DIGITAL HANDBOOKS FOR PRIMARY EDUCATION – A PSYCHO-PEDAGOGICAL ANALYSIS ON DESIGN
DIGITAL HANDBOOKS FOR PRIMARY EDUCATION – A PSYCHO-PEDAGOGICAL ANALYSIS ON DESIGN

Summary/Abstract: It is one year now from the launching of the new digital handbooks developed for the first and the second grades of primary education in Romania. While there have been previous experiences with developing education software for schools, the switch to digital handbooks at national level starting from the first grades is something new. Therefore, piloting and validating the new digital handbooks as well as collecting users feedback on the use of such means for teaching primary students are needed. This need is also an urgent one as the process of developing digital handbooks for the following grades is ongoing and digital handbooks for the third grade are already introduced in the system. The article will survey similar experiences from other countries and discuss learned lessons and implications for design, development work in interdisciplinary teams and actual work of the teachers and pupils with the digital handbooks as well as current trends in the international literature in this field. The multifarious factors conditioning the implementation success of these resources are discussed (developers training/approach, teachers training, available equipment, conditions of learning) and teachers and students voice is considered with regard to formulating suggestions for improvement to different actors: teachers, pupils and digital handbook publishers. We will analyse in this article how the new developed digital handbooks meet on the one hand the users expectations, and on the other hand the principles of designing educational digital resources, as well as it will explore possible ways of improvement and redesign according to the psycho-pedagogical principles of design.

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