Digital Child x ACMI Seminar: The Social Worlds of Children's Digital Play

Schedule

Thu Jun 01 2023 at 05:00 pm to 07:30 pm

Location

ACMI (Swinburne Studio) | Melbourne, VI

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Teachers, researchers, and leading experts in digital play will come together to talk about this topic from four unique perspectives.
About this Event

Digital Child x ACMI Seminar Series
'The Social Worlds of Children's Digital Play'

Play is at the very heart of childhood - an essential part of children’s learning and development. Children’s play now involves the use of both non-digital resources and digital technologies, where children create, explore, and actively engage in meaningful activities.

We know that digital play is a major part of the diverse social worlds that children experience. These worlds include home, education settings, and within contexts of informal learning such as museums, galleries, and theme parks.

But what is ‘digital play’ and what constitutes ‘good’ digital play? And what does digital play look like in practice in different contexts?

Families, teachers, educators, EdTech developers, and designers of community digital displays and exhibitions all face this challenge of understanding the role of ‘the digital’ in children’s play. Additionally, early childhood frameworks and curriculum guidelines now mandate that teachers support young children to explore, use, design and produce digital technologies – for children’s both personal and social needs, all with the aim to encourage confidence, problem solving, creativity, and new ways of thinking. This means that this challenge of understanding ‘the digital’ when it comes to children’s play in their various social worlds is an urgent one for all.

In this next Digital Child x ACMI seminar, teachers, researchers, and leading experts in digital play will come together to talk about digital play from four different perspectives:

· Children’s digital play in the home

· Children’s digital play in the early years of schooling

· Children’s digital play in informal learning contexts

· The business of digital play

This event will bring together a range of audiences to address these questions and to broaden our understandings of digital play through open conversation and informal networking.


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Event Convener

Professor Louise Paatsch is the Deputy Director of Deakin University's Strategic Research Centre in Education - Research for Educational Impact (REDI), and a Chief Investigator at the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. Louise's research focuses on children’s and young people’s communication, language, pretend play, and literacy development, with a strong focus on metapragmatic and pragmatic language use and the link to social communication.


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Panellists

Jacqui Jarvis is a Foundation Teacher and Playgroup Leader at St James’ Primary School in Sebastopol, where she has taught for 13 years. Her passion for play began early in her teaching career and took her to the United Kingdom in 2007 where she worked in a Nursery and Reception classroom in a low socioeconomic area of London. Here she found her love for working with Neurodiverse and at-risk children. Upon returning to Australia in 2010, she began work at St James’ Primary School where her knowledge around how children learn and the fundamental place of play in the learning trajectory were consolidated. Jacqui completed her Bachelor of Education at Australian Catholic University in Ballarat and is currently undertaking a Graduate Certificate in Early Childhood Research with the University of Melbourne.

Dr Britt Romstad is ACMI's Executive Director of Experience and Engagement, and an experienced leader and communicator who has spent many years working to embed an audience-led approach to service design and strategy at ACMI. Britt champions data-informed decision-making and holds a PhD in Cinema Studies from the University of Melbourne.

Dr Fiona Scott is an internationally-recognised researcher of children’s digital lives. She has frequently collaborated with a range of external partners in research, including The LEGO Foundation, XR Games and CBeebies. She is an Editor of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, a member of the Editorial Board for Reading Research Quarterly and a member of the Academic Advisory Board for the Children's Media Foundation. Fiona's current research is focused on children's digital play and well-being. She is currently leading a large-scale research project funded by The LEGO Foundation and delivered with The LEGO Group and Unicef Innocenti. Fiona is also a Lecturer in Digital Literacies in The School of Education at The University of Sheffield, where she is Director of the Literacies and Language Research Cluster.

Laura Stone is the Early Childhood Education Producer at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). With experience as an early childhood teacher and early learning consultant, she leads ABC Kids Early Education, an online destination for early years curriculum-aligned resources designed for the national early education and care sector. Laura builds opportunities for Australian research and stakeholder engagement to amplify the success of ABC Kids media and digital resources in educational and community contexts.

For more information regarding this event, please contact Loretta Watson at [email protected]


Please note that we can provide a Certificate of Attendance for any attendee who would like this seminar to count towards their professional development. You can note this in your registration or contact us after the event.


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Where is it happening?

ACMI (Swinburne Studio), Flinders Street, Melbourne, Australia

Event Location & Nearby Stays:

Tickets

AUD 0.00

ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child

Host or Publisher ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child

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