‘I’m a completely different person at home’: using digital technologies to connect learning between home and school L. Grant Futurelab, Bristol, UK and University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Abstract This paper reports on a qualitative study exploring children’s, parents’, and teachers’ experi- ences of communication between home and school and connections between children’s learn- ing at school and home in order to consider how using digital technologies to mediate the home–school relationship might support children’s learning. Parents, teachers, and children welcomed the idea of using digital technologies to communicate between home and school, hoping that more timely communication could avoid problems at school. There were few con- nections between learning at home and in school; participants saw school and home as separate domains and the boundaries between the two were strongly maintained. It is argued that for connections to be made between learning at home and in school, elements of both need to be drawn together in a space in which both are valued, and that digital technologies could support the creation of such virtual third spaces. Keywords digital technologies, funds of knowledge, home–school links, out-of-school learning, parents, third spaces. Introduction The communication and connection between chil- dren’s home environments and their schools is a critical subject to consider if we wish to support children’s learning in the widest sense. The prevalence of digital technologies in UK schools and homes, their use in both formal and informal learning activities, and growing ubiquity as communication media, make tech- nology use an obvious site in which to explore and develop connections between children’s learning at home and in school. In the UK, supporting links between home and school has been a priority for poli- cymakers, with a range of policies and strategies aimed at increasing parents’ engagement with school and children’s learning (e.g. DCSF 2009). Children do not leave their out-of-school lives behind when they enter school, but bring with them the values, skills, knowledge and interests from their homes and commu- nities. If education aims to enable children to partici- pate socially, economically, and culturally in the world in which they live, it needs to connect with the rest of their lives. The lack of opportunities children have to use their out-of-school experiences in school or apply their school learning to daily life was described by John Dewey as the ‘great waste of school’ (Dewey 1956), a situation that could be argued to still apply today. This paper draws on research from a study exploring parents’, teachers’, and children’s experiences of, and perspectives on, the relationship between home and school in two UK secondary schools. The study aimed to understand the context of social tensions, politics, and cultures in the home–school relationship in order to Accepted: 23 May 2011 Correspondence: Lyndsay Grant, Graduate School of Education, Uni- versity of Bristol, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 1JA, UK. Email: lyndsay.grant@bristol.ac.uk doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00433.x Special issue 292 © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (2011), 27, 292–302