Life Transitions, Learning and Digital Technologies -Common Threads and Conceptions

This paper opens up the symposium with a central question that all papers will consider from their different perspectives: how do digital technologies support life transitions? Before this question is tackled, a pre-requisite question needs to be considered: what are life transitions? Across the range of papers presented we will see a number of life transitions – moving from one part of the education system to another, from education to work, from one set of working practices to another, and from one workplace to another. Features of these transitions can be quite different. The nature of the distinct transitions researched will be explored in this paper, as will their relationships with digital skills and the development of digital skills to support specific needs in each distinctive transition. Life transitions occur at different times across a lifespan, and different technologies can be used according to age. Early learners (up to 5 years of age) may use digital technologies such as Bee-Bot programmable floor robots, Roamers or Pixie Robots that are not used by older learners, but they also use devices modified specifically to accommodate access and use by this age group, such as laptop computers, mobile telephones, photocopiers, scanners and televisions (Aubrey and Dahl, 2008). Technologies accessible to users clearly affect how they can be applied to life transitions, but another factor that is involved is the different levels of technology uses according to age. These are demonstrated by evidence from Ofcom in the UK (2012). Data from other sources indicates that levels are different in other countries, however (see, for example, Eurostat, 2010). Technologies accessible to individuals also change over time. Shifts in software happen about every eighteen months, while in major hardware facilities they occur about every five or ten years. Mega-changes (about every ten years) and major changes (about every five years) are more hardware related (Passey, 1999), while regular changes are more software related and are concerned with the introduction of new software, upgrades of existing software, and the doubling in the power of computer capacity within an eighteen month period. These changes affect the affordances and facilities that learners can use over time, and apply to their life transition needs. Learning settings also change for individuals across a lifespan. Early learners initially experience informal, home settings. For some, from perhaps 3 years of age, and for others from about 6 years of age, they experience learning in somewhat more formal kindergarten or nursery school settings, moving to more formal settings from about 5 to 7 years of age, while from about 9 to 11 years of age many learners will experience learning within non-formal club and society settings. More informal settings can again predominate for some learners when they reach 16 years of age or more, when learning happens at home, and non-formal experiences tend to increase as learners work in more specific communities, societies or groups (Passey, 2013). In training and employment situations, non-formal settings may also arise more frequently, where groups of learners are involved in problem-solving or team endeavour approaches rather than being involved in more formal classroom settings. This paper will introduce features and factors that affect learners in their uses of digital technologies in life transition settings. A conception of the ways learners use digital technologies within life transitions will be developed; subsequent papers will explore factors and features in more specific settings and detail.