this reason, Digital Play Framework was introduced which acted
as a tool for understanding the usage of the technology as a tool and this can be classified n
two forms.
Evaluate teaching pedagogies for multimodal media and digital technology
education.
Digital technology pedagogy is associated including the various axiomatic changes
taking place in the traditional pedagogy. This is almost similar and common with the
constructive approach where it is seen that the students are associated with the construction of
their own knowledge in a social context (Hutchison & Woodward, 2014). But despite all this,
the digital pedagogy has gone beyond that so as to include the teaching about as well as for

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digital technology for learning. Co-construction of knowledge is generally considered to be
the central portion of digital pedagogy.
The digital pedagogy is associated with including the planning that is needed for
learning which is of low content than depending upon the solving of the problems. This is
also associated with presenting the knowledge as one of the problematic aspect rather than a
fixed one (Pereira, Ramos & Marsh, 2016). For this reason, it is associated with promoting
the higher order of thinking skills and the students are associated with moving from the
remembering of contents towards gaining of a deep understanding of the different kind of
concepts. A critical analysis is developed along with metacognition as well as reflection,
which is done by creation, editing, and online publishing. The digital pedagogy might also be
including the usage of the Web 2.0 technology so as to access the social networks by usage of
the blogs, wikis and many more. In this way, it is possible for the digital pedagogy to
promote connectedness to the wider world (Flewitt, Messer, & Kucirkova, 2015). For the
purpose of embracing the digital pedagogy the teachers might also find that they are no
longer are the experts and for this, there is a need of changing themselves that is from being
the users of the technology to co-creator of the technology.
There exist many students who are having navigation skills or access to the whole
range of ICT completely and for this reason, the teachers need to demonstrate the ways of
identifying, selecting, analyzing and usage of the ICT information (Rowsell, Morrell &
Alvermann, 2017). This is to be done so as to make sure of the fact that students are capable
of developing critical digital literacy. Besides this, it is also to be made sure that the teachers
are accepting the fact that, fundamental changes might occur in the activities.
There exist various studies which have been associated with investigating classroom
practices existing around the digital pedagogies related to the literacy. One of the authors was

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associated with investigating this by making use of the language experience approach
associated with the digital storytelling by means of power point presentation (Walsh, 2017).
Some other studies were also associated with discussing the electronic storybooks for the
purpose of increasing the reading motivations. This helped in showing the fact that the
electronic storytelling methods are very much successful in providing motivations to the
students along with teaching an aspect of literacy (Miller, 2015). In order to investigate the
professional development model numerous studies were conducted and this studies were
generally related to the up-skilling of the teachers present in the classroom which was
assisted by various pedagogical practices and ICT so as to teach literacy.
Another study indicated the fact that as literacy purposes and its uses outside the
school are changing gradually so the pedagogy associated with teaching literacy also needs to
be changed so as to capitalize the on the skills that the students are going to develop in some
other contexts (O’Brien et al., 2018). Besides this, the teachers need to be extra aware of the
increased number of processes that are associated with making of meanings along with the
production of digital texts. Besides this, the accessed digital texts are also of a different type.
The digital texts are associated with encouraging the browsing, selection, and sampling of the
strategies b incorporation of the images, sounds and interactive elements.

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