Despite nearly three decades of the use of new technologies in education, schools seem to have remained impervious to significant change. Heritage curriculum and traditional pedagogies persist and, indeed, are dominant in school contexts, which seem to be embedded in the past, rather than preparing children for their future lives. Pockets of innovation illustrate that transformation is possible and comes with the added benefits of renewed student enthusiasm and engagement in learning. Yet, systemic changes are limited in a global context that is dominated by high stakes testing and the neoliberal agenda. This article explores the potential for change. Focusing on the early years, which are the foundation of schooling, we report on data from a study using iPads for learning with kindergarten children in Australia (4 and 5 years of age). The data support the contention that new technologies offer the possibility for new learning by enabling young children to embark on investigations and explorations that were not possible in previous eras. In this article, we focus on transformations and explore the potential of the iPads to encourage playful explorations for investigating, reflecting, making meaning, knowledge building, and communicating ideas to a shared audience.

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In this article, the authors discuss the findings of two surveys that were conducted with 10-year-old primary students and their parents in Hong Kong. They sought to gather empirical data about how the students spend their time in out-of-school contexts in order to interrogate the view that Asian students often spend much of their time studying, with little leisure time. The authors were concerned that there was an absence of empirical data on this topic. Increasingly, there is a recognition that Asian students perform well in high-stakes international tests, and a widely held view is that this is because they dedicate so much time to intensive academic study in contrast to their ‘Western’ counterparts. The social and cultural capital derived from doing well in school systems is an established feature of many global contexts. In the competitive environment that characterises education in Hong Kong, progression through the system is based solely on examination scores, and justified on the basis that this is both equitable and allows the best students to thrive. Tutorial schools that train attendees in the art of testing are multimillion-dollar industries – but who are the clients? In this article, the authors reveal that at 10 years of age, the out-of-school lives of the students surveyed contain many and varied activities. They attend school and, in out-of-school contexts, complete homework, participate in activities that both incorporate new media (for example, television and computers) and others (for example, indoor and outdoor play), and do not.

This study aims to discuss the findings of a survey completed by 335 parents of children in Kindergarten 1 (3 to 4 years), Primary 1 (6 to 7 years) and Primary 5 (10 to 11 years) in Hong Kong, about their children's out of school time use. We wanted to explore the widely held notion that Asian students spend much of their time studying, with little leisure time, and there is scant information about Asian children's everyday lives outside schooling. The findings from the survey indicate that this cohort of parents reported that their children spend their time out of school engaged in a variety of activities. The children don't spend large amounts of time (that is, > 4 hours) on academic activities, but do on visiting friends and relatives and playing, indoors, outdoor and in organized sporting contexts. Doing school homework fell in the mid-range of activities. The students also did not spend a lot of time using technology. These findings reflect existing data collected in western contexts in terms of the time spent on leisure activities and homework, but contrast to other findings with older students where students in East Asia spent more time out of school engaged in academic work with minimal leisure time.