Introduction

In this book Learning and the e-generation we have questioned the impact of digital technologies on learners and their learning process. In contrast to a number of excellent texts addressing this question, we have focused specifically on the ways in which technology is influencing basic skills such as language, communication and problem-solving and how such changes impact the way people learn. As we noted in the introduction, the perception that digital technologies are deskilling this and future generations of learners continues to be a concern both within educational circles and society in general. Throughout this text we have questioned whether this concern is valid or whether it is time to accept that change is inevitable and by doing so focus on how to exploit the many benefits that accrue from using these digital technologies.

There is little doubt that the rise in digital technologies is having an effect on how people go about their daily lives and it would seem self-evident that changes in how we learn are inevitable. Learners are now engaged with an increasingly complex, problem-orientated and intellectually challenging digital world and these experiences are promoting a new subset of skills. We have of course come down on the side of accepting that change is inevitable, however there is some truth in the assertion that the net generation is not honing many of the skills that previous generations have valued. While the basic skills of language, communication and decision-making remain central to our human endeavour, the tools we use to support those skills have continued to evolve. For previous generations the move from adolescence to adulthood, whether at 21 or latterly 18 years of age, was marked by the purchase of a high-quality watch. Today many individuals do not own a watch or if they do it is a piece of jewellery rather than a timepiece. The smart phone tells the time and offers so much more at the touch of an icon. What need is there for anything else? As this study has illustrated increased connectivity and more mobile technologies clearly offer so much more than previous technologies and this generation of learners is taking full advantage of the opportunities afforded by them. The key question concerns how our ability to embrace these digital technologies is shaping the cognitive, social and emotional skills of our current generation, which is the focus of this final chapter.

The Skills of the Net Generation

A key aim of this study has been to assess how technology has changed the cognitive, social and affective aspects of learning and a primary focus on the impact of technology on the individual learner. It remains clear that we now have a generation of learners that are fully immersed in digital technologies and these are often referred to as digital natives, net generation, Google generation or the millenials (Bennett, 2012). Each of these terms has been used synonymously to highlight the significance and importance of new technologies within the lives of many young people. For some, new technologies have been such a defining feature in the lives of our younger generation that they predict a fundamental change in the way in which young people communicate, socialize, create and learn. For others, technology is so rapidly changing that it remains difficult to keep abreast of new advances. It is likely that the rhetoric around ‘digital natives’ will encourage dramatic educational reforms because traditional education systems do not, and cannot, cater for the needs and interests of its young people. Yet it is clear that this digital divide is much more than a simple generational difference in the access to, and use of, technology. The digital divide also concerns the perceived benefits from using these technologies and whether similar gains in educational learning can be found across all users. From this perspective an understanding of the factors that have led to individual or group differences in how and why students embrace technological change becomes essential. Notwithstanding claims that the digital native myth is perpetuated by the wider moral and ideological debates over young people and their digital technology (Selwyn, 2009, 2011), and how this rhetoric may portray a pessimistic view about embedding technology into educational institutions (Helsper & Eynon, 2010), we can see that many young learners are changing as a result of their willingness to engage with such technology.

Native speakers of technology are quite clearly fluent in the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet. Prensky (2005) acknowledges how the skills and abilities students acquire outside the classroom are far more refined that we could ever have thought. This has led to numerous sources debating the relevance of the competencies of digital natives and the extent to which these skill sets evolve through our digital lives (see Palfrey & Gasser, 2008). It remains apparent that our young people generally have a much better idea of what the future is bringing than we do. But in reality how are these natives engaging with new ways of learning? As we have seen within the previous chapters, learners are already busy adopting new systems for communicating (instant messaging), sharing (blogs), buying and selling (eBay), coordinating (wikis), searching (Google), reporting (camera), socializing (chat rooms), exchanging (peer-to-peer technology) and creating (Flash) (see, Bennett, 2012). These functionalities are readily accepted and exploited by the young and are having a profound effect on their patterns of behaviour, including their responses to formal education. They often embrace many of these features as possible tools for collaboration, communication and learning without any formal instruction to do so and these are activities that are part of their natural, everyday engagement with technology (Underwood, 2007; Underwood, et al., 2008, 2009).

The immersion in the digital world of technology is beginning very early. For example, in Gillen’s (2002) study of the telephone discourse of three- and four-year-olds, the children were seen to enact spontaneous telephone play and through their imaginary conversation were seen to develop complex conventions of ‘telephone talk’. Even young children are well equipped with the functionalities of the iPad and mobile phone (Falloon, 2013). Children furthermore often redefine themselves and others though such interactions with the technology and new technologies seem commonplace within the home. While there may be some ongoing debate on how digital technologies can fit into the lives of young children, young children’s reliance on digital devices such as iPhones, iPads and game consoles are rapidly becoming a reality in early childhood settings and many children’s homes (Smith, 2002; Verenikina & Kervin, 2011).

Perhaps the biggest change has been the shift within the types of online social interactions, often encouraged through social networking activities, and the way in which individuals broadcast themselves across the net. With the increased popularity of smart phones learners have a wealth of communication tools simply at the touch of a button. This has resulted in the widespread use of the hybrid language of digital texts seen in synchronous online communication, emails and text messages that reflect the creation of new orthographic features of informal and more abbreviated forms of written language (see Wood, et al., 2013, for a detailed discussion). For the first time in human history, a majority of the world’s adult population is playing an active role in the culture of reading as well as of writing. Social media networks have become an effective vehicle for change, not least because what they offer is an arena of typed conversation (Chatfield, 2013). It is clear that learning and instruction need to adapt to these new literacies emerging with the move from traditional print-based media to digital, hybrid and multilingual forms (Razfar & Yang, 2010). This is proving painful for many given that text speak is not an accepted mode of communication in the majority of schools or other formal educational contexts and is often considered to be damaging the traditional conventions of literacy.

The introduction of new tools designed to enhance social communication allows learners to communicate with a range of individuals at any given time. Instant messaging, a popular tool for communication, allowed one-to-one dialogue in real-time, encouraged spontaneous discussions with friends and immediate responses (Paolillo, 1999). One-to-many types of interaction and the increased popularity of Twitter and Facebook have replaced this focus on one-to-one exchanges. This shift in moving towards a much more public form of communication appears to encourage young people to broadcast news to a wider community of friends, acquaintances and more worryingly strangers (Underwood, et al., 2011). Facebook and other SNSs provide a clear example of an individual’s tendency to blend the personal with the public and an unrestricted form of social communication that provides greater freedom of expression, opportunities for collaboration, discussion and reflection (Davies & Merchant, 2009; Deed & Edwards, 2011). Despite concerns that Facebook, text messaging and other communication tools may be a distraction for our students, they show real potential to transform the learning experience for many individuals (McCarroll & Curran, 2013).

As these tools develop they modify the human skill set. So we find that handwriting has deteriorated in favour of email, text or instant messaging. The skill of essay writing is sorely missing in many of our undergraduate students as they arrive at university and they turn to the Internet as a source for providing immediate access to information and, sadly, from a teacher’s point of view, for some, completed essays (Matthews, 2013). Such skills have been replaced by the bullet point and the development of story boarding and presentation skills and the keyboard not the pen, and images not words, are now king. But engagement with new technologies is shaping how we think, learn and react to challenges. These changes to the skill set are even more pronounced when we consider cognitive capabilities of the net generation and how they interact with video-games, virtual environments and multimodal learning environments. Multitasking through video-game playing can have real benefits and promote divided attention skills, and a refinement of behavioural, cognitive and affective skills that are needed to engage within a digitally rich social environment. For some, these may be seen simply as highly addictive or time-wasting activities yet for others they provide real opportunities to enhance students’ cognition and learning. For example, while some multitaskers have been shown to perform poorly in certain cognitive tasks involving task-switching, selective attention and working memory, this may not always be detrimental. There is some suggestion that heavy media multitaskers performed better in a multisensory integration task and showed sustained improvements in engaging with parallel processing and attentional switching (Lui & Wong, 2012), skills that are inevitably important within many contexts in formal education. The benefits of technology for improving cognition can be found in the allure of video games. We know that video games can promote behavioural, cognitive and emotional engagement within learners (Appleton, 2008) as well as helping disenfranchised individuals back into education through the recognition of their role as expert gamers (Sandford & Williamson, 2006). Through the process of trial-and-error, video games may well promote effective learning and knowledge acquisition. As Shin and colleagues (2012) suggest, games can promote discovery learning and impact on the many essential processes that underpin it, which include finely attuned attentional skills, increased problem solving and more sophisticated forms of reasoning ability. Yet despite such evidence, there is so little emphasis on using gaming as a pedagogical tool within formal education.

Throughout the text we have gauged the opportunities for learner development through their growing access to new technology while noting some of the not inconsiderable risks of learning in digital worlds. Some of these risks include the detrimental effects of multitasking on educational outcomes, evidence of academic malpractice and cheating among students, the way in which video games are eroding young people’s social lives and the deterioration of traditional literacy standards through a rise in texting and instant messaging. We have also briefly discussed how educators may need to allay parental concerns of online risks and how Internet harassment and bullying victimization is a growing concern for all involved. While there may be some criticism that we have not explicitly dealt with the urgent issue of cyber-bullying and associated malpractices, this was a conscious decision. It is a topic that requires its own indepth treatise and is beyond the scope of this text, which focuses primarily on learners and their learning journey.

Bridging the Home–School Divide

There is evidence that the divide between home and school technological practices still remains. Of course, there remains a minority of students who still do not have access to digital technologies within the home (Madell & Muncer, 2004; Underwood, Ault, et al., 2006 Underwood, Baguley, et al., 2007, 2009, 2010), and as a result, they lack the affordances that these new technologies can offer. But it is not simply access to technology that creates this divide, but also the uptake by the young and the convergence of functionality of the technologies.

There are often discrepancies between the types of technologies used within the home and those used within the classroom. Often technology at home is seen as a vehicle for promoting social practices, like gaming, and communicating with friends. For many individuals, the out-of-school digital world is richly populated and the school digital world often suffers by comparison. There are attempts to bridge this divide. While the increasing use of VLEs and other technological support as tools to dissolve the barriers between home and school learning environments is to be welcomed, there is a persistent core of pupils that is unable to take advantage of these initiatives (see Somekh & Underwood, 2007). Furthermore, as our own research has consistently shown, teachers are open to the implementation of new technologies but are constrained by the lack of funding or the lack of additional training that is currently required to fully integrate these tools into the curriculum (Underwood, Baguley, et al., 2008, 2009). It is not that teachers are reluctant to bridge this home–school divide it is simply that the institutional or government constraints are preventing the successful implementation of exciting new technologies into the classroom.

Returning to our main theme, our collective extolling of the affordances of these technologies at the expense of teaching and learning processes provides a partial explanation as to why technology has yet to be universally accepted in the classroom as they are in the world beyond the school gate. Day and Lloyd (2007) present a good example of this. They describe a class in which the teacher has identified the value of a wiki to support students’ collaborative writing. From their observations they can see the identified technology affordance is clearly present and some students are producing collaborative text. However, a number of students are not involved, with some preferring to work on paper and have face-to-face discussions. So while these technologies may have educational potential, Maddux and Cummings (2004) argue that they are introduced as ‘silver bullets’ to solve educational ills rather than being embedded in educational theory and process, and in this role of educational panacea they have little chance of meeting the unrealistic initial expectations that are generated.

On the basis of our earlier investigations (Underwood, Baguley, et al., 2007, 2008;) we acknowledged that while learning occurs both in formal as well as informal settings, many students’ technological world is likely to be richer outside school than inside the classroom. There is strong evidence for this suggestion. We know that the amount of time spent on ICT at home greatly exceeds that spent on ICT at school (Somekh, et al., 2002). We also know that many families are using technology much more to prepare their child for formal education. For example, Neumann and Neumann (2013) describe the versatile functions of tablet devices and their apps for alphabet matching, phonics games and personalized stories, which can be a valuable tool for promoting early literacy acquisition. In fact, nearly 72 per cent of apps are aimed at pre-school children, and more than 50 per cent of the top-selling apps target primary school children (Shuler, et al., 2012). Children’s interactions with digital texts in out-of-school settings have revealed that they engage with the technology in a playful way with agency, and creativity (Burnett, 2010) as well as using iPads to promote personalized storytelling opportunities (Kucirkova, Messer, Sheehy, & Flewitt, 2013). This suggests a positive link between new technologies and home-based educational learning.

However, technology can also affect family dynamics especially if we consider the impact of young people’s Internet use on the family as a whole. Having access to technology in the home may be less positive in some circumstances. There are conflicting findings as to whether young people’s Internet use in the home has a deleterious impact on family time and communication. For example, it has been shown to reduce family time leading in turn to a weakening of family ties (Mesch, 2003; Nie, Hillygus, & Erbring, 2002). However, other studies show little or no reduction in family time (Kraut, et al., 2002). Lee and Chae’s (2007) research further complicates the picture as it confirms the reduction in family time but found that this did not cause a reduction in the levels of communication within the family. They argue that Internet time may in fact replace passive rather than active family time and so is not deleterious. Further, while game-playing reduces family time and family communication, the use of the Internet as an information source or for homework posed little threat to family coherence. Clearly, as the evidence suggests, there may well be a strong need to consider the impact of technology not just within school but also within the home and how children’s early social and educational practices are evolving with the introduction of these new technologies.

While there may be evidence of the successful use of technology within the home, still this does not address how teachers and parents can help overcome the home–school digital divide. It is not simply adding more technology into the classroom, but transforming the learning space to allow for greater flexibility in the choice of technology and how students learn that will encourage greater access between home and school.

Can Psychological Theory Inform Educational Practice?

A second theme of this book has been to ask to what extent psychological theory can illuminate the educational debate? Specifically we have drawn together the many theories of learning in order to understand when and why learning is or is not successful. We have shown that psychological theories can focus on a range of skills required by the learner, which relate to the behavioural, cognitive and affective dimensions of learning. We have also suggested that there is now a greater willingness to accept that psychological theory might have a place in developing pedagogic practice due to recent developments in the fields of cognition, education and neuroscience. As part of the student’s journey, there is a wider recognition that we need to move away from our focus on content to a better awareness of the process in our attempts to maintain and promote learning or academic success.

One of the key difficulties is establishing what is meant by academic or pedagogic success. For some, success may relate to supporting disenchanted learners’ return to the educational system, for others success can be defined by an improvement in a learner’s attentional or behavioural skill. The notion of educational success varies across individuals and groups, and while not everybody sees success in national test scores such as SATs and GCSEs as the gold standard of learning, many teachers and educators often do. Based on their own work on Integrated Learning Systems, Wood, et al. (1999, p. 99) suggest that we need to further refine our claims about the impact of teaching and learning outcomes and our assessment of what a ‘learning gain’ means. To some extent, these gains should be focussed on learner attributes rather than solely on academic test scores.

There are those who are very sympathetic to the technology-supported play-way-to-learning. For example, Klopfer and Osterweil (2011) show:

sympathy for those who favour unrestrained gaming over schooling. We see enormous creativity in gamers. Mastering a game involves entering into often chaotic environments, learning through trial and error, observation, analysis and systematic testing … the culture of problem solving that surrounds gaming reveals the very dispositions desired in the twenty-first century workforce.

(Klopfer and Osterweil, 2011, p. 154)

However, the counter argument is also prevalent for example, Kirschner, et al. (2006) advocate that:

after a half-century of advocacy associated with instruction using minimal guidance, it appears that there is no body of research supporting the technique. In so far as there is any evidence from controlled studies, it almost uniformly supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners.

(Kirscher et al., 2006, p. 83)

The amount of flexibility and autonomy students should have within the confines of their own learning is an important distinction between these quotes. The debates about the content and process of learning and the value of digital technology as a tool to achieve those learning goals: are often driven by personal belief and opinion, rather than being empirically reasoned and informed (Selwyn, 2011, p. 88). However, in looking for commonalities in the many seemingly disparate learning theories we are endeavouring to make some small steps towards a more reasoned debate on the value of learning technologies. Utopian hopes and perception of technology: often lead policy makers and practitioners to ignore general theoretical perspectives about teaching and learning (Sutherland, et al., 2004, p. 413). Acknowledging the complexity of the relationships within the learning system is, perhaps, the first step in addressing the effective use of technology as it removes the polarization of perceptions for and against technology’s role as a learning tool. This step leads to an appreciation that digital technologies are neither inherently good nor bad, and neither effective nor ineffective. Each learner and teacher can influence the learner’s experience for themself and for those around them. The difficulty lies in how to structure this learning experience. One way to embrace technology is to consider the use of instructional designs that focus not just on the use of technology, but on incorporating technology in a way that manages or supports the cognitive load and the flow of information for learners and the cognitive requirements of the task (Kester, Kirschner, & Merriënboer, 2005).

It is clear that physiological, cognitive and affective responses to learning also remain an important and enduring issue. Technology as a tool for learning requires a clear investment of cognitive skills on behalf of the learner. Learning requires attention and practices (perseverance) as well as a degree of reasoning and problem solving, but each of these skills also requires the emotional engagement of the learner (motivation). Such engagement comes from individuals seeing an activity as relevant to themselves and achievable by themselves. This raises the question of why these digital tools are not readily incorporated into educational provision in schools, given their appealing and enticing nature. There are many who question the importance of such technologies for education, especially in improving language, literacy and problem-solving skills and we highly recommend a greater focus on the positive affordances of these new technologies and a commitment to the reskilling of our current generation of learners to ensure their future success (see Selwyn, 2006).

Promoting Educational Change

The final issue concerns how we can support and promote educational reform through the implementation of these digital technologies? There is some recognition that the human skill set is changing; yet the link between the social and educational uses of technology is far from established. As noted in Chapter 1, vociferous arguments have been put forward to support the conclusion that ICT is a drain on our educational system (see Cuban, 2001; Oppenheimer, 2003) and a feeling that the technology is not bringing about the educational gains once expected. Although the usefulness of digital technologies in education is open to debate, few would challenge the major impact of digital technologies on our everyday lives. So why is the evidence so hard to find within educational settings? Watson (2001) for one has argued that such assumptions around the advances in technology within society often sit uncomfortably with teachers’ own professional judgements and educational practices. The discontinuity between teachers and digital technology may be more deep-seated than simply a clash with professional practice. Those who choose to teach are characteristically book lovers and it is not age or gender, but membership of the teaching profession that is the defining characteristic of low involvement with new technological innovations (Sandford, et al., 2006).

But why is this change to education deemed important? Even if we consider the basic skills, such as reading and writing, then it becomes quite apparent that the skill set currently taught in schools fails to meet learners’ everyday literacy practices. No longer do we see students turning to textbooks to find information or using a notepad and pen to record ideas. Instead, students turn to the iPad or notebook for note-taking and refer to a range of Internet sites for expert guidance and advice. According to some, the ability to use digital media requires skills that are inherently different from those required of conventional print and therefore require us to reskill (Gilster, 1997). This is certainly true when we consider the multimodal textual landscape of digital literacy (Kress, 2010), which involves the need to incorporate multiple sign systems into our everyday literacy activities (videos, images, multimedia) and skills in deciphering often complex, visual representations to extract meaningful information. The use of multiple information systems is a difficult skill for many, and whether we encourage the use of blogs to promote digital literacy activities and peer-collaboration within the classroom, or interpret visual representations, these are skills that are well beyond the conventional views of literacy. Without doubt, there is a clear recognition that this immersion in digital technology can shift the goals of education and require students to acquire a new contemporary skill set and it is only when students, teachers and institutions work together that any notable learning gains can be identified.

Learner, Teacher and School Level Characteristics

We have illustrated the effects of technology on the individual learner within this new digital age. As learning becomes more individualized, learner-centred, collaborative and ubiquitous across the lifespan, new technologies are becoming more personalized, user-centred, mobile, networked and durable. However, successful implementation of digital technology within the school environment does require a much more focused effort on behalf of the learner, the teacher and the institution. Underwood, Baguely, et al. (2008) summed this up in a learning equation, which suggests that effective learning is the direct result of valuable learning opportunities provided by the school and teacher as well as an individual’s own investment in the learning process (see Figure 11.1). In essence, both opportunity and investment need to occur on all three levels to ensure successful implementation of digital technology to support and enhance the learning process.

If we are to consider that both opportunity and investment are the main components of success, then effective learning cannot happen without effective implementation not only by schools, but also by teachers and by the learners themselves (Somekh & Underwood, 2007; Underwood, Baguley, et al., 2007, 2008, 2010). In this sense, digital technologies can be considered as a toolkit, which can provide opportunities for learning both at the school and classroom level. At the school level, technology needs to be available, accessible and built into the curriculum to create a greater synergy between school and home educational culture and ethos. A top-down institutional policy regarding the whys and hows of embedding technology into the classroom is required.

Even at the classroom level there needs to be focus on integrating technologies to support the learning process (see Figure 11.2). Such integration is a complex process. ‘Classroom orchestration’ is the metaphor currently in vogue when we talk about an alignment of the design of technology learning experiences with pedagogic practice (Nussbaum, Dillenbourg, et al., 2013). Technology needs to be firmly embedded into the educational curriculum at the classroom level before any substantial gains can be identified. Successful embedding of learning technologies is predicated on: appropriate, well-supported and focused human intervention, good learning design or pedagogical input and the sensitive handling of the process over time (Salmon, 2005, p. 203). The potentials of technology, at the classroom level, can help to promote the differentiation of assessment to fit the students’ needs and allow a more personalized learning experience by recognizing different modes of learning. While technology may have the potential to shift the goals of learning and to make the learning process more authentic and engaging for students, this can only occur if the technology is focussed on enhancing the learning process itself. However, as we are aware from our own investigations (Underwood, Baguley, et al., 2009, 2010) some teachers lack the skills necessary to assess the value of different technologies and knowledge regarding the best ways to incorporate such technology into their teaching, while for others, they may need convincing of the potential benefits of using these digital tools (see also Gray, Ryan, & Coulon, 2004).

As we know, change does not always occur immediately. While there is a demand for immediacy, that change should have an impact here and now, this is unlikely to occur in any meaningful way when technology is first introduced into the educational process. Teachers may lack the experience or time to fully consider how and where these new technologies can be embedded into the classroom activities but additional support, guidance and freedom to experiment with new approaches could be beneficial. In a series of longitudinal studies we have identified what we call the technology dip (Underwood & Dillon, 2004, 2011). This is a dip in pedagogical risk taking by teachers following the introduction of new technologies. Until there is alignment of teachers’ beliefs and practices and the newly acquired technology skills, teachers necessarily focus on acquiring the new technology skill-set. Recovery from that dip and the ensuing benefits take about 2 years but when this happens measurable learning gains alongside positive learner and teacher attitudes emerge (Underwood & Dillon, 2011). As technology becomes ubiquitous one might expect this dip to disappear but of course this will only occur if the technology stabilizes and its use become routine. Whether this change will result in low-level or advanced pedagogies is a question that can only be addressed once the technology is embedded within teaching and learning activities in the school curriculum.

However, providing opportunities on their own cannot guarantee success. Beyond these opportunities, there also needs to be a focus on investment. From an individual learner-level perspective, technology may encourage changes in learner behaviours in that the individual sees them as being relevant, stimulating and motivating. In essence, individual learners need to show some investment in their own learning on both a cognitive and affective level if digital technology is going to enhance their learning for the better (see Figure 11.3). However, the simple relationship between enjoyment and motivation, espoused as the key benefit of computers in classrooms, will not guarantee success. Often performance breaks down if the learner does not accept or embrace challenge or take some responsibility for their learning (Underwood, Baguley, et al., 2010).

However, it is perhaps pertinent to note that not all learners benefit from an e-learning experience. For example, Chandra and Lloyd (2008) found e-learning led to lower performance scores for high-performing girls but brought measurable learning benefits to low-achieving boys who showed marked improvement. The use of technologies tends to be less effective, or indeed ineffective, when the goals for their use are unclear. There needs to be an increased recognition of students regulating their learning.

With an increased focus on the learner, there may be a priority to ensure the promotion of personalized or self-regulated learning (SRL) and to prioritize the individual needs of the learner as a step toward to improving the educational experiences of children (Banyard, et al., 2006). Learners need to set their own goals and to think about the skills and strategies required to achieve them. The ability to monitor progress towards learning rather than outcome is indicative of du Boulay’s (2000) shift from a focus on the content to the processes of learning. As we know, self-efficacy is positively related to self-regulatory strategies such as planning, monitoring, and regulating strategies and has been shown to lead to academic success (Pintrich, 2000). This self-regulation, coupled with an active approach to learning may be the key to observing actual gains in learning. From a constructivist approach, it is recognized that active learning is far more beneficial than being a passive recipient of information. However, concerns over deep and surface learning come to the fore. While deep learning is often seen as the gold standard for education, we know that a learner who can strategically move between surface and deep learning, depending on the nature of the information, will make better gains overall (Entwistle, 2000). There is also recognition of students’ self-reflection on their own personal mode of learning and how pedagogy can embrace and incorporate learning activities that cater for visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning styles (Sharp, et al., 2008). There is some pedagogic potential for allowing greater flexibility in the choice of medium in which learners can select, edit and produce material for classroom activities and assessment (Underwood, Baguley, et al., 2007, 2008, 2009). Given this freedom of choice, learners may take greater responsibility for their own role within learning and recognize the value of learning as a process rather than simply an outcome.

Many Possibilities but no Certainties

Technology is equipping our current generation of students with new skills for communication, collaboration and learning. Yet the gap between the use of technology both within and outside education remains apparent. While so many of the young are immersed within this technology, it begs the question why these technologies are not being integrated within mainstream educational settings? There is a worldwide imperative to exploit the opportunities afforded by new digital technologies for teaching and learning but this is not accompanied by the recognition that technology will transform the learning environment. Throughout this study, we have illustrated how technology does have the potential to shift the goals of learning and to make the learning process more authentic and engaging, but this can only occur if the technology is focussed on enhancing the learner and their own learning process. Providing opportunities within the home or school context may not be sufficient to promoting change. The technologies need to have a pedagogical focus and allow the learner to make an investment in their own learning. An attempt to embed technology necessarily involves some level of disturbance to the educational system and the extent that these perturbations are tolerated will affect the level of acceptance of the technology. If the acceptance is low then for some learners the educational system will become increasingly irrelevant and they will carve out a learning environment for themselves, dipping into the formal system only when they see the need. The move towards integrating digital technology into the classroom requires a greater emphasis on redesigning curriculam at the school and teacher level and a better understanding of the true affordances that this technology can provide. Despite some innovative examples of incorporating technology in the school setting, we still have some way to go and perhaps the starting point is to identify the new skills that are being acquired through such digital technologies.