I have thoroughly enjoyed this paper as it has allowed me to
view technology through a much wider lens. I have enjoyed reading my peers
reflections and seeing what parts of technology they use with children. I have
enjoyed getting my feedback and seeing the different ways I could take the use
of technology in my centre. Overall I have enjoyed seeing the enjoyment of
children being able to achieve goals through using technology. I believe that
technology is of vital importance in the field of early childhood education. My
belief in this has been verified by the experiences that I have had over this
assignment. I have witnessed the learning that occurs when a child is left
alone with a piece of technology, Skills such as problem solving, turn taking
and trial and error are all skills that help the children develop into lifelong
learners. This is supported by Ministry of Education (1996) which states that “Children
develop: Confidence in using a variety of strategies for exploring and making
sense of the world, such as in setting and solving problems, looking for
patterns, classifying things for a purpose, guessing, using trial and error,
thinking logically and making comparisons, asking questions, explaining to
others, listening to others, participating in reflective discussion, planning,
observing, and listening to stories” (p.88). I understand that these items that seem very
insignificant to us in our teaching are paving the future for the children that
we teach. I have found out during this
assignment that even the simplest of objects like the ball point pen is a piece
of technology that we can use with the children. Everyday objects that I would
never have considered to be technology, but fit under Smorti (1999) explanation
of “Technology is also a creative and purposeful activity aimed at meeting
needs and opportunities through the development of products, systems or
environments. Knowledge, skills and resources are combined to find solutions;
and there may be more than one solution to the problem” (p.5).
As I mentioned previously I thoroughly enjoyed getting
feedback from my peers about my experiences. One piece of feedback I particularly
liked was Krissy’s feedback on my pen reflection. Krissy wrote about allowing the children to
use a feather and ink which I had never thought of. I believe this is a great
idea and I feel that it is a great idea to teach children where this piece of
technology has come from. Krissy also brought up the issue of safety around
children using pens. In my centre children are not allowed to use pens on a
daily basis or unsupervised. If they ask to use a pen they have to be monitored
to make sure that they are using the en correctly.
The feedback that I received from Lucy was amazing. She
suggested some websites that I should take a look at. On one of the websites I found
some suggestions as to where I could go with the camera and the child in the
form of extending on this experience. One of the suggestions was to take the
photo and talk about what the child could see in the photo, name some of the
objects they have taken photos of and expand on their vocabulary. I did this
and it was a great exercise and has led to a keen interest in bugs and creepy
crawlies in my centre.
Annalicia talked about not knowing what a sunfish was and
using Google to find out what I was talking about. I see this as a great
example of using technology to learn about the unknown. This was the same
process the children and I went through to learn about the Sunfish and was a great
experience. Annalicia suggested that the children and I take this experience
and extend on it by searching other fish species. We have done this and found a
whole range of species of fish that the children enjoyed doing activities with.
This interest is an on-going one in my centre at the present time.
References:
Ministry
of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He
whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa : Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning
Media.
Smorti, S. (1999) Technology in early
childhood. Early Education, 1, 5-10.
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