This chapter looks at how tablets can help children interact with the wider world by offering exciting ways of engaging in research and seeing themselves as information gatherers and creative producers.
As information becomes more of an integral part of our lives, from checking our friends’ status on Facebook and sharing their links, to reading blog posts by fellow teachers on Twitter and catching up with the news online, the need to handle this information effectively grows. We will follow the journey of researchers as they begin choosing a topic of research to explore, become information gatherers and finally, creative producers to then use that information to communicate and collaborate with the world.
The following case study from Caroline Haslett School, Milton Keynes, shows a simple and effective way of implementing project-based learning in the primary classroom, utilising the tablet as one device that can source, organise and use information. It focuses on the varying stages within the research process and the questions which children must consider along the way, including how best to help pupils choose, evaluate and synthesise information with discrimination and how re-mixing and re-purposing information can reinforce understanding. A range of apps is explored to support gathering, organising and using information.
We will go on to discuss how project-based learning as a pedagogy for allowing children to be researchers facilitates the adoption of twenty-first-century skills. Part of this involves teaching children to become efficient and effective information gatherers and digital creators. Alongside this, we explore the informal learning culture associated with digital creation in online communities and how these practices can be utilised for education. The chapter ends by discussing the impact of children sharing their work with a global audience through simple video conferencing and eTwinning.