Educators' use of digital technology in early childhood education: Personal and educational environments
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29329/pedper.2025.117Keywords:
Early childhood education, digital technology, digital tools, digital application, educatorsAbstract
Improving and strengthening digital technology (DT) in early childhood education settings is significant. The extent to which educators include DT and its use in their personal lives and educational environments plays a key role in this empowerment. Identifying the deficiencies in technology tools, the DTs that need to be supported in educational environments, the experiences of teachers in the use of DTs, and the DT applications that need to be increased in educational settings will enable more accurate steps to be taken in this regard. This study aimed to understand the DT tools that early childhood educators use in their personal and educational environments, the duration of their use, their practices, their feeling comfortable, and their frequency of use. In this study, data were collected from 16 educators working in three different schools in one of the Midwestern States of the United States. Frequency, percentage, and mean calculations and descriptive graphs were created. The study's results revealed that educators actively use DT in their personal and educational environments. The use of tablet and smart board tools in educational environments is low, as is the use of social media and communication tools, television and educational videos, and voice recorders. In addition, educators were less comfortable with storytelling programs, digital photo editing, playing computer games, and using drawing programs; using web search and word processing applications by children was quite limited; the frequency of use of drawing programs by both themselves and children was very low.
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