Digital Smarts: the book is out

Digital Smarts: Enhancing Teaching and Learning

For those of you interested in looking at the role digital technologies play in education contexts from early childhood to tertiary, this book is now out. Dianne and I have gathered together the research of colleagues into various facets of the education landscape in one region of New Zealand. And in the spirit of openness, have made this freely available via a Creative Commons Licence.

This book was also an opportunity to support colleagues' work and collect various interpretations and applications of the idea of 'digital smartness'. There are various ways of interpreting this phrase, and we wanted colleagues to be creative. We therefore have examples from early childhood, through to a variety of school settings and also in tertiary education contexts.

'Digital smartness' can be understood as being about opportunity, creativity, appropriation, investigation as well as frustration or pain (as in 'smarting'). Young children, adults learning to be teachers, and staff are part of this landscape, as the chapters explore examples of what digital smarts might look like in various educational contexts.

The gestation of this book included developing a quality assurance process. This consisted of Dianne and I reviewing each chapter, as well as getting each of the authors to peer review someone else's chapter. After that process,  an international array of academics who work in this field provided blind reviews of chapters. These international academics include Kevin Burden from the University of Hull, Alec Couros from the University of Regina and Caroline Daly from the Institute of Education, Gilly Salmon from The University of Western Australia, Richard Walker from The University of York and @timbuckteeth, aka Steve Wheeler from the Plymouth University. Each of these people provided feedback to authors and have enriched the quality of the book through these international perspectives.

Please feel free to read it. Shortly, an ebook version will be available as an alternative to the pdf. To read the ebook version, you need an ebook reader. We'd love to know what you think of our efforts. Curt Bonk has been the first to it review it, and his thoughts are on the book's site.