Today I was given the opportunity to
revisit a local primary school and work with a group of children to create a
talking book. As the school is a rights respecting school, each group focused
on one of the rights of the child (UNICEF 1989). As a group, we focused on
article 29 which states that children have to right to become the best that
they can be.
As an English specialist I found it useful
to have planning time as a group to discuss and structure our ideas before
meeting the children. This allowed my group to sketch out what we needed to do
and work out roughly how much time we had to film and edit. Although we only
had a short amount of time to plan, from gaining first-hand experience I can
see how teachers need to plan and ensure they have all the resources available
before the children begin working in order to save time.
I was surprised at how capable the children
were with using the app and Ipad, although they are only in year 1. They were
confident and willing to try out different things such as camera angles and the
green screen. This allowed me to witness first-hand The Future Lab’s (2010)
theory of children being digital natives and having the knowledge and
confidence to use technology at an early age.
I think one of the biggest challenges of
the day was the time limit. Although as a group we had planned the morning and
the children were confident with the apps we were using, timing was an issue.
This has highlighted the need for teachers to allow sufficient time for
children to edit their work and discuss what worked and what didn’t at the end
of a project. This is something I will consider in my future practice.
Although there were challenges and
surprises throughout the day, I found the experience valuable and enlightening
as it allowed me to put the theory we have been learning about into a real life
context.
FutureLab (2010) Digital Literacy Across the
Curriculum: (Sections 3.1 – 3.4 Digital Literacy in Practice)
United
Nations (1989) United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC),
Geneva: United Nations.
I also found it surprising that the children were so capable and knowledgeable in using the ICT as I thought previously that this would have been one of the biggest struggles. I agree that the visit highlighted the need for editing time as well as an evaluation in order to improve our own practise.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with the idea about planning in enough time to ensure filming and editing can take place, As an ICT specialist i was surprised at how capable the children were with using the technology from such a young age, however I do feel it would have been valuavble if we could have discussed with the children how they felt the task went as well to gather their opinions.
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