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‘Technological me’: young children’suse of technology across their homeand school contextsDonna Gronna, Anne Scotta, Susan Edwardsa & Michael Hendersonb

a Faculty of Education, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne,Australia.b Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.Published online: 25 Aug 2013.

To cite this article: Donna Gronn, Anne Scott, Susan Edwards & Michael Henderson (2014)‘Technological me’: young children’s use of technology across their home and school contexts,Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 23:4, 439-454, DOI: 10.1080/1475939X.2013.813406

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‘Technological me’: young children’s use of technology acrosstheir home and school contexts

Donna Gronna*, Anne Scotta, Susan Edwardsa and Michael Hendersonb

aFaculty of Education, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia; bFaculty ofEducation, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

(Received 4 May 2012; final version received 22 November 2012)

Research into children’s learning with digital technologies is represented by agrowing body of literature examining the relationship between home–school tech-nological practices. A focus of this work is on the notion of a ‘digital-disconnect’between home and school. This argument suggests that children are such nativeusers of technologies they struggle to connect with commonly used technologiesin school. This paper examines how the ‘digital-disconnect’ is experienced inchildren’s lives. Drawing on a data set investigating the digital experiences of 12children aged 2–12 years, we consider the experiences of one family attendingthe same school. Three siblings aged 5–12 years recorded their home and schooltechnology use for one week. The findings suggested some difference in useacross both settings, but also similarities associated with information retrieval,rote learning and entertainment. We use Bulfin and North’s and Dyson’s ideasabout the permeability of social boundaries to explain why technology use mightbe more similar than disconnected in each context. We consider the extent towhich each setting influences the other as the basis for moving away from binaryconceptualisations of the digital-disconnect informed by generational assumptionsabout children and technologies.

Keywords: home–school technology use; digital-disconnect; net generation

Introduction

This paper emanates from a pilot study that aimed to examine the use of digitaltechnologies in the lives of pre-teen children. The project focused on identifying thepractices associated with children’s use of digital technologies within their commu-nity, home and educational settings. The identified practices were used as a basisfor considering the relationship between home and school technological practices.

Home–school technology use

While there is considerable research literature about children’s learning withtechnology and their capacity to use digital technologies (Liu, Liu, Wang, Chen, &Su, 2012; Miller & Robertson, 2011; Mitra, Dangwal, Chatterjee, & Jha, 2005;Plowman, McPake, & Stephen, 2008), O’Hara (2011) suggests that a lesswell-defined area of investigation is the interface between children’s home–schooltechnology use. This focus has extended from a growing awareness about the

*Corresponding author. Email: Donna.Gronn@acu.edu.au

Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 2014Vol. 23, No. 4, 439–454, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2013.813406

� 2013 Association for Information Technology in Teacher Education

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powerful role home–school relationships have on learning and teaching (Marsh,2003), to increased sensitivity regarding the perceived ‘digital-disconnect’ betweenhome–school contexts (Levin & Arafeh, 2002). The notion of the digital-disconnectemerges from generational perspectives on children’s learning with technologies,and is often based on the argument that as ‘native users’ of technology, children areused to richer and more complicated technology use at home than they experienceat school.

For example, Oblinger and Oblinger (2005) refer to students born in the 1980s orlater as the ‘Net Generation’ because they have had relatively easy access to theinternet and other forms of digital technologies. They argue that the Net Generationhave grown up on a diet of digital technology, and subsequently are individuals whoby and large value experiential learning, working in teams, and social networking.Hence, it is argued that for these students, curriculum and instruction should incorpo-rate digital technologies to maximise the learning experiences and maintain high lev-els of engagement. However, claims based on arguments around the ‘NetGeneration’ and other ‘generation gap’ theories including the notion of ‘digitalnatives’ (Prensky, 2001) need to be considered critically. Notable academics haveargued strongly that these terms reveal moral and ideological motivations quiteseparate from the espoused welfare concerns of children (Livingstone, 2009;Selwyn, 2009). As such, Selwyn (2009) urges us to consider such terms as discur-sive rather than descriptive devices. They are being used to construct or negotiate aworldview that positions children, learning, and technology in particular ways.Jones, Ramanau, Cross, and Healing (2010) also define technological discursivenessin terms of generational positioning that comes to be associated with popularly heldbeliefs about how young people use technologies and their associated learningpreferences (p. 726). For instance, children are discursively constructed as having anatural affinity for technologies that are themselves constructed as having an inherentpositive, or at least benign, influence on children regardless of circumstance or con-text (Helsper & Eynon, 2010). In addition to these arguments, scholars (Livingstone,2009; Selwyn, 2009) suggest that debates about generational differences omit anyserious consideration of the rich lived experiences of children, especially young chil-dren, and the way in which children develop and learn in relation to technology(Marsh, 2011). Adopting a child-focused perspective, rather than an orientation thatfocuses on perceived differences between home and school experiences, supports amore holistic understanding of the relationship between children and technology.Consequently, we agree with Selwyn’s (2009) concern that there is need for furtherempirical research into the complexities of how and why children use technologyacross and within contexts.

The problem with ‘digital-disconnect’

It is often argued that a ‘digital-disconnect’ (Levin & Arafeh, 2002) exists betweenyoung people’s experiences of technology at home and school (Madden et al.,2005). The common theme is that children’s use of technologies in the home ismore frequent and/or complex than it is in schools (Dodge et al., 2008). For exam-ple, Somekh et al. (2002) reported that most students not only spent more timeusing ICT at home than at school, but that the technology available to them athome was more varied and powerful than the resources available at school.Likewise, Zevenbergen and Logan (2008) have argued that pre-school aged children

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are immersed in practices surrounding technology use very early in their lives, suchthat they quickly demonstrate confidence and competency using various forms oftechnology prior to commencing formal early childhood education and primaryschool. The perception that technology use in the home is qualitatively different tothat at school has led some researchers to argue that knowing how ‘students learnin their homes offers valuable insights into how best to educate the young for life’(Lee, 2007, p. 42). However, as Helsper and Eynon (2010) argue, the notion of the‘digital-disconnect’ may be discursively problematic in much the same way that thenotion of the ‘digital native’ has come to be described (p. 4). Uncritical acceptanceof the arguments associated with the notion of ‘digital-disconnect’ may not neces-sarily be an appropriate basis for educational practice.

The distinction between home and school is not as clear-cut as arguments aboutthe digital-disconnect might suggest. First, the scale of the ‘disconnect’, particularlythe assumption that richer and more varied technologies are experienced outsideschool, should be considered cautiously. Apart from conditions of unequal access tohome-based technologies due to issues such as socioeconomic status, gender, andgeography (Selwyn & Facer, 2009; Vandewater et al., 2007; Willis & Tranter,2006), the assumption that children have rich home technology experiences isfraught with romanticised notions of digital natives creating and communicating innew ways. While home and school contexts may represent different physical sitesin terms of technology experiences, homes themselves are not always sites of crea-tion, collaboration, and rich diversity. For instance, Selwyn, Potter, and Cranmer(2009) completed a large-scale quantitative study into primary school students’home–school use and suggested that ‘engagement with ICT is often perfunctory andunspectacular’ in both contexts (p. 928).

Second, the digital-disconnect is a misnomer because research has establishedthat children carry their experiences across contexts, constantly negotiating meaningand practice (Hedges, Cullen, & Jordan, 2011) in educational settings. To speak ofhome practices without giving due regard to experiences from other contexts can beunhelpful because it compartmentalises children’s learning within the broader socialand cultural setting of which family and home experiences are a part. As such,Bulfin and North (2007) counsel against ‘emphasising the boundedness of schooland home spaces’ and instead argue that ‘young people’s practices that developaround their use of digital technologies flow across these spaces, making simple dis-tinctions and binaries about use in each domain problematic’ (p. 247). Bulfin andNorth go on to suggest that instead of a digital-disconnect it may be more useful toconsider the home–school relationship in terms of Dyson’s (1997) conception of‘permeable’ boundaries in which practices and artefacts, having particular signifi-cance in one context, filter into other contexts influencing social practices andworldviews. An example of this can be found in the study of Somekh et al. (2002)in which students’ perceptions of learning were shaped by their experiences inschool settings, in particular, students associated ICT used in schools with learning,with all ICT used at home associated in terms of ‘games’. This was despite the evi-dence that learning was occurring in their use of ICT for leisure pursuits, includingthe learning of factual knowledge, conceptual understandings, and as skills and lit-eracies associated with a range of online social and communication skills. Whilstthe findings of Somekh et al. (2002) precede the rapid uptake of mobile technolo-gies by children, further research is needed to determine the extent to which similarjudgements are likely to be made by children with respect to their mobile

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technology use (Looi et al., 2009). Furthermore, there has been little considerationof the differentiation very young children are likely to make between play andlearning in educational settings where curriculum formation is informed byplay-based learning. This suggests the need for caution with respect to generation-ally inspired ideas about the significance of the ‘digital-disconnect’ on educationalpractices and learning (Helsper & Eynon, 2010; Jones et al., 2010).

Selwyn (2012) proposes that more in-depth understanding about howtechnologies are used across social settings is necessary to move educational technol-ogy research beyond an endless focus on how technologies should be used to‘improve’ learning (such as by narrowing the ‘gap’ between home and school use).He argues that educational technology research should adopt a more criticalorientation to thinking about the relationship between technologies, education, andmicro/macro social and cultural experiences (p. 216). Selwyn (2010) posits threecore principles for a critical research perspective, including (1) moving beyond ameans–end way of thinking (i.e. researching how technologies can improve learn-ing); (2) asking ‘state-of-the-actual’ questions (instead of ‘state-of-the-art’ questionsabout what the most current technologies can do for learning); and (3) developingcontext-rich analyses of how technologies are used by learners across multiplesettings (pp. 68–70).

In this paper we focus on asking a ‘state-of-the actual’ question through acontext-rich consideration of how three children from one family attending the sameschool used a range of technologies over the period of one week. ‘State-of-the-actual’questions emphasise understanding ‘what is actually taking place when a digitaltechnology meets an educational setting, and from a historical perspective, how thiscompares with what has taken place in the recent past’ (Selwyn, 2010, p. 70). In thispaper, we are interested in what technologies all three children used in both settings,and how these might be understood in terms of the functions associated with theiruse from a ‘permeable boundary’, rather than ‘digital-disconnect’ perspective.

Research design

To understand the specific technology uses by the participants we worked from aninterpretivist theoretical orientation (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007), and drewon ideas from symbolic interactionism (Bowers, 1989) where the self is describedas being made up of ‘multiple Me’s’ (Mead, 1934). We endeavoured to understandeach child’s ‘technological me’ through their uses of technologies and their interac-tions with others in their environment (for example, how technology use wasinfluenced by teacher rules, or home use by sibling relationships).

Although the children in this study may be considered to have multiple viewsof self (son/daughter, student, friend, etc.), it is the ‘me’ as technology user whichis the focus of this paper. The ‘technology me’ is primarily constructed througheach child’s technology use in their environment. To understand the ‘technologyme’ in each child, a case study method was adopted to investigate the technologiesthe children used across their home and school settings. Case study is an appropri-ate fit for investigating the most salient ‘me’ (Bowers, 1989) – in this case, the‘technological me’ of the young participants. Importantly, case study aligned withall three of Selwyn’s (2010) arguments constituting the notion of ‘criticaltechnology’ research (Selwyn, 2012), rather than critical theory per se (Kincheloe& Mclaren, 2011).

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Participants

The research included context-rich case studies of 12 children aged between 2 and 12years, several of whom were siblings and enrolled at the same childcare centre orschool. To consider the ‘state-of-the-actual’ and to develop a ‘context-rich’ under-standing of children’s technology use across social settings, this paper specificallyfocuses on three children from the same family who all attended the same school andhad potential access to the same technologies within each context. These technologiesincluded computers (desktop and laptop), iPod Touch™, and gaming consoles. Theschool was a medium-sized (309 students enrolled) Catholic primary school locatedin the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. The school was categorisedaccording to the MySchool indexes as of above-average Community Socio-Educa-tional Advantage (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority,2010). The aim was not to find a representative school but rather to be selective infinding a case study that could reveal connections and continuities across contexts.

The three siblings included two boys and one girl (pseudonyms used through-out). The youngest, Hayden, was six years old and in the Preparatory grade (thefirst year of formal schooling). The middle sibling, Clinton, was 11 years old and inGrade 5. The oldest, Mary, was 12 years old and in Grade 6.

Data collection tools and processes

Case study methodology allows for various methods of data collection for prepara-tion of rich thick descriptions and triangulation of lines of inquiry (Merriam, 2001;Yin, 2003). In this study, record sheets of technology use were maintained for eachchild over the same seven-day period across both contexts. Analysis of the datawas then used as a stimulus for a focus group interview with the three children. Afurther focus group interview with the children allowed for clarification, memberchecking (Yin, 2003), and pursuit of further lines of inquiry. The record sheets wereused to capture the variety, duration, location, and purpose of technology use acrosscontexts over a seven-day period. The children had separate record sheets, one eachat school and one each at home.

At school, the Preparatory teacher completed Hayden’s record sheet, whereasthe teachers of both Mary and Clinton supervised the children as they recorded theirown technology use at school. A similar situation occurred at home where both ofthe older children completed their own home record sheets, with their motherrecording Hayden’s technology use. Initially all participants found the sheet difficultto record accurately the details of every technology used. A particular limitationwas that the format of the record sheet did not allow for accurate capture of theways in which children used multiple technologies simultaneously. These includeditems such as watching television whilst using their iPod™. Consequently, the focusgroup interviews included questions aimed to clarify these inconsistencies.

Data from the home and school record sheets were collated and patterns oftechnology use identified. Subsequently, a focus group interview was conductedwith all three siblings. Images of technologies used and not used throughout theweek were presented to the children during the interview to prompt them in theirdiscussion. The initial focus group interview was oriented toward discovering whythe participants elected to use certain technologies at home and school. Their expla-nations were further revealed through exploring the reasons why some technologieshad not been used and which technologies they would like to use more often.

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A second focus group interview was held with the children. The aim of thisinterview was to clarify how they saw the technologies as useful to their learning.To assist them in this task a picture of the technologies was given to each partici-pant. They then rated each technology out of 10 by its usefulness for their learning.Both child focus group interviews were video recorded.

Data analysis

Both quantitative and qualitative data were examined using content analysis. Datafrom the school and home logs were collated in Excel. Using content analysis(Cohen et al., 2007), the researchers determined instances of particular technologyuse across children’s daily lives throughout one week. Data were analysed in termsof frequency, time, and context. Transcripts of the focus group discussion wereinspected against categories from the home and school logs.

Findings

Across the first week of data collection, the three siblings used various technologiesfor various lengths of time. Table 1 shows the time spent online by the children(and distinguishes between going online in a computer lab and/or in class). Table 2shows the overall time each child used technologies both at home and school,including a breakdown of television use.

In this section of the results we focus on the question: What digital technologiesdid the siblings use across the home and school settings? First, we present thosetechnologies used by the three siblings at school. Next, we provide an analysis ofeach sibling’s use of the technologies at school, drawing on excerpts from the focusgroup interviews to illustrate how these were considered related to learning. Wethen present the technologies used by the children at home and examine the internetas the most frequently used technology across both settings. Finally, we look at thedata provided in the second focus group that focused on the value the childrenplaced on each technology as related to their learning. This data set providedinsights into their reasons why they used certain technologies both at school and athome and is helpful for illustrating the value of thinking about home–school tech-nology use as a permeable boundary (Dyson, 1997) rather than a digital-disconnect.

Technologies used at school

The range, amount, and quality of technology found in Australian schools variesgreatly depending on funding, access to technological support, and the presence of

Table 1. Time spent in online activities at school in the classroom or computer lab.

Mary (Grade 6) Clinton (Grade 5) Hayden (Prep)

• 20 minutes using Google tosearch for information on theCommonwealth Games (lab)

• 10 minutes for entertainment(class)

• 15 minutes searchingfor Mathematics (class)

• 60 minutes for play (lab)

• 20 minutes searchingfor information onliteracy awareness (class)

• 10 minutes searchingfor information onthe CommonwealthGames (class)

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technology ‘champions’ (Department of Education and Early ChildhoodDevelopment: Victoria, 2012). The school in this case study had a broad range oftechnologies available for student use including internet-enabled iPod Touch™devices for senior students (Grades 5 and 6). Table 3 is a summary of the differenttypes of technologies used by the three siblings during one week at school.

Table 3 indicates that during the week of data collection the three siblings usedthree main types of technologies at school: PC online, PC offline and iPodTouch™. These technologies made up 90% of their entire school usage for theweek. The PC online and PC offline were used often (43 and 31%, respectively).To a lesser extent the internet-connected iPod Touch™ (16%) was also used. Amore fine-grained analysis of these data provides a profile of the types of technolo-gies used by each sibling at school and indicates the time spent on each (seeTable 4).

The profile of results indicates that the only type of technology that all threesiblings used at school during the data collection week was the internet. These dataalso indicate that the television was not used at all at school although it featuresheavily at home.

Notable was the substantial use of the PC offline by the youngest sibling,Hayden (in his first year of formal schooling). During a focus group discussion, hecommented on computer-related activities that reinforced number facts and on acomputer game used for learning literacy when he noted: ‘there’s a game, there’s aword down the bottom and you have to click the word that’s in the picture andthat’s how I got to learn how to spell it and read it’. Offline computer activities asdescribed by Hayden were completed as both whole class introductions to literacycontent as well as paired and/or individual activities.

There was also moderate use of the iPod Touch™ by the eldest sibling, Mary.Examples of the activities using the iPod Touch™ included practising number facts,checking meanings of words and searching for information. Mary said:

Table 2. Time use for technologies per child at home and school (minutes).

Schooltotal

Hometotal

Hometelevision total

Home totalminus television

Mary (Grade 6) 285 2020 840 1180Clinton (Grade 5) 142 690 300 390Hayden (Prep) 306 615 330 285

Table 3. Type and percentage of time spent on various technologies at school.

%

PC (online) 43.39PC (offline) 30.60Mobile phone 3.76Video game 3.48Digital camera 2.78iPod Touch 15.99Television 0

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My school iPod Touch™ has a calculator, dictionaries … and some Apps. Some timesour teacher says, ‘five minutes Touch’. [These Apps] are all based on games but [theyare] maths games and table [multiplication] games. We have WiFire [sic] at the schoolso we use the internet. Our Italian teacher says, ‘Where’s Rome in Italy? Find outabout it.’

Similarly, the middle child, Clinton, used the iPod Touch™ at school for practisingcomputational skills and as a reference tool. When asked what he used the iPodTouch™ for at school he said: ‘Maths, estimation, the calculator to check answers;dictionary and the internet, if I have to’.

Technologies used at home

The children in this study had access to a range of technologies at home includingmobile phones, iPod Touch™, various video gaming consoles (e.g. Nintendo DS™,Wii™) and in some places wireless internet. Table 5 is a summary of the differenttypes of technologies used by the three siblings during one week at home. Althoughthe children accessed mobile technologies, including phones and the iPod Touch™,the focus was on their home technology use and so did not collect data on occa-sions involving mobile technology use outside the family home.

Table 5 indicates that during the week of data collection at home the threesiblings used three main types of technologies, including television, internet andiPod Touch™. These three types of technologies made up 79% of their entire homeusage for the week. The television was most used (44%), with the internet (17%)and iPod Touch™ (18%) to a lesser extent. Interestingly, with the exception of thetelevision, the internet and iPod Touch™ were frequently used technologies atschool. The children’s home technology use is summarised in Table 6.

The profile of data in Table 6 indicates time (in minutes) each sibling spentengaged with the specific type of technology whilst at home. It is evident that thesiblings spent differing amounts of time with the technologies available in theirhome. Mary used three main technologies, the television, the internet and the iPodTouch™, for longer periods of time than her younger siblings. Indeed, Marywatched television for 840 minutes, averaging two hours per day. She used the iPodTouch™ for 465 minutes, averaging just over one hour per day. It should be notedhere that she had both a school and personal iPod Touch™. She used her personaliPod Touch™ to listen to music and play games for entertainment. Mary also spentmore time on the internet than her siblings, primarily to retrieve data for homeworkactivities.

Table 4. School use of technology (minutes).

Mary Clinton Hayden

PC (online) 80 132 100PC (offline) 30 0 190Mobile phone 25 0 2Video game 25 0 0Digital camera 20 0 0iPod Touch 105 10 0Television 0 0 0

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Clinton, the middle child, commented on his enjoyment of watching sport-related programmes on the television whilst simultaneously using the iPod Touch™.When asked about his use of the iPod Touch™ he said: ‘it’s more fun to play withthem than a reading book’. When asked the same question, Hayden, the youngestchild, said: ‘I use my sister’s iPod Touch™ if she’s like at a party or something, formusic and playing games’. This comment shows the transferability of the items oftechnology used in the home. Although the iPod Touch™ belonged to Mary,Hayden was able to access it when Mary was not at home. Hayden did not haveconstant access to the iPod Touch™, but took any available opportunity to have aturn. His comment also revealed that Mary did not take her iPod Touch™ to theparty with her. This example relates to Selwyn’s (2010) point about the importanceof developing ‘context-rich analyses’ that demonstrate how the technology use issituated within the ‘social interests, relationships and restrictions associated with theformal and informal provision of education’ (p. 70). Here, Hayden’s use of the iPodTouch™ at home is contingent on Mary’s absence from the home and the fact thatshe did not carry the technology into the social setting of the party. Social relation-ships mediate access to and use of the technology for both Hayden and Mary.

The home data set shows that the siblings had a similar range of technologiesavailable to them at both home and school. How they used the technologies wasmore a function of the environmental context in which the technology was locatedthan the technology itself. For example, school use was more related to conven-tional learning experiences, such as fact checking and rote learning (Bull et al.,2008), whilst home use was characterised by entertainment-based, more ‘informallearning’ experiences (Bull et al., 2008) (although home use also included usingtechnology to complete homework).

Table 6. Home use of technology for Mary, Clinton, and Hayden (minutes).

Mary Clinton Hayden

PC (online) 390 150 30PC (offline) 90 30 45Mobile phone 130 30 90Video game 105 120 60Digital camera 0 0 0iPod Touch 465 60 60Television 840 300 330

Table 5. Type and percentage of time spent on various technologies at home.

%

PC (online) 17.14PC (offline) 4.96Mobile phone 7.52Video game 8.57Digital camera 0.00iPod Touch 17.59Television 44.21

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Internet use

Excluding television, the internet was the most used technology across the schooland home environments, as can be seen in Table 7 (television was excluded,because although it is a technology, it was seen for the purposes of this research asa non-transformative technology). The data collected on television use is a limita-tion of the study. Although there was some discussion on the educational value ofsome television shows watched, no actual data were collected on the amount oftime each child spent viewing and the details of specific programmes. This alsomade it difficult to consider television as an aspect of the ‘state of the actual’ of thechildren’s technology use. Web searching was the most prominent use of the inter-net at both school and home. It was noted that during this week that none of thechildren participated in online chat/Twitter™ or email. This social-networkingaspect of technology (Merchant, 2012) was not used either at school or at homeduring the research week.

Internet at both school and home was WiFi enabled and mainly focused oninformation retrieval to support formal learning (at home for the completion ofhomework). Table 8 shows a comparison of the siblings’ internet usage in thesetwo contexts.

In Table 8 the figures 80, 132, and 100 represent the time each sibling Mary,Clinton, and Hayden, respectively spent accessing the internet at school. Given thechildren are at school five days per week, this equates to each child respectivelyusing 16, 26, and 20 minutes per day at school in the week of data collection.

In contrast, the figures 390, 150, and 30 represent the time each sibling Mary,Clinton and Hayden, respectively, spent using the internet at home. Given thechildren are at home seven days per week, this equates to each child respectivelyusing 56 minutes, 21 minutes and 4.3 minutes per day. Mary therefore used theinternet for longer at home, Clinton for roughly the same time, and Hayden forlonger at school. The data show that the siblings used the internet for searching theweb both at school and at home. Mary and Hayden accessed the school’s learningmanagement system, myclasses™, at school and home for a variety of reasonsincluding: homework, notices, and links to age-appropriate games for reinforcingliteracy and numeracy skills.

Usefulness for learning

The second focus group interview was held to delve further into the children’sreasons for using technology (functional use), and more specifically to garner the

Table 7. School and home internet usage of the three siblings combined (minutes).

School Home

Web search 135 240Website – myclasses 40 60Website – favourites 35 70Book 15 30Online chat/Twitter 0 0Email 0 0iPod Touch 87 144

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value they saw for each technology in relation to their learning. The items were allrated on a scale of 1–10, with 1 showing they did not value a particular technologyfor assisting learning, and 10 showing that they highly valued a technology forassisting learning. These data were collected via a survey that visually listed thetechnologies and the children were asked to give each item a ranking from 1 to 10.Whilst the children observed each other’s rankings and these were used to promptdiscussion, they did not alter their own rankings based on their response to rankingsof their siblings. These responses were then discussed in more detail during thefocus group to elicit further information. As can be seen in Table 9, there were nineitems that received a perfect score of 10/10 including: Mathematics games (Clintonand Hayden), interactive whiteboard (Hayden), television (Hayden), literacy games(Clinton), MS Word (Mary), iPod Touch™, Wii™ (Hayden), and Nintendo DS™(Hayden). The majority of gaming consoles scored lowly, except for the Wii™ andNintendo DS™ for which Hayden had specific educational games. Both CD andDVD players scored lowly. In the focus group discussion the children agreed thatthe computer and/or iPod Touch™ had replaced CD and DVD functions.

The value of the iPod Touch™ at school was discussed in the second focusgroup interview. Mary said, ‘when we first got them we were really excited at hav-ing them and using them, but now it’s not as exciting’. She commented that theyused them in class a lot (16% of all technology use at school in the surveyedweek). She said they used the calculator, dictionary, images, games, and the inter-net. She suggested they were ‘fun and you don’t realise you are learning when youare using them’. Clinton used his iPod Touch™ less in the classroom, and thenmostly for Mathematics (estimation, calculator, multiplication app). Both Mary andClinton said they needed specific permission from teachers to use the internet ontheir iPod Touch™ in the classroom. Mary and Clinton rated the iPod Touch™ 4and 3, respectively, in usefulness for learning; however, Mary’s comments seem tosuggest higher scores. For example, Mary said of the iPodTouch™ ‘our school onehas … a calculator, dictionaries. Sometimes the teacher says “five minutes touchtime” … all the games are to do with like Maths or stuff like that’.

Both Mary and Clinton felt they were learning when using technologies. Marysaw the ‘big picture’ learning as ‘computer skills … being able to use the mouse orthe keypad’ and ‘being able to read quicker’ and also noted that ‘sometimes gameson the internet don’t really teach you stuff’. She went on to clarify the computerskills; ‘if you spend more time on the computer you actually get used to where thekeys are [but] I don’t spend that much time on the computer, I’m not that fast atyper [sic]’. Hayden felt that he was learning when he was using a computer gameat school in the Literacy block. He said, ‘I click the word that’s in the picture andthat’s how I got to learn how to spell it and read it’.

Table 8. Comparison of internet usage school and home (minutes).

School Home

Per week Per day Per week Per day

Mary (Year 6) 80 16 390 56Clinton (Year 5) 132 26 150 21Hayden (Prep) 100 20 30 4.3

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Discussion

With a total time for all three siblings (of an ‘above-average’ socio-economic stand-ing) of 67 hours and 38 minutes spent using technology across the whole week,there were some differences and a number of similarities in the type and functionaluse of technologies the children used at home and school.

In percentage terms, the internet was in the top three for use at both school andhome, although school use was higher in terms of minutes spent online than athome. The use of the iPod Touch™ for all three siblings was consistent both atschool and home for the week (16% home; 18% school). At home the siblingsmainly used three types of technologies: the television, the internet and the iPodTouch™. The television was the most used technology (44%) at home. This is indirect contrast to a total lack of television use in the school setting. However,removing television shows internet use and iPod Touch™ as the most frequent forboth and home school, although there were differences in the amount of time spentin each activity according to context. It should also be noted that a broader rangeof technologies were used at home compared to school. For example, all threechildren used six different technologies at home, but only the internet was used byall of the siblings at school. Although the internet, PC offline, mobile phone, Play-Station Portable™ and other gaming options, digital cameras and iPod Touches™were available in the school environment, they were not used to the same extent asthe internet by all three siblings.

Apart from the iPod Touches™ which were only available to Mary and Clinton inthe senior school, all three siblings had access to the same technologies whilst atschool. In Mary’s classroom technology access was primarily limited to the PC onlineand iPod Touch™ – both for purposes of data retrieval. Clinton, on the other hand,used only the internet and had very minimal use of the iPod Touch™ (10 minutes

Table 9. Children’s rating of commonly used technologies as useful for learning.

Mary Clinton Hayden

Mathematics games 6 10 10Interactive whiteboard 8 7.5 10Television 8 6 10Computer 8 7 8Literacy games 6 10 7myclasses 5 9 8Word 10 8 0iPod Touch 4 3 10i/ebooks 5 5 7Wii 2 4 10Digital camera 2 6 8Nintendo DS 1 4 10Email 7 8 0Internet 5 9 0Mobile phones 2 4 8Games 2 6 5Excel 4 8 0DVD player 3 5 0CD player 2 3 0iTunes 1 2 0Sony Playstation 0 2 0

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across the week). Hayden also only used the internet and the PC offline at school,though he did use the PC offline more than both older siblings, and the internet morethan Clinton.

The moderate use of the internet at school is worth further consideration.Selwyn et al. (2009) identified that primary students’ actual engagement with ICTat school was restrained. Our findings reflect this suggestion, which is interesting ina school where all students in Grades 5 and 6 have an iPod Touch™ and WiFiaccess. Here, the time spent using the internet for the children in this particularsocio-economic situation as a resource was less than 30 minutes a day, and thatwas only with teacher permission. In fact, the youngest child in the Preparatorygrade, Hayden, spent more time using technology (without an iPod Touch™) atschool than both his siblings. Although Mary (Grade 6) used a wider variety oftechnologies than both her brothers, Hayden used the internet more diversely thanboth older siblings. This included web searching, the school’s myclasses™ learningmanagement site, favourite websites, and books online.

The use of the internet by these siblings was primarily teacher-directed, butalthough the two older children’s use was focused on the reinforcement of knownfacts, and searching and retrieving information, Hayden’s use of the internet wasmore activity-focused. This suggests that the activities in the senior classes werecontent-driven as opposed to being inquiry-based. Furthermore, we speculate thatduring this week, the two older students were using technology as consumers ratherthan creators, whilst Hayden in his first year of formal schooling was using thecomputer, particularly the internet, for activity-based tasks. Bull et al. (2008) arguethat content-driven technology use in educational settings is derived from difficul-ties associated with moving education from predominately print-based to digitalactivities. This means that schools are more likely to use technologies in ways asso-ciated with more conventional teaching than they are on student-constructed content(p. 102). This provides one possible reason for the limited opportunities Hayden,Mary, and Clinton appeared to have for using the internet to generate and sharetheir own content.

Uses of technologies away from school were primarily selected by the child.The PC online and iPod Touch™ devices were evident in the life of the family.However, it appears from the data that these technologies are not necessarily trans-forming lifestyles but instead being integrated into existing cultural practices aroundlocating information and supporting formal learning (i.e. homework) at home. Thedata show these technologies being used in somewhat limited ways, which interest-ingly tend to mirror the school-based functions where they were used to gatherinformation rather than generate new content.

It would appear that the siblings had access to similar technologies across thehome and school (disregarding television), and that for internet use in particular,this use is predominately orientated towards information gathering or rote learning.This raises questions about the extent to which the digital-disconnect (Levin &Arafeh, 2002) may be argued to exist for these children because they used the tech-nologies at home and school for similar purposes. Whilst there were differences inthe length of time associated with each use and whether or not the technology usewas self-selected and/or teacher-directed, a main function appeared to be orientatedeither towards data retrieval (at school to answer teacher questions and at home forhomework) or entertainment (at home for fun and at school for reward – i.e. ‘fiveminutes iPod Touch™ time’). This finding raises a question of the ‘chicken and

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egg’ nature; namely does home use mimic school use, or does school use informhome use? The question itself is interesting because it dispels a focus on the digi-tal-disconnect and emphasises instead what Bulfin and North (2007) identified as apermeable boundary (Dyson, 1997), in that practices across both settings are seenas possible influences on both settings.

Conclusion

Although it has been argued that knowing how the ‘students learn in their homesoffers valuable insights into how best to educate the young for life’ (Lee, 2007,p. 42), this particular perspective on the role of the digital-disconnect in educationdid not feature in our findings. Rather, the siblings in our study reported using simi-lar technologies (internet and iPod Touch™) for learning in both their home andschool environments in similar functions. These functions included informationretrieval, rote practice of skills, and entertainment purposes (Bull et al., 2008). Thenotion of permeable boundaries (Bulfin & North, 2007; Dyson, 1997) provides oneway of thinking about this finding, particularly because it highlights how practicesand beliefs that potentially inform technology use cross contexts. This may be moreuseful than continuing to assume that young children have a natural affinity withdigital technologies that is supported by home use in such a way that they aredisconnected from their school experiences (Helsper & Eynon, 2010; Jones et al.,2010). A helpful step forward would be to research in further detail the extent towhich children’s home use of technologies mimics what they experience at schoolor if school use is informing what children are electing to do at home. Such aframing would also reflect a more socio-culturally framed orientation to technologyuse (Plowman, Stephen, & McPake, 2010) than the continued dichotomisation ofhome–school contexts through a digital-disconnect perspective. This would beuseful because socio-cultural understandings of learning and development have beenshown to highlight the ways in which children carry experiences and learningacross contexts as a basis for negotiating meaning and practice (Hedges, Cullen, &Jordan, 2011). The state-of-the-actual (Selwyn, 2010) could come to be understoodas how technologies and their functions are located in social and cultural home andschool practices, rather than as different uses associated with generationaldifferences and exposure to technology over a given lifespan.

Notes on contributorsDr Donna Gronn is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Coordinator of the Postgraduate Hub inthe Faculty of Education at Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus. Email:donna.gronn@acu.edu.au

Dr Anne Scott is a Senior Lecturer and eLearning Mentor in the Faculty of Education atAustralian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus. Email: anne.scott@acu.edu.au

Associate Professor Susan Edwards is a Principal Research Fellow in the Faculty ofEducation at Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus. Email: Suzy.Edwards@acu.edu.au

Dr Michael Henderson is a Senior Lecturer in Information Communication Technologies inEducation at Monash University, Clayton. Email: michael.henderson@monash.edu.au

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