In Chapter 9 we considered how to support student wellbeing in the digital space, and how to develop eSafety and digital citizenship. In this chapter, we will consider the implications of your professional digital image or identity and how it impacts upon your role as an educator who actively uses digital technologies. We will also discuss your responsibilities as an educator in developing student digital literacy skills, even if access to technology is limited. Additionally, we will explore strategies to overcome these limitations as well as considering educators’ responsibilities to communicate with students’ parents or carers, and how digital tools can help facilitate this communication.

The first chapter considers the value of and opportunities with digital technologies, and how they can be used as tools and environments for learning. It talks about the importance of being agentic and using digital tools with purpose. The use of digital tools to develop 21st-century skills in students is discussed and there is an overview of the curriculum and policy mandates for the use of digital technologies, including development of the general capability of digital literacies.

This chapter considers the opportunities for students to explore interests, such as independent learning and personal projects, eSports and interest groups, such as maker spaces and coding clubs. It then looks at the changing roles for students and educators in which you are all co-learning–you as the educator do not need to be the expert.

Incorporating digital technologies in the classroom can be both a daunting and exciting experience for educators of all age groups. Supporting Innovative Pedagogies with Digital Technologies explores intentional teaching approaches for using digital technologies in the classroom as a tool to support rather than replace established strategies. Readers will learn how to innovate their classroom, and vignettes from Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary classrooms will remove the overwhelming pressure of redesigning learning and teaching from scratch.

Over three parts, the text explores understanding learning and teaching with digital technologies; designing and enacting learning with digital technologies; and professional responsibilities for teaching with digital technologies. Each chapter includes vignettes to illustrate key ideas and prompt discussion, reflection activities to encourage critical thinking and inspire educators to use key ideas in their practice, ‘Tips and tricks’ to provide practical hints and expert guidance for future consideration, and review questions to consolidate understanding.

Written by a team of authors, each with over 25 years of experience and expertise in teaching about and with digital technologies, Supporting Innovative Pedagogies with Digital Technologies is a valuable resource for all educators wanting to enhance and transform their classroom learning and teaching strategies for the modern age.

This chapter focuses on information knowledge (also known as declarative or ‘what’ knowledge) and looks at how digital tools can be used to learn information. It considers how extended reality, gamification and simulations are used for learning and teaching, and explores why and how digital technologies are used in inquiry-based learning, in particular, challenge-based learning.

Given the dynamic changing nature of knowledge, educators need to appreciate that learning and teaching theories can help them to conceptualise their use of digital technologies to support learning and teaching. This chapter will highlight the main learning and teaching theories that educators can draw upon to help them understand or inform their pedagogical approaches when using digital technologies in their classroom. The chapter is not meant to be a comprehensive review of major learning theories used in education, though it is intended to be a useful guide to help pre-service educators and beginning educators make the link between the use of digital technologies and a number of the learning theories that exist.

Additionally, the chapter will challenge you to understand how the influence of personal experience plays a large role on the pedagogical approaches that educators either consciously or subconsciously apply within our classrooms. The main focus of this chapter will highlight how digital technologies are used to support learning and teaching in consideration of these theoretical underpinnings.

This chapter will explore the use of digital technologies to develop psychomotor procedures when learning with our bodies. This includes the use of video, images and annotations to practise technique or strategy in physical education, such as improving a cricket bowling technique, or to review and analyse team performance and gameplay following a match. It could be using video or audio to develop musical instrument technique or to improve public speaking or other acting or speaking skills in drama. It could be used to develop choreography or dance technique, or to practice speaking a new language. Psychomotor procedures are also involved in learning to form letters when writing and acquiring the manual skill of typing.

This chapter begins with a theory-based explanation of psychomotor procedures and how they are incorporated in some of the key models of knowledge such as Bloom’s Taxonomy and Marzano and Kendall’s New Taxonomy. It then considers how you can use digital tools to develop psychomotor procedures in curriculum subjects.

As we have noted in Chapter 1, digital technologies have the potential to enhance learning and teaching and it is within this context that we see digital technologies as also being an important part of many learning environments. This chapter builds on the nature of learning and teaching in Chapter 2 and the models and frameworks presented in Chapter 3 to highlight the importance of learning and teaching environments and the role that digital technologies play in these environments. The chapter will start with an overview of learning environments, followed by how digital technologies and circumstances (e.g. COVID-19) have expanded traditional understandings of learning environments and driven the need for digital transformation. Practical examples and spotlights will be used to explore how some of the more traditional spaces have changed.

This chapter introduces you to foundational knowledge regarding frameworks and models which is applied in later chapters. Theoretical models and frameworks serve as the ‘connective tissue that meshes theory and practice’. The chapter presents an overview of some of the most pertinent models and frameworks that can support you in designing lessons or learning experiences that incorporate digital technologies. It also highlights how you can reflect on the integration of technology into your teaching.

This chapter begins with models of educator knowledge, TPACK and the UNESCO ICT model, followed by the WHO workflow that helps you plan for using digital technologies in learning. The chapter also examines models and frameworks for considering the degree of integration of technology into teaching (SAMR and RAT/PICRAT) and concludes with educator acceptance models (TAM and CBAM).

The constantly changing nature of digital technologies opens opportunities to improve established approaches and to seek out new approaches. And although these opportunities stem from new technologies, they are translated to action by innovative educators and leaders. Hence all educators need to be innovators.

This chapter begins by explaining why educators need to see themselves as learners and innovators. It then conceptualises the nature of change in education settings for the purpose of understanding how best to respond. After which, it explores a range of professional development and learning models, and then considers the nature of innovation. It provides insight and tips that you will be able use to enact your role as an innovator.

In addition to knowledge of information (details and organising ideas), students also need to develop the skills and processes needed to complete mental tasks, for example, how to do long division, how to read a map and how to write in a specific genre. This domain of knowledge is called mental procedures. Mental procedures are learned through practice and are executed when needed to complete a task. Mental procedures occur inside a person’s brain. Educators use pedagogies to help students to learn these procedures and, once learned, to activate and facilitate this mode of thinking. This chapter will focus on how digital technologies can be used to support these pedagogies while also exploring some new opportunities.

This chapter begins by explaining mental procedures domain of knowledge. After using the TPACK model (see Chapter 3) to highlight the importance of intentionally using digital technologies, it then explores how they can be used to develop mental procedures and to guide student’s when using mental procedures.

Learning is a process. It takes time and often involves a degree of challenge. But how do students know that their learning is progressing? How do they identify ways to improve their learning? How do educators know whether the strategies and activities that they are using are helping students? This is the role of assessment – it helps students and educators to gauge progress and identify opportunities for improvement.

In Chapters 5, 6 and 7 we explored how to use digital technologies in the learning and teaching of the three domains of knowledge. In this chapter, we will close the loop by focusing on assessment and how digital technologies can help. We will start by considering the important role of assessment in learning and teaching. Following this, we will explore how to capture evidence of learning, assess learning and provide feedback using digital technologies. The chapter will conclude by exploring how to store and analyse assessment data using digital technologies.