Digital Photo Journals: A Novel Approach to Addressing Early Childhood Technology Standards and Recommendations

The early childhood field is full of mixed messages about young children and technology. Research and policy standards stress the importance of computer use as a means to increase basic skills and develop information literacy, while also warning that over-use can lead to children's social isolation and reduced attention spans. It is within this ongoing debate that we situate our research on digital photo journals in a kindergarten/first-grade classroom. Students in our study used a digital camera to document their daily activities and created digital photo journals on the computer to represent their experiences and their surroundings. Our results suggest a novel approach to addressing current debates in educational technology for early childhood, wherein the digital camera and photo journals become explicit tools for exploring social networks, understanding and interpreting the classroom environment, and achieving meaningful technology integration.