Final reflection.

In response to the sharing the journey entry, a number of comments are made about limiting children’s screen time which I found interesting. I am not sure how this would work as I have not seen it but I would anticipate resistance. Perhaps if if all about how the rules or limits are discussed with the children.  The children’s perceptions of computers would also be shaped by their home experiences of computer use.  I really appreciate Emma’s comment about taking a balanced approach and thoughtful planning around ICT implementation.  With the ultimate responsibility lying at the feet of the teachers it is vital that we have learning opportunities such as these to gain the knowledge necessary to keep our children safe and enhance their learning.   

Through reflecting on the gardening entry comments I have realised that our centre garden may partly service the children’s meal needs while at the centre but it really would be great to grow plenty and have extra produce to share with the centre whānau.  This could possibly even lead into sharing recipes to use with the new produce. I love the idea of children taking something that they have cared for and grown home to share with their families. This conveys great value for the effort & work that they have put into the garden too.

I really enjoyed thinking about the simple tools that are in the centre and that the children use in their daily lives. This course has really highlighted the importance of providing plenty of opportunities for children to use simple tools.  I have become much more aware of the benefits of their use and how hard it would be to live without them.

I feel it is important to provide these opportunities as lots of people have not had the benefit of this exposure and have not developed the skills to use them, this is particularly important at such a young age.  Recently I wanted to make up a wooden trolley to use in the centre. I gathered together the materials and necessary tools and took them into the centre. The children were very curious and wanted to give everything a try. Many of the adults were unfamiliar with an old fashioned manual drill, a mitre box and things I thought were quite common tools. On reflection I realised that I am quite a practical person who has always been involved with craft & construction activitis where as others may not have had any exposure to these tools before. This seems a bit sad really as using  these simple tools to follow through a process and achieve a finished piece of construction was a very satisfying experience.  For the children involved it was an opportunity to focus their energy and concentration and follow through a construction that they felt very proud of on completion.

Overall I have grown in my understanding of the broad arrange of technology in our centre environment and immediate neighbourhood. Through the experience of creating and using our blogs I have grown in confidence and awareness of the potential for sharing our learning that a blog provides.  I can see that blogs could be a great tool to share the learning that goes on in a school or early childhood environment. However there are certain cybersafety issues that come along with this and teachers carry the responsibility to collaborate with parents and centre whānau to help teach children how to keep themselves safe. We also have a great responsibility to scaffold and enhance children’s experiences with technology in order the enhance their learning.  However I feel that this responsibility is full of possibility and potential for a wonderful journey which we can share with the children and their whānau.

Comments on other blogs

Comments on other's blogs.

Comment on Emma's blog 1
Comment on Emma's blog 2

Comment on Melissa's camera blog entry
Comment on Melissa's glue, scissors, selotape, glue gun blog entry

Comment on Liyan's reflection two: spray bottles
Comment on Liyan's refelction three: computer games
Comment on Liyan's reflection one: camera usage

Comment on Luahine's refelction 1: computer develop literacy
Comment on Luahine's refelction 2: using phones to enhance numeracy skills
comment on Luahine's reflection 3: using camera

Fa's hammer reflection 
Fa's computer reflection

Sharing the journey.

My home centre has recently acquired a computer for the childrens use and have set it up near the writing table in the centre. A few of the teachers discussed how we would introduce the computer and appropriate use of this new resource to the children. It was decided that we would let the children practice gentle key strokes and fine motor skills on existing keyboards that are not connected so that the children would have opportunities to practice and demonstrate their understanding of appropriate computer handling.  I observed my colleague scaffolding young children and enhancing their experiences with technology for numeracy and literacy  purposes(Ministry of Education, 1996).  I was surprised with the degree of concentration and focus that I saw in the children. 

It seemed that these keyboards were treasured and highly regarded resources. As children qued up and waited patiently for their turn I wondered if being resources that is not on full access everyday made them more sought after objects or that the adult was modelling a high degree of care in their usage and this communicated their value to the children.

I found this a very interesting time to observe the children and teacher sensitively interacting about the computer usage.  As teachers we are learning about the technology and about the teaching of technology in our practice from our practice with children.

As we are introducing this new technology into the centre environment we need to be aware of the power of its influence on our world and the consciousness of little minds that are being shaped and formed by the environment around them. At times the lifestyles of people in the modern world could easily lead to media bombardment and overstimulation of the youngest children.  As can be seen in some situations when the radio is turned on all day in a centre and babies are being subjected to blatant commercialism and inappropriate content.

I believe teachers and parents have a responsibility or duty to be mindful of the influence of highly complex technology in children’s lives and how we introduce technology in developmentally appropriate ways so that technology in truly a tool which facilitates and enhances children’s learning rather that stifling it.

I am a little concerned that there is a possibility for highly complicated technology to complicate our lives rather than enhance it by making tasks easier, solving problems and helping people (Smorti, 1999).  This could occur through learned dependency, possibly a genuine or perceived inability to carry out tasks or function without it.  I think we had a small glimspe into this when we were asked in class to imagine how we would feel if we could not use any internet, cellphone, camera, gps, etc for a week or even a day.   As the children of today are growing up as digital natives they are more likely to lead lives which are more dependent on technology than previous generations. I would like to think that teachers will incorporate this ever advancing technology and equip children to work with it in the future world they live in.

However I am really wrestling with the balance of empowering and equipping them with the skills and dispositions to adapt and thrive in this ever advancing world that is our future and instilling the foundation of self belief that will see them through when technology breaks down.

Where to next?  I guess we will all have to grow and learn alongside each other to find out. 

References:

Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mo nga mokopuna o Aotearoa .Wellington: Learning Media.

Smorti, S. (1999) Technology in Early Childhood. Early Education, No.19 Autumn 1999.  

What are we growing?

In my home centre we have a large vegetable garden which the children help to look after. Food from this garden is often used in cooking for the children by the centre cook. A few weeks ago the children brainstormed the fruit and vegetables that they would like to grow for the coming season and they went on a trip to the nursery to pick them out. They then returned to the centre and helped to plant the new edible crops into our garden.

We have also set up a worm farm and have been learning how to look after the worms that live inside. In was a very interesting process to follow through as we learned lots of new things about the worms and their new home. We set up a worm farm barrel and filled it with all the things that little worms like. Hopefully soon we will have some worm tea (or worm wee) to fertilise the garden and help the plants grow. Although this end product will be quite useful for the garden, the process of setting up and caring for the worm farm in itself has been such a valuable learning experience for the children and teacher like. Children are taking roles of responsibility to put some chopped up lunch scraps into the worm farm and like to check on the progress of breaking down the waste scraps.

The garden has been challenging as we have lots of caterpillars eating the plants lately. I have discussed different pest control alternatives with the other teachers as we need to find an organic option to be safe for the young children. The children were interested to know why the plants are being eaten and what we can do to stop this also. We found a book at the library which showed us how to make some garlic spray that may stop the caterpillars from eating our plants. So over the next few days we talked about the recipe, collected the ingredients and mixed it all up. We learned about how to dilute the mixture and use a sprayer to apply the garlic spray onto the affected plants. This technology was very natural and very helpful as there are far fewer caterpillars in the garden now and the broccoli is growing much healthier.

On reflection I can see that this area of our curriculum has been full of rich opportunities for learning and development for all ages and stages. The use of technology has enhanced and enriched these experiences greatly. We possibly could have done some gardening without any tools, however the use of garden tools and processes has provided opportunities to develop gross & fine motor skills, scaffolding, turn taking and social skills, mathematics, science and literacy as well as learning about the process of recycling and life cycles of plants and insects. I see this an example of the rich content which supports development of problem solving processes, understandings of multiple cultures and perspectives and critical thinking that involves several learning domains for all involved (Mindes, 2006).  

Through this experience I am convinced that introducing horticultural technology into the gardening activities has extended children’s learning and provided opportunity for real engagement and meaning making to occur. If we had not have used technology in our garden we might have been able to grow plants but we would have missed out on the growing of minds that happened while we were on the journey.  

As it is a journey I recognise that I need to acknowledge that I’m still not ‘there yet.’ I am finding my place in the team at a new centre and it is still a work in progress. At the last team meeting we discussed the use of the garden produce and the reduction of cooking experiences that we have been providing for the children lately. Some teachers reflected that the centre used to do cooking with the children at least weekly and now it is few and far between.

I reflected on this in comparison to my previous experience at another centre where cooking was a daily occurrence and wondered what barriers existed in the new centre. I reflected on my own lack of confidence in this area and the need for a team approach to supporting each other’s attempts in cooking activities. Nimmo, (2002) states that “teachers grow through opportunities to stretch their comfort level in their teaching” (as cited by Nimmo & Hallett, 2008, p.3).  I feel that building and further strengthening trusting relationships in the teaching team will empower us to provide a wider range of experiences for and with the children.  

References:

Mindes, G. (2006). Social studies in kindergarten. In D. F. Gullo (Ed.), K today teaching and learning in the kindergarten year. (pp.107-115). Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Nimmo, J., & Hallett, B. (2008). Childhood in the Garden: A Place to Encounter Natural and Social Diversity. YC: Young Children, 63(1), 32-38. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Really seeing what there is to see. (More than ICT.)

During the early classes of this course I was interested in and a little uneasy about the general assumption that technology in early childhood education means the use of cameras and computers. While I concede that these are certainly the most obvious examples and can be of great benefit in children’s learning I had a feeling and hope that technology should be something more. As the classes unfolded I learned about other types of technology that are involved in our everyday lives. Once I realised my own working definition of technology involved tools and process which make our tasks easier I began to recognise technology everywhere in the centre. It was at the writing table with scissors, pens, the art area with paint, brushes, an easel and bulldog clips to hold the paper. In the play dough area with shape cutters, cutlery and even the play dough itself. In the outdoor environment in our garden, bikes, sandpit tools and other equipment. It’s everywhere.

The use of these tools has been particularly evident in the children’s own creative play and exploration.

One day last week I was working with some children on the deck when I noticed another group of children wanted to paint their wood work creations. This posed a bit of a challenge as the paint brushes were mysteriously missing from the pottles at the time.

So these children were quite resourceful and decided to try using alternative tools to spread the paint onto the timber. Some found ice cream sticks from the collage area and others returned with plastic knives from the nearly play dough area. They tried their new tools out and swapped or changed things as they needed to achieve their desired result in decorating their timber creations.

I found this experience was quite heartening for me as it was nice to have my initial suspicions confirmed and extended on the greatest experts in early childhood; the children themselves. Perhaps part of why I found myself looking for something more than the surface value of ICT types of technology is due to my own frustration that I don’t really understand how ICT works. I know that it does work and I use if regularly but truly understanding how it works seem out of reach to me. Somehow this shallow understanding does not seem enough, not if we are to empower children are to generate, research and modify their own working theories and a variety of strategies for exploring and making sense of their world (Ministry Of Education, 1996).

ICT may be the area of technology that has the most novelty value due to its new and cutting edge developments, but I don’t believe that necessarily means that it is the most valuable resource we have at our disposal to enhance and support children’s learning & development. As Smorti (1999) explains the simplest definition of technology is about solving problems and helping people. Both of which are important dispositions to encourage and enhance in children.

I believe that there are many simple technologies that are of great value in teaching children about technology and that in fact teaching these simple technologies first will lay the foundations for children’s understanding of the more complex types of technology that  permeate our everyday lives. I have realised that it’s about getting back to basics, acknowledging our technological pioneers that developed or invent simple tools such as the telephone, grater, toaster pulley systems that make our everyday lives easier or better. It would be great to learn about the motivation behind and benefits of these inventions.

I would hope to support children in developing a thorough understanding of these simple tools through a variety of fun and meaningful experiences such as those I have seen used in a primary learning and teaching environment. Through repeated experiences with simple tools children can begin to build upon their theories, to complicate their thinking and this would empower them to devise their own tools and inventions.

At times it may be fun to omit one of the basic ingredients, equipment or tools in a task of activity to see how the children improvise and develop their resourcefulness and creative thinking further. By using open ended questions as prompts to trigger their imagination and creativity maybe we can continue to invent new tools and processes.

References:

Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mo nga mokopuna o Aotearoa .Wellington: Learning Media.

Smorti, S. (1999) Technology in Early Childhood. Early Education, No.19 Autumn 1999.

Kia ora everybody,

Welcome to my brand new blog.
I look forward to our learning journey together through this class.