Digitalisation is one of the key areas of this decade, and digital transformation is one of the most important substantive goals and strategies. This is also reflected in education at all levels. Data and practise have shown that future professionals in education will need additional knowledge in the field of digitalisation. In the academic years 2023/24 and 2024/25, we redesigned the Child in Society course in the Preschool Education programme at the Faculty of Education at the University of Ljubljana with the aim of strengthening the digital skills of future kindergarten teachers. The redesign of the course took place in several steps. The first step was a formal step with the update of the curriculum, the second step was the inclusion of digital content in the course itself and the third step was the evaluation. We made several changes to the implementation of the course in terms of the use of digital technology in the study process, both in exercises and lectures. For group work, students used tablet computers, they used the Shi fu smart globe, they deepened their knowledge of working with shared documents (as Google Docs), they used Mentimeter and Kahoot, presentation preparation applications such as PowerPoint, Canva and Prezi, video editing applications such as Movie Maker, Canva and Capcut, and we used the Arnes online classroom (Moodle) where students published their work and where all digital study materials were also available. We created digital study materials entitled Children in Society, which included digital links to resources and QR codes. In the academic year 2024/25, we conducted qualitative research on a sample of 41 third-year students of the Preschool Education programme at the Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana. At the end of the course, the students answered open-ended questions in digital form. We investigated the research question of how students evaluated the integration of digitalisation into the course. The analysis showed that the students acquired some new knowledge in the field of digitalisation. The following should be emphasised: learning digital games, the knowledge acquired through the use of tablet computers, the use of ChatGpt, applications for video editing, the use of a platform for submitting assignments, a smart globe, an application for editing videos and preparing presentations, Canva, etc. Some students were very satisfied and in favour of integrating digitalisation into the study process, while others were more reluctant. The survey showed that the area of digitalisation among future preschool teachers needs to be further researched and developed, especially with regard to a meaningful and safe integration of digitalisation in kindergartens.

This contribution was written as part of the NOO 5.02 project Improving the digital skills and competences of (future) educators for quality education and training with young children.

Keywords: Child in society, digitalisation, applications, study programme reform, students, competences.