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Journal of Early Childhood Literacy

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Multimodal digital text ! The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1468798418779171
journals.sagepub.com/home/ecl
and open-ended creative
apps to improve the
literacy learning of
children in early
childhood classrooms
Grace Oakley , Helen Wildy and
Ye’Elah Berman
The University of Western Australia, Australia

Abstract
This article reports on an exploratory mixed-methods study that investigated how the
creation of multimodal digital texts, using tablets, and open-ended creative apps con-
tributed to the literacy learning of five-year-old children in two schools in low socio-
economic areas in Western Australia. Participating teachers learned about seven
exemplar learning activities designed to engage children in multimodal text creation
using tablets, primarily to improve literacy. Teachers used exemplars to guide their
literacy planning and practice over three school terms. Pre- and post-test scores sug-
gest that aspects of participating children’s reading had improved. Teachers also
reported some improvements in children’s oral language and writing, as well as reading.

Keywords
iPads, tablets, mobile, literacy, diversity, early childhood, multimodal, digital storytelling,
low socioeconomic status, apps

Introduction
The aim of this exploratory study was to find out how tablets could be used in
the Foundation Year of school (the first compulsory year of schooling in

Corresponding author:
Grace Oakley, Graduate School of Education, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway,
Crawley, Western Australian 6009, Australia.
Email: grace.oakley@uwa.edu.au
2 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 0(0)

Australia) by children from low socioeconomic status (SES) communities

to create multimodal texts as a means of improving literacy and the five
outcomes of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) (Department of
Education Employment and Workplace Relations [DEEWR], 2009). This art-
icle focuses on the literacy learning of the students, especially certain elements
of reading, and to some extent illuminates the reading-writing connection in
the context of multimodal digital texts.
The study, which involved five-year-old children in Foundation year, teachers
and Education Assistants from one remote and one metropolitan school in
Western Australia (WA), involved teachers being taught seven exemplar multi-
modal text creation activities that were designed primarily to help improve
specific aspects of children’s literacy, using tablets. Over three school terms
(there are four terms in Australian schools), the teachers used these to guide
the planning and practice of their literacy teaching. Researchers provided an
initial professional learning (PL) session and ongoing support, including three
in-school sessions for teachers and education assistants. The study, called iPad My
Story, was funded by the Public Endowment Education Trust.
Children from communities with a low SES are more likely to be ‘devel-
opmentally vulnerable’ upon school entry (Australian Institute of Health
and Welfare [AIHW], 2011; Australian Early Development Census [AEDC],
2014–2015) and thus underperform in literacy throughout their schooling
relative to children from higher socio-economic groups (Brinkman et al.,
2013; Shoghi et al., 2013). Developmental vulnerability is linked to lower
language and social skills. There is convincing research evidence, however,
that early intervention can change the trajectory of vulnerable children’s
learning (Snow et al., 1998; Taylor et al., 2015).

Literature review and theoretical framing

Language and literacy in the early years
Literacy incorporates the creation and comprehension of multimodal texts for
a range of communicative purposes. The EYLF for Australia, which outlines
principles, practices and outcomes that support the learning of children from
birth to five, defines literacy broadly as incorporating ‘a range of modes of
communication including music, movement, dance, storytelling, visual arts,
media and drama, as well as talking, listening, viewing, reading and writing’
(DEEWR, 2009: 38). Similarly, the Australian Curriculum expands the defin-
ition of ‘texts’, stating that they ‘can be written, spoken, visual, multimodal,
and in print or digital/online forms’ (ACARA, n.d.). Young children must
Oakley et al. 3

learn how to create and comprehend multimodal texts, but to become literate
in this broad sense they also require skills and understandings often associated
with traditional print-based literacy, such as knowledge about sound–letter
relationships, a store of sight words, the ability to construct sentences and
knowledge about punctuation. Such skills and understandings can be taught in
parallel with newer multimodal and digital literacies (Merchant, 2008) and
do not need to be taught in isolation, decontextualised from authentic text
creation and comprehension. This article aims to add to the literature that
shows how disadvantaged children may learn such skills through engaging in
authentic multimodal text creation.

Digital technologies and literacy in the early years

Although there has been controversy about the role of digital technologies in
the early years (Plowman and McPake, 2012), there is mounting evidence that
digital technologies have a valuable if not essential place in early years literacy
learning (Burnett, 2010; Kalaš, 2010). It is common for children in their early
years to have rich activities with digital technologies outside school (Plowman
and McPake, 2012). Indeed, Marsh (2004) found that when engaging with
digital texts, young children often do so in a playful manner, with a high
degree of agency, and educators should aim to transfer such rich, playful
activities into early years educational settings. In doing this, educators value
and build on the ‘funds of knowledge’ children bring from home (Moll et al.,
1992), including ‘technological funds of knowledge’ (Mawson, 2011). It has
been found, though, that technology-based practices are used less often in
early years classrooms than outside school (Hill, 2007; Parette et al., 2010),
perhaps with less playfulness and control on the part of the children.
In her review of the 2003–2009 literature on the use of digital technologies in
early childhood literacy contexts, Burnett (2010: 254) found that research in that
period focused on three areas: ‘Technology as deliverer of literacy’, ‘Technology
as a site for interaction around texts’ and ‘Technology as medium for meaning-
making’. Research on technology as a deliverer of literacy investigates the uses of
technology to improve children’s print-based literacy skills, largely focusing on
teacher-led interventions. Potential benefits are identified in a range of literacy
areas, including comprehension, word recognition and decoding. Many ‘tech-
nology as deliverer of literacy’ studies have focused on children with literacy
difficulties using essentially ‘closed’ software that is based on ‘drill and skill’
pedagogy. The second category of research focuses on ‘technology as a site for
interaction around texts’. This body of research examines the ways in which
4 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 0(0)

digital technologies can be used to stimulate and change talk and collaboration.
The third body of research identified by Burnett (2010) concerns ‘technology as
a medium for meaning-making’ and involves ‘new’ digital and multimodal texts
and how young children comprehend and create them.
Since Burnett’s (2010) review, digital technologies have developed consid-
erably with regard to affordability and affordances (Lynch and Redpath,
2014), and mobile devices including tablets such as iPads have become
commonplace in schools. In terms of affordances, touch screens, inbuilt cam-
eras and microphones, as well as a host of quality apps for young children,
mean that tablets present many opportunities for innovation in teaching and
learning. The features mentioned have the potential to make activities such as
multimodal text creation highly motivational and intuitive, even for young
children (Hutchison and Beschorner, 2014).
Researchers have started to advance their understanding of how mobile
devices such as tablets are being used and could be used in homes, centres
and classrooms in ways that affect children’s literacy learning (Clarke and
Abbott, 2016; Lynch and Redpath, 2014; Merchant, 2015; Neumann and
Neumann, 2013; Northrop and Killeen, 2013; Pegrum et al., 2013; Price
et al., 2015). Research on the use of tablets to address literacy learning diffi-
culties has also been conducted, showing considerable potential (Bouvat et al.,
2014; D’Agostino et al. 2015; Milman et al., 2014; Oakley et al., 2013).
Potential benefits of tablets include enhanced motivation (Hatherly and
Chapman, 2013; Merchant, 2015), increased interaction (Falloon and Khoo,
2014) and the capacity for these devices to enable multisensory and embodied
modes of learning and expression that are in keeping with the way young
children learn (Leonard et al., 2016).
Multimodal text creation entails multiple modes of expression, such as
verbal, gestural, musical, visual, written and pictorial (Fellowes and Oakley,
2014). Mobile technologies such as tablets can be an efficient and appealing
tool for creating and reading multimodal texts (Flewitt et al., 2015) and they
can be used in ways that are in alignment with early childhood philosophies,
policies and research on how young children learn. Using tablets to create
multimodal texts can complement play-based learning; children can work in
collaborative groups, playing with one another and with creative ways of rep-
resenting meaning (Brooker and Siraj-Blatchford, 2002). Johnson and Christie
(2009) also argue that play in the context of digital media can enhance learn-
ing, in that it can stimulate social interaction and problem-solving.
The creation of multimodal texts using digital technologies may help young
children to develop their oral language skills as they learn to retell an event in
Oakley et al. 5

sequence, using appropriate vocabulary and sentence structures. The inter-

action around texts as they read and compose them also has the potential to
improve their oral language and communication skills. Their listening com-
prehension and vocabulary can be developed through engaging with multi-
modal digital texts with narration, and this includes children who are ‘at risk’
and children for whom English is a second or additional language (Smeets and
Bus, 2012; Verhallen et al., 2006; Verhallen and Bus, 2010).
If multimodal digital texts include written text, they can help children learn
sight words, because children will often repeatedly see written words while
hearing the corresponding audio when listening to stories (Oakley, 2003).
This is especially so if high-frequency words are built into stories. In the
context of reading, multimodal texts can also facilitate comprehension,
because pictures, animation and video can be supportive of written text
(Doty et al., 2001; Takacs et al., 2015).
Finally, multimodal digital texts can have positive benefits with regard to
attitudes towards literacy. When describing computer-based multimodal texts,
researchers have often found that they can be motivational and more engaging
than paper-based books (De Jong and Bus, 2002; Glasgow, 1996–1997;
Matthew, 1996). They can thus encourage repeated readings, which is benefi-
cial to sight word learning, reading comprehension and fluency development
(Oakley, 2003; Sindelar et al., 1990). In this paper, we add to the literature by
presenting new information about the ways in which the creation of multi-
modal texts using tablets may contribute to the learning of children living in
communities with a low socio-economic index, with an emphasis on reading. It
is recognised, however, that reading cannot be seen in isolation in the context of
multimodal texts, and writing and oral language are also discussed.

Research design
This mixed-methods research was composed of quantitative and qualitative
components to answer the research question: How does the use of mobile
technologies (tablets) to create multimodal stories impact on the literacy
learning of young children?
The quantitative component of the study involved a comparison of
Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPS, 2011) and reading assess-
ment scores of participating and comparison classes after a period of three
school terms in which children were engaged in creating multimodal digital
texts. The two participating schools were compared with a group of compari-
son schools, whose PIPS data use for research purposes had been agreed upon
6 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 0(0)

collection. Comparison schools were selected from the cohort of schools

enrolled in the PIPS programme in 2013 with a similar socio-economic
status to the participating schools, using the Index of Community Socio-
educational Advantage (ICSEA), an index that purports to represent the mag-
nitude of the level of educational advantage that might impact on students’
academic progress (ACARA, 2013). Qualitative data in the form of interviews,
work samples and teacher log books were collected from participating tea-
chers at various points of the intervention.

Participants and settings

Two composite schools (Primary–Secondary), with the same low SES indi-
cated by ICSEA scores, were invited to participate. One was located in a
metropolitan area in WA and the other categorised as remote.
The Australian government MySchool (myschool.edu.au) website shows the
following demographic information (Table 1) for the two schools, in the year
of the project:
Both schools had used PIPS to assess children’s literacy knowledge for at
least nine years. They were selected on the basis that they had used PIPS for a
period of time, on the basis of location (urban/rural) and their ICSEA
score. Once a pool of schools that met these criteria had been identified,
convenience sampling was used on the basis that the two school principals
were in the professional network of the university. One teacher and 12 chil-
dren from the remote school and two teachers and 38 children from the
metropolitan school participated, 18 in one classroom and 19 in the other.
The reason why two classrooms participated in the urban school was because
it was a larger school and both Foundation year classroom teachers wished to
participate. The two urban teachers had 22 and 10 years’ teaching experience

Table 1. School demographic details.

Metropolitan
Rural school school

Total enrolment K–10 (rounded to nearest 240 640

10 to protect anonymity)
Attendance rate 86% 89%
Language background other than English 5% 53%
Indigenous students 31% 10%
Oakley et al. 7

respectively, and the rural teacher was in her third year of teaching. Teachers
indicated that few of the participating students had access to tablets outside
school.

Procedure
Professional learning (PL) sessions
Each participating school was loaned five tablets per classroom, with several
pre-installed apps as well as funding to install additional apps if required. The
teacher at the remote school had previously used drill and practice phonics
apps, but the metropolitan teachers had not used tablets for educational
purposes.
The Foundation year teachers and Education Assistants from the schools
participated in three PL sessions, all of which were 4–5 hours in duration and
hosted at the schools. The first session was held prior to the commencement
of the study. Teachers were taught the basic functions of the tablets and
introduced to several ‘open’ apps, as well as four exemplar learning activities
that employed the apps (Activities 1–4, described in Table 2), which were
designed by the researchers. Research indicates that teachers would like access
to examples of how they might integrate technology into their literacy teach-
ing (Hutchison and Reinking, 2011), so the intention was for the exemplars
to help teachers improve their ability and motivation to use tablets in such
teaching. The PL sessions were hands-on and educators had a chance to try the
apps and discuss them with peers. At the end of Term 2, participating teachers
were shown how to implement two more learning activities (Activities 5 and
6). This PL was conducted in the classroom with the children and teachers
learning together. In Term 3, Activity 7 was conducted in the same way.
Members of the research team were in regular contact with the schools and
support was provided throughout the project.

Exemplar learning activities

Exemplar learning activities were developed by the researchers with reference
to the literature on early childhood pedagogy, literacy learning and integrating
digital technologies into education. Most of them were, essentially digitally
enhanced versions of well-known instructional strategies. Each learning activ-
ity was intended to be carried out in pairs or small groups of children, with an
educator providing guidance. A small range of ‘open’ or creative apps was
suggested, through which children could write text, create images and video,
8 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 0(0)

Table 2. Summary of exemplar activities and suggested apps.

Summary of exemplar activities and suggested apps

Activity and apps Main purpose Description of learning activity

1 e-Language Experience Oral language development Electronic Language Experience

Approach (eLEA) – vocabulary, sequencing,
My Story Book Creator constructing sentences
By Bright Bot, Inc. Concepts about print
Knowledge of letter–sound
relationships
Write about own activities
2 ‘My Friends’, or ‘My Practise writing and reading Children write about familiar topics
Family’ eBook high-frequency words
Feltboard (pronouns) such as ‘this’,
By ‘here’, ‘my’, ‘he’, ‘she’
Software Smoothie and ‘like’.
My Story Book Creator Use capital letters and full Audio narration is added to the story
By Bright Bot, Inc. stops at the beginning
and end of sentences
Write about friends and
family.
3 Alliterative story Improve phonological Using My Story Book Creator, children
My Story Book Creator awareness – initial
By Bright Bot, Inc. sounds
Kid Art for iPad Sound–letter relationships
By GP Apps Write about self
They then draw characters and back-
Approach (eLEA) (Oakley, 2001),
known also as digital language
experience approach (Labbo et al.,
2002), involves children participating
in a multisensory experience in
which the teacher endeavours to
extend their oral language by mod-
elling language and engaging in inter-
action through and about the shared
experience. Children’s oral stories
about the experience are then tran-
scribed by teachers using digital
technologies, with children telling or
audio-recording the words to be
written. Children create images,
sounds and animations to be
included and record a final narration.
using structured sentence frames,
such as: ‘This is my sister’, ‘This is my
brother’, ‘Here I am with my cat’,
‘Here I am with my mum’.
so that children can hear if it ‘sounds
right’ and match written and spoken
words.
make an alliterative class book
about the children in their class. Each
class member, with support from
teachers as needed, orally constructs
an alliterative story using their
own name.
grounds either on iPad (in My Story
or KidArt) or draw/paint pictures on
paper and take photographs using
the iPad. Children also audio-record
their alliterative stories.
(continued)
Oakley et al. 9

Table 2. Continued.

Summary of exemplar activities and suggested apps

Activity and apps Main purpose Description of learning activity

4 Comic strip book Children write simple comic books

ComicBook! with speech bubbles. They can use
By 3DTOPO Inc. photographs of themselves and turn
them into comic book style images
for the stories.
5 Oral dialogues and Oral language Children ask questions and conduct
asking questions Constructing and answer- dialogues through digital puppets,
Sock Puppets ing questions whilst recording the dialogues. They
By Smith Micro can replay the dialogues and reflect
Software, Inc. on what they said, leading to possible
changes and improvements. Teachers
can participate in the reflections and
prompt improvements in oral
expression.
6 Literature response Response to literature Children can participate in drama, role
iMovie Oral language (e.g. retelling, play, music and visual arts, or any
vocabulary) combination of these, to respond to
children’s literature. Responses can
be video recorded using the iPad and
a multimedia digital story can be
composed.
7 Language of Positional language The language of mathematics, including
mathematics Counting counting, numbers and positional
eBook Magic language, can be encouraged using a
By range of hands-on experiences. These
Evergreen Ruby LLC experiences can then be recorded
and made into stories on the iPad.
Means and standard deviations of improvement scores by school and year.

add sound effects, narration, music and animation to compose multimodal

digital stories. These apps (described in the Results section and in Table 2) are
open-ended tools with which children can be creative and make choices to
personalise their learning (Flewitt et al., 2015). They were selected because of
their open-endedness and ease of use, and based on recommendations of
teachers in a previous study (Oakley et al., 2012).
The multimodal texts were intended to be composed collaboratively in
most cases, thus oral language for a variety of communicative purposes was
promoted and activities were based on sociocultural approaches to learning.
Although learning activities focused on creating multimodal digital texts,
10 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 0(0)

because the creation–comprehension or writing–reading relationship is

highly reciprocal in the context of digital text (Oakley, 2017; Walsh and
Simpson, 2013), it was anticipated that gains in reading might be made.
The exemplar learning activities included: (1) electronic or digital Language
Experience Approach (Oakley, 2001) to help children understand the rela-
tionships between oral and written language and concepts about print and
screen and to help them write; (2) writing a digital story about friends and
family, using some specified high-frequency words such as the pronouns
‘this’, ‘here’, ‘my’, ‘she’ and ‘he’, and using full stops; (3) an alliterative
digital story to improve phonological awareness; (4) a digital comic strip
book to motivate writing and promote learning about sequencing; (5) an
animated digital story (without written text) to encourage oral dialogue
and the children to construct and respond to questions; (6) a digital story
of children’s responses to children’s literature, involving drama, music and the
visual arts, and; (7) a digital story using mathematical language, such as
prepositions. Several other open/creative apps were installed on the iPads
and teachers were invited to design an additional activity involving the cre-
ation of multimodal texts, using apps of their choice.

Data collection and analysis

Quantitative data in the form of PIPS data were collected before and after the
project, in February (Term 1) and October (Term 4) of 2013. Data from
the comparison schools collected at the same time were extracted from the
de-identified database of school-level and individual-level data, with permis-
sions to use data for research purposes being granted upon collection. PIPS is a
computerised assessment tool which is administered to children at the begin-
ning and end of the Foundation year of school. The assessment shows both
baseline performance and also progress in Reading, Maths and Phonological
Awareness scales. The scales are internally reliable, with Cronbach’s alphas of
0.95 for Reading, 0.93 for Mathematics and 0.86 for Phonological Awareness
in international contexts (Merrell and Timms, 2007) and across all states and
sectors in Australia (Wildy and Styles, 2008). In the PIPS test, which is admin-
istered one on one by the teacher, reading is assessed in terms of concepts
about print (such as pointing to a full stop), letter naming (upper and lower
case), sight word recognition and reading aloud simple sentences that contain
high-frequency words. Vocabulary is assessed through a picture vocabulary
subtest. In the phonological awareness assessment (which was not used in this
study), children repeat words pronounced by the teacher and identify
Oakley et al. 11

rhyming words (see Merrell and Timms, 2007). Comprehension and fluency
are not assessed.
The quantitative component of the study allowed comparisons of progress
in the reading of participating school cohorts relative to their performance at
the start of the year, with similar cohorts of Foundation students from com-
parison schools. The progress of participating school cohorts, relative to their
performance at the start of the year, was also compared to their own school
cohort progress in the previous 10 years of completing PIPS testing.
This provided additional information with which to examine the possible
impact of the tablet-based instructional strategies. It is worth noting that in
2013, mean baseline PIPS scores for each of the two participating schools did
not differ significantly t(48) ¼ 0.81, p > .05 with an average of 43.37 at the
urban school and 37.00 at the rural school. Baseline scores at the participating
schools also did not differ significantly t(731) ¼ 0.65, p > .05 from baseline
scores at the comparison schools (M ¼ 43.80).
To assess students’ improvement over the year in reading, four independent
sample t-tests were performed using students’ reading scores from PIPS.
Students were tested in Term 1 and again in Term 4 so that improvements
over the school year could be calculated. The first pair of tests sought to
determine whether there was a significant difference in students’ improve-
ments in the year of the project compared to those in the previous 10 years at
the same school. The metropolitan school only had nine years of PIPS data so
their scores were compared to those of the previous nine years. The second
pair of t-tests sought to determine whether students from the schools involved
in the project improved significantly more than those from comparison
schools.
Qualitative data in the form of semi-structured interviews with participat-
ing teachers were collected twice, towards the end of school Term 2 and at the
end of the intervention. Teachers were asked ten questions about the use of
the tablet-based activities and how they thought they were affecting students’
literacy learning and development in terms of EYLF outcomes. In addition,
teachers kept log books in which they wrote about the learning activities they
had implemented and their observations of children’s engagement and learn-
ing, as well as any challenges encountered.
Interviews were transcribed and analysed using steps suggested by Creswell
(2012) to capture the educators’ views about how the use of tablets to create
multimodal texts had impacted on children’s literacy learning. Teachers’ log
books were used mainly to discover how they had implemented the exemplar
learning activities in their classrooms. These were not used to assess ‘fidelity of
12 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 0(0)

treatment’, as this exploratory project was not set up in a prescriptive way.

Rather, a set of exemplar learning activities were offered to the teachers to
help them use iPads to further children’s literacy learning. Teachers were free
to use their professional judgement to modify the activities as they saw fit, to
suit the context and the needs and interests of the children in their classes. The
teachers in the two schools made slightly different choices and it is thus best
to see the two schools as separate cases.
Ethics permission from The University of Western Australia (Permission
number RA/4/1/5851) and from the school system (the Department of
Education, WA, Reference number D130084519) was secured. School prin-
cipals, participating teachers, children and their parents were given informa-
tion letters and consent forms. Children had the research explained to them by
parents and teachers and all indicated informed consent on an age-appropriate
consent form. They were informed that they did not have to participate and
could stop at any time. Their teachers, who worked with them in creating the
stories, knew that they should ensure that children were participating freely.
There were other literacy centres that they could engage in if they did not
wish to participate. Parents of children in the study were advised in an infor-
mation letter that PIPS data would be used as part of the evaluation of the
innovation. PIPS data were de-identified at school and individual levels, and
permission for use for research purposes in this form had been given at the
point of accessing the PIPS each year. Those children not participating in the
research were allowed to engage in the iPad activities if they wished.

Results
Teachers at each school implemented the activities slightly differently accord-
ing to the needs of their students and other factors, such as technical diffi-
culties and support available. The activities implemented at each school are
briefly described before results in terms of children’s learning and teacher
perspectives are presented.

Metropolitan school
The two teachers at the metropolitan school (Kaylee and Renae – pseudo-
nyms) collaboratively planned for their Foundation year students and imple-
mented the same activities. The description below is drawn from their logs
and interviews. At the beginning of the project, both teachers said that they
would rate their own attitude towards using iPads in the classroom as 8/10,
Oakley et al. 13

and this did not change when asked again at the end of the project. Though
this is a blunt self-report measure, it may give some indication of teacher
motivation and confidence.
Kaylee and Renae implemented the majority of the exemplar learning
activities outlined in Table 2, but emphasised four of them, namely:
Activity 2, writing a multimodal text about friends and family using some
specified high-frequency words such as pronouns, ‘this’, ‘here’, ‘my’, ‘she’,
and ‘he’, and using full stops; Activity 5, an animated digital story (without
written text) to encourage oral dialogue and the children to construct/
respond to questions; Activity 6, a digital story of children’s responses to
children’s literature, involving drama, music and the visual arts and Activity
7, a multimodal text using mathematical language, such as prepositions,
shapes and numbers.
The My Story Book Creator app, by Bright Bots, Inc., was used by children
throughout the period of the intervention to create multimodal texts about
themselves and their families. This app was also used to create multimodal
retells of familiar stories. The tablets were set up as learning centres,
which children rotated through four mornings a week; thus, the children
had an opportunity to work on their digital texts four times a week for
approximately 20–30 minutes each time. This was part of the teacher’s pro-
gramme, not an additional activity. Throughout the three school terms, stu-
dents regularly used FeltBoard by Software Smoothie to create pictures to import
into their stories. They also used this app to play barrier games as a means of
improving oral language. Kid Art by GP Apps was another app that was fre-
quently used to create pictures that could be imported into digital stories. This
app was used mainly to develop children’s numeracy, including mathematical
language. The fourth app that was employed frequently was Sock Puppets by
Smith Micro Software, Inc., which became the main oral language learning
activity in Term 4. Children used this app to ask and answer questions through
humorous sock puppet characters. It is not the intention of this article to
promote particular products and readers are advised that there are many
apps that may be similar to the ones used in this study.

PIPS results: Metropolitan school. PIPS results showed improvements in reading. An

independent t-test showed that the reading scores of the students in this
school improved significantly more in the year of the project than they had
in the previous nine years t(235) ¼ 6.1, p < .05, with a mean improvement of
76.42 in the intervention year (standard deviation [SD] ¼ 26.54) and a mean
improvement of only 46.37 in the previous nine years (SD ¼ 28.07).
14 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 0(0)

An independent samples t-test also found that students’ reading scores at

the metropolitan school improved significantly more in the intervention year
than those from the comparison schools: t(370) ¼ 3.62, p < .05. The mean
improvement at the school was 76.42 (SD 26.54), whilst the mean improve-
ment in comparison schools was 60.34 (SD 25.89). However, as can be seen
from Table 3, the two years prior to the project had also seen high gain scores
so there may have been other school-based factors at play. The gain score
(76.42) did not differ significantly t(64) ¼ 0.37, p > .05 from the previous
year (78.93), so it can be concluded that the use of the tablets did not detract
from learning.

Teacher observations: Metropolitan school. The two teachers from the metropolitan
school reported that they had observed many improvements in the children’s
literacy, most notably in oral language skills such as pronunciation, listening
skills, the ability to construct and respond to questions and oral retelling.
Renae felt that the activities she had implemented, all of which enabled chil-
dren to interact and collaborate with each other, gave students ‘a voice’. In
terms of writing, Renae observed that writing multimodally using tablets
allowed children to express themselves and tell stories, even if their hand-
writing and traditional writing (and drawing) skills were not well developed.
She also noted that children would edit their stories more readily when in a
digital multimodal form and that they seemed more motivated to complete
tasks to a high standard. This would involve them paying more attention to the

Table 3. Mean improvement and standard deviation in improvement

scores, by calendar year at the urban school.

Standard deviation
Year Mean improvement (improvement scores) N

2005 31.62 12.01 34

2006 31.46 14.02 26
2007 48.90 21.58 21
2008 28.95 9.99 19
2009 32.67 19.22 21
2010 43.67 25.92 33
2011 83.59 21.88 17
2012 78.93 28.68 28
2013 76.42 26.54 38
Oakley et al. 15

spellings of words, as well as sentence structure – skills that would transfer to

reading. Furthermore, her students seemed better able to self-evaluate their
work due to the multiple modes of the texts. For example, they could listen to
the narrations they had made and decide if they sounded right and made
sense. Both teachers reported that engaging in creating multimodal texts using
tablets appeared to have increased the children’s confidence in themselves and
their willingness and ability to collaborate with other students. It had also
enabled them to experience success. As Kaylee noted: You know, they’ve all succeeded
in what they’re doing.

Remote school
The teacher at the remote school, Julia, drew on the exemplar learning activ-
ities to suit her classroom context. According to interview data and her log
book, she primarily used three of the activities, namely: Activity 2, writing a
multimodal text about friends and family, using specified high-frequency
words such as pronouns, ‘this’, ‘here’, ‘my’, ‘she’ and ‘he’, and using full
stops; Activity 5, an animated digital story (without written text) to encour-
age oral dialogue and constructing/responding to questions; and Activity 6, a
multimodal text of children’s responses to children’s literature, involving
drama, music and the visual arts. She heavily used multimodal text creation
as a means through which children could respond to children’s literature. For
example, children created several retells of traditional tales they had
been reading in class, such as The Three Billy Goats Gruff. They also wrote
their names and drew pictures of themselves using My Story Book Creator,
along with an audio-recorded description of some of their favourite things,
to make a digital class story. They wrote short multimodal digital narratives
based on known stories and, using the Felt Board app, they practised writing
high frequency words, as well as oral questioning using PuppetPals. Students
also used a whiteboard app to do a text innovation of the book Brown Bear, Brown
Bear, What Do You See? by Martin (1984). Julia observed that the use of tablets
seemed to encourage children to share and discuss their learning activities
with each other in a positive manner and that it enhanced their willingness to
reflect on their work. As was the case at the metropolitan school, Julia had
learning centres set up and children rotated around these during the literacy
block four days a week, and could use the tablets for up to 40 minutes per
session.
Julia rated her attitude as 1 out of 10 when asked at the beginning of the
project and 8 or 9 at the end. This means that in the earlier weeks, she may
16 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 0(0)

not have been as enthusiastic and confident as she was at the end, and this may
have influenced her teaching.

PIPS results: Remote school. PIPS scores indicated improvements in the participat-
ing children’s reading. The scores of the children in the remote school
improved significantly more in the year of the project than they had in the
previous 10 years, t(131) ¼ 5.34, p < .05 with the mean improvement in the
year (M ¼ 59.66, SD ¼ 21.33) being significantly higher than that of the pre-
vious 10 years (M ¼ 33.18, SD ¼ 15.86). However, there was no significant
difference between improvements in reading at this school and comparison
schools during the year: t(193) ¼ 1.01, p > .05, with the mean improvement
at comparison schools being 67.92 (SD 27.76). There are many possible
explanations for this, including a slightly lower baseline, a high proportion
of Indigenous students, a rural location and an early career teacher. As can be
seen from Table 4, the mean improvement in the year of the project was
considerably higher than in the previous year.

Teacher observations: Remote school. Like the teachers at the metropolitan school,
Julia observed (using her regular classroom assessment techniques) improve-
ments in children’s oral language and social interaction skills and observed
that, when using the tablets to create texts, children were listening to each

Table 4. Mean improvement and standard deviation in improvement

scores, by calendar year at rural school.

Standard deviation
Year Mean improvement (improvement scores) N

2003 44.80 28.71 10

2004 28.11 12.91 9
2005 31.59 11.12 17
2006 26.17 10.19 12
2007 28.61 13.59 18
2008 35.33 9.37 12
2009 33.67 20.65 9
2010 27.67 11.34 9
2011 38.71 17.49 14
2012 39.09 14.36 11
2013 59.67 21.33 12
Oakley et al. 17

other more carefully. Like Renae and Kaylee, she observed that the students’
motivation to engage in writing tasks was better in the context of using
the tablets, as was their persistence in completing tasks, even if they encoun-
tered problems.
Julia reported that through multimodally retelling print stories they had
read (which entailed sequencing events and thinking about narrative text
structure), she was of the opinion that students’ reading comprehension
had improved. In this way, the reading–writing connection may have been
supported.

Discussion
The results suggest that the use of tablets in Foundation year classrooms in low
SES schools may have the potential to play a part in improving reading scores
(as measured by PIPS) when carefully designed activities involving multi-
modal digital text creation using ‘open’ apps are put into place. This indicates
that there may be value in building the reading–writing connection in the
early years, through the creation of multimodal texts using tablets. Children in
both of the participating schools showed significant improvements in PIPS
reading assessments, even though the teachers in each school implemented
the exemplar activities slightly differently, using their professional judgement.
Because we were unable to measure the exact length of time spent on the
activities, it is acknowledged that the two schools may have spent unequal
amounts of time on them, although both embedded them into their literacy
block as learning centres four mornings per week over three school terms and
did not report spending extra time on this curriculum area.
It is suggested that the activities that children engaged in, using tablets,
acted to support (rather than ‘deliver’, to use Burnett’s term) reading skills.
Unlike the software that Burnett found to be used to ‘deliver’ literacy, this
software was open-ended and creative, not closed and behaviourist in orien-
tation. Activities were not drill and skill based, but involved the creation of
meaningful texts in contexts in which children could be creative and playful.
Here, children practised writing words and sentences, including high-
frequency words. Their learning about high-frequency words, spellings and
sentences should theoretically help them identify words in their reading and
improve their concepts about print, which are aspects measured by PIPS.
In addition, teachers reported that the multimodal digital text creation
activities appeared to have improved oral language and social interaction.
This may be partly attributed to each tablet acting as a ‘site for interaction
18 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 0(0)

around texts’ (Burnett, 2010) – children were found by all three teachers to
be highly collaborative with each other when undertaking the activities and
keen to share their stories with others, as well as making constructive com-
ments to each other. This supports Falloon and Khoo’s (2014) finding that the
use of tablets in classrooms can lead to increased interaction. (Oral vocabulary
is also measured in the PIPS picture vocabulary test, which is part of the
Reading component of the test.)
Also, teachers observed improvements in children’s writing, particularly in
their writing processes such as their willingness and ability to discuss, review
and edit work to make it meaningful to themselves and others. In this way,
technology was successfully used ‘as a medium for meaning making’
(Burnett, 2010). It is acknowledged that students’ writing (either traditional
or digital multimodal) was not formally assessed by researchers in this pro-
ject, although teachers conducted their usual classroom assessments, which
informed their interview comments.
As found by Hutchison and Beschorner (2014), tablets were perceived by
teachers to be motivational and easy to use by the participating children.
Teachers reported that the activities using tablets led to improved confidence
and persistence in students, which may have been linked to successful task
completion and an increased ability of the children to self-evaluate and peer-
evaluate their work. There is a chance that a novelty effect was at play, but the
duration of this project was three school terms, so it seems reasonable to
expect that any novelty effect would have at least partially worn off by the
third term. None of the teachers mentioned any reduction of children’s motiv-
ation as the academic year progressed.
This study was not without limitations. Like many studies that attempt to
gauge the impact of new instructional strategies or interventions in less than
experimental conditions, this study contains a number of threats to validity.
The first is that the participating classes were not equivalent in all respects,
although the socioeconomic indices of the schools were the same and baseline
PIPS reading scores were not statistically different. Students were not ran-
domly assigned to schools or classes, nor were they matched in pairs.
Teachers were not randomly assigned to schools or classes. Literacy/English
programmes were not necessarily the same, although both schools were gov-
ernment schools which were expected to adopt the same curriculum, with the
same guidelines for how much time per week should be spent on the English
curriculum. Attendance was an issue in both schools, with the rural school
having an attendance rate of 86% and the metropolitan school having a similar
attendance rate of 89%. As indicated in the Participants and settings section of
Oakley et al. 19

this article, the cultural mix of the classes varied, with a greater proportion of
Indigenous students in one school than the other, where students came from a
greater range of cultural backgrounds. Teacher motivation may have varied
and we do not have accurate measures of that variable, despite recognising the
impact of the teachers on students’ learning. However, teachers were asked to
rate their attitudes to using an iPad in the classroom at the beginning and end
of the year, as mentioned in the Results section. Teacher expectation of stu-
dents’ capacity to learn is a variable for which we do not have data.
Implementation fidelity is another variable over which we did not have con-
trol, because we did not observe or monitor the classroom activities and, in
any case, we were not prescriptive as to how teachers should implement the
exemplar activities. A further limitation is that restricted data were collected
on the finer details of how the educators implemented the exemplar multi-
modal digital text creation activities in their classrooms. Although teacher logs
were available for analysis, as well as interview data, observation in classrooms
would have been desirable. Also, PIPS does not measure oral language in any
detailed way, apart from oral vocabulary through a picture vocabulary test.
Further study is thus warranted to measure children’s oral language growth at
the word, sentence and text levels. It would also be advantageous to more
formally assess improvement in writing. Finally, it is acknowledged that,
although PIPS measures several aspects of reading, it does not set out to
assess all aspects of literacy, including comprehension processes or fluency.
Such threats to validity in the design and implementation of this study indicate
that the results should be treated with caution and we can neither be certain that
the effects were due to the project nor that the findings can be generalised. That
said, we offer our research as an exploratory study to add to the growing
interest in the use of digital technology for the creation of multimodal texts
to support the literacy learning of young children.
The study adds to knowledge by indicating that creating such texts, using
tablets, may help children improve their reading as well as writing and oral
language. It is acknowledged, though, that any improvements could have been
due to the underlying pedagogies upon which the technologically enhanced
versions were based. For example, the teachers may have been scaffolding
story retells with more vigour and rigour than usual, and it was this attention
to pedagogy, not the technological enhancement, that led to improved PIPS
results. There may have been other, unknown factors at play, such as school
attendance factors.
The results of this study seem to highlight the reciprocity between learning
reading and writing, as well as speaking and listening, across both traditional and
20 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 0(0)

multimodal texts. The activities were primarily focused on writing, yet reading
scores improved according to PIPS data. This should not be surprising as it is well
known that reading and writing are intimately related and that improvements in
knowledge in such aspects as decoding, word recognition, vocabulary and text
structures can lead to improvements in both reading and writing.
Possible reasons for any improvements in the students’ reading include
increased interaction, persistence and reflection by the children when using
tablets to create multimodal texts. This may be linked with Kuby and Vaughn’s
(2015) finding that the creation of multimodal artefacts can enhance children’s
sense of agency and identity; children can collaborate, discuss, make choices
and have increased ownership over the process of learning when they are
provided with tools with which to easily and creatively use multiple modes
of expression. Participating teachers also noted improvements in children’s oral
language, and more confidence and motivation in the area of writing when
engaged in multimodal text creation activities using tablets.
As already explained, the children at the two participating schools seemed
to benefit, according to PIPS results, as their improvement over the school year
was significantly higher than the mean improvement of previous cohorts over
the previous nine or ten years. However, the rural school did not improve
more than comparison schools. It should be noted that the rural school may
have faced different challenges to the urban school, and even to many com-
parison schools, because it had a relatively high Indigenous population, the
sole Foundation year teacher was an early career teacher and the school (being
rural) did not have access to the same level of technical support. Finally, the
rural teacher started out with a less positive attitude towards using iPads in the
classroom than the two urban teachers. Also, the urban school had seen
improvements for the two previous years also, so factors other than the tablets
may have been at play.

Concluding comments
As noted in the Discussion section, the results of this study indicate that the
creation of multimodal texts using tablets in early years classrooms may assist
children from low SES communities improve various aspects of their literacy in an
enjoyable way, which at the same time improves their use of digital technology.
Although more research certainly needs to be carried out, the authors
hope that this article may help teachers plan multimodal digital text-writing
activities using tablets to enhance children’s reading, writing and oral
language in both traditional and digital multimodal forms. The article also
Oakley et al. 21

provides insights into the reciprocity between reading and writing, in

the context of both digital multimodal and more traditional literacy practices.
This is also an area that warrants further research.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Public Education Endowment Trust for funding this
project. We would like to express appreciation to the participants in schools and to
the UWA colleagues who supported this project, particularly those who generously
provided professional development to participating teachers.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors received financial support
from the Public Endowment Trust.

ORCID iD
Grace Oakley http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1177-1738.

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