Keywords

Technology Integration, Early Childhood Education, Preservice Teachers, Instruction

Description

The purpose of this project was to create a new Instructional Psychology and Technology (IP&T) course for Early Childhood Education (ECE) majors at Brigham Young University. Currently, ECE students take three 1-credit IP&T classes that focus on the following disciplines: integrating technology into the classroom, using coding and computational thinking in the classroom, and teaching in online and blended learning environments. These classes are geared towards K-12 education majors and are taught to a broader group of preservice teachers. ECE majors have a very defined set of grades and ages that they can teach, all of which have unique and specific needs that other grades and ages do not have. In addition, the ECE program recently reduced the total course load for their students by 12 credit hours. Because of these specific ages and unique needs and uses of technology, Kathie MacKay, the ECE program chair, has asked the IP&T department to create a new 2-credit course that focuses on the needs and uses of technology in the early childhood classroom and combines aspects of the currently required IP&T courses to make the information more meaningful and useful to ECE students.

The approved learning outcomes for the new course are as follows:

Integrate technology into early childhood classrooms in developmentally appropriate ways
Teach computational thinking concepts in the early childhood classroom, including coding short programs.
Know how and when to use personalized learning software as well as how to analyze the data from those tools for further learning.