The work we are presenting here is part of a research project on teaching practices involving ICTs during early childhood education, which has also included studying the learning process in the classes analysed to understand how the pupils acquire digital skills. When addressing the study of pupils’ learning within that experience, we initially face the question of what we should assess, whether traditional knowledge on matters of infant education or the expertise specifically required for the handling of ICTs. This latter option was the one adopted, as distinguishing between the curricular learning attributable or not to ICTs is impossible under the direct teaching conditions in our target classrooms. An intensive study model had been adopted on real practices with ICTs, given that a systemic analysis could be made of the curricular practices with ICTs of participating teachers and pupils. Furthermore, the assessment of the learning of the digital skills by the pupils in the study rendered it especially expedient to understand this process within a school setting. We therefore had to consider the nature of the conditions of curricular development in which the practices related to the acquisition of the multimedia skills subject to assessment unfolded.

With a view to assessing the pupils’ learning especially related to the multimedia skills developed with the project’s ICT resource, an assessment worksheet was prepared according to the analysis of different aspects of the evaluation target, which were as follows:

1. Physical description of the technology resource. An analysis was made accordingly of those aspects involving the skills required for handling the hardware.

2. Teaching materials presented on CD-Rom and basic software programs (Paint, Word, browsers). Regarding the matter in hand, a study was made of the skills required for handling the software loaded onto the computers.

3. Practices undertaken with the ICT resource in the classrooms taking part in the research. The analysis of the classroom sessions recorded over the 2009-10 school year allowed identifying five working strategies with the ICT resource detected when observing how the teachers organised the pupils when they were allocated their turns on the computer.

The outcome of this analysis was the design of a single assessment worksheet that was applied to the pupils throughout the 2010-11 school year in order to evaluate their learning in areas related to the digital skills involving the ICT resource. This initial worksheet was modified according to the results obtained through its application. On the one hand, this simplified the content of the worksheet and, on the other, it allowed differentiating between the worksheets for the first, second and third years of early childhood education. In addition, different worksheets were also used for the first and second terms, with there always being a fewer number of items to be assessed during the first term than in the second. This new version of the assessment worksheet is being applied during the 2011-12 school year.

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