Investigating verbal interactions when primary chidren use computers

This paper is based upon some early results of a research project currently underway at Edith Cowan University to investigate the nature of young children's interactions centred on and around the use of new technologies for learning. The research focused on children working in dyads on a single computer‐based language task; the software used was chosen to facilitate children's talk. This paper reports a number of findings, including the difficulties of predicting the quality of children's interactions at the computer; the likely significance of a wide range of factors that influence children's interactions; and, the lack of patterns in children's interactions over time. From the analysis of the data, two categorisations are given which might be useful to guide further research into the nature of children's interactions using the computer. The first categorisation is a checklist of verbal interaction types, and the second, a checklist for metacognitive components in children's interactions.