Hanging out, playing, messing around: ePortfolios and mobile devices for teaching Early Childhood Education

Bachelor of Teaching in Early Childhood Education (ECE) programme at Unitec Institute of Technology is a field based degree programme. This case study outlines a range of approaches and strategies developed during a self-review project exploring the affordances of m-learning and digital tools used in our programme. This review involved two lecturers that teach across a range of courses and co-ordinate the practicum and work experience components of the programme. The Ako Aotearoa research project was a timely opportunity to further the work already taking place in the programme to increase digital literacy for both students and staff. In this report we discuss the context within which we carried out our review, the philosophical underpinnings of our research and describe a few of our strategies along with the challenges we faced along the way. We see this as work in progress, with many plans for 2016 and beyond as we develop our own skills and understanding and students arrive from schools with mobile learning experience