Digital photography and journals in a kindergarten-first-grade classroom: Toward meaningful technology integration in early childhood education

To explore meaningful and effective technology integration in early childhood education, we investigated how kindergarten-first-grade students created and employed digital photography journals to support social and cognitive reflection. These students used a digital camera to document their daily school activities and created digital photo journals to represent their experiences. Ethnographic video data, field notes, and student journals were examined using a grounded theory approach. Results reveal that when students took pictures, they successfully negotiated their dual roles of photographer and participant in other activities. In the process, the children meaningfully integrated technology into their classroom activities, as well as transformed the nature of the social space surrounding the computer where children created their journals. Furthermore, the journals illustrated children's complex and varied types of cognitive and social reflections. Based on these results, we discuss implications for meaningful technology integration in early childhood education.