Summary CaseStudy

COGNITIVE DOMAIN 
Teachers were interviewed, one-to-one, and were asked in 
the online survey to consider degrees of educational or 
cognitive value to using individual interactive devices in the 
classroom.
While, no one claims the impact of these technologies has 
a negative impact on child cognitive development. It 
appears 22% (Fig. 7) or 2 respondents of 18, feel that 
these technologies have no impact on cognition in children, 
while 78% feel the impact is positive.
The questioning of the educational value and the feeling 
that interactive technologies have a positive effect on child 
cognition reflect somewhat contradictory or conflicted 
perspectives.
Further comments made by teachers were coded to reveal theme patterns in how teachers view 
technology impacts on child cognition. These are shown in Table 2. 
Table 2. excerpts from teachers online survey reflecting sentiment towards the impact of interactive technology 
on child cognition. 
Learning process
Learning style
Skills
increase readiness
visual
languages
promote independence
kinesthetic
ICT (x2)
instant feedback
auditory
maths
mode competency
perception
vocabulary
higher-order thinking
applied learning
Fig. 7 Online Survey responses from teachers: 
impact on child cognitive development 
Fig. 8 Survey with 16 primary school children showing counts of interactive devices available in their 
classrooms and their favourite interactive devices

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Devices and Learning Preferences 
Descriptions by children of their preferred devices may indicate a reduction in the use of iPad 
technology once the move is made from IWB to ISB, which may be a source for concern, considering 
the a sizeable portion of students state a preference for individual learning opportunities.
Preference for whole class or individual learning with interactive technology, are arrived at from their 
responses to these two questions: describe your favourite activity and describe how you learn best.
We see in Fig. 8 that children are almost equally split across whole class and individual learning 
ISB + IWB = 9 
iPad + laptop = 7 
Further examination of the data by gender reveals what appear to be strong preferences across the 
categories when gender is factored. 
Gender 
Of 7 boys 5 prefer whole class learning, of 9 girls, 5 prefer individual learning. 
Fig. 9 appears to reveal a marked 
preference among boys for whole 
class activities. While girls are almost 
equally split between individual and 
whole class activities. 
The categories used in Fig. 10 in 
relation to learning style are derived. 
This is described further below.
Fig. 10a indicates all girls’ favourite 
actives are self-directed, with four of 9 
preferring games (potentially problem-
solving meaningful learning (Mayer, 
2009). 
Fig. 9 Preferred devices by gender: 9 girls, 7 boys 
Fig. 10 (Aggregated) Preferred activities and preferred learning styles. 

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Fig. 10b would also seem to show that while boys almost all prefer to learn by doing, girls are 50% 
more likely to prefer learning though verbal or multi-sensory input.
These insights suggest, contrary to statements gathered in interviews, where class teachers identified 
age and not gender as factors which influence the children use of interact technologies, that gender is 
an significant factor in multi-media learning.
Age
The influence of age could not be adequately tested as 
while the spread of ages represented was broad the 
representation of different ages within the sample was 
skewed.