Technology is everywhere, and we use it every day. It is very important in our daily life. Without it we will be back to the Stone Age. We are living in a world of rapidly developing technology. How can we catch up with the rapidly developing technological world? We need to have the opportunity to explore and play with the technology tools, so that we can catch up with the technological world we are living in. Especially our children, they are the future, imagine how advanced technology will become before they step out to the world. Te Whaariki (1996) states, “To cope with such changes, children need both the confidence to develop their own perspectives and the capacity to continue acquiring new knowledge and skills.” (p. 18).
Therefore, our responsibility as teachers is to provide the opportunities for our children to explore the technological world and let them make discoveries for themselves. As Elsie mentioned in her comment, we need to motivate our children to take responsibility for their own learning. For children to do that, the first step we as teachers needed to do is to provide them a rich meaningful technological learning environment. According to Te Whaariki (1996), the responsibility of educators is to help and support children to become life-long learners both confident and competent.
What a great learning experience for me! I have learnt a lot through this course, and from all of my group members, either their reflective learning experiences with the children in their centre, or valuable comments and feedbacks they made to my reflections. Through this course, all the readings, and guess speakers, I learnt the concepts of technology in depth, acknowledged and understood the importance of technology in children’s learning and development; and how we as teachers can enhance children’s learning in all the other aspects of technologies. Technology provides children lots of different aspects of their learning and development, like problem solving, language, critical thinking, imagination, creativity, and lots more (Fleer & Jane, 2011).
Before I started this course, I would not have dream of technology can be involving nails, bricks, and other simple technology objects (Fleer & Jane, 2011 and Smorti, 1999). Yes, I agree with Rosie, that we do take technology for granted because we born with it and they are all around us just like the air. This course motivated us student teachers to step in and start to equip ourselves with all the technological knowledge and skills which we need to support our children’s learning. It also helps us to reflect on our practices and think deep into the learning and development of our children through different technology experiences and activities. As Ministry of Education (2004) showed us many different ways to enhance children’s learning experiences through ICT.
Thank you so much for all of the valuable comments and feedbacks my group members made on my reflections. All of my group members agreed, that it is our responsibility as teachers to provide the children meaningful learning opportunities and the support they need. When we do, children benefit hugely in their learning. When children have lots of opportunities to explore and learn about our technology tools, they will become confident and competent in using them, just like Luana mentioned that one of her children is a good photographer, and she can trust him with her camera and he will take good photos for her.
A great point that both Rosie and Carly brought up, is the theories exploration for children about how food gets processed and packed into bags and tins. Yes, I agree that today’s children missed the opportunity to learn the knowledge of where our food comes from. This will bring children back to the nature, and the whole process of food. This will be a great learning experience for our children if they are interested in it. We can facilitate children’s learning experiences through the use of different technology tools, like looking for more information from the internet, movies of food processing, printing the pictures, etc. We can even plan a trip to the food processing factory to observe and explore along with our children, to help them expand their learning and knowledge within the topic, as that will deepen their critical thinking skills.
Carly brought up another great point, which is the extension of children’s experience using the computer to downloading and print photos. As I have mentioned in my third reflection, we have limited access to the computers now, so doing what Carly suggested is another problem. But luckily, I identified the problem and brought it up with the rest of my team and my supervisor. I am going to have that as my action research topic, to foster children’s collaborative problem solving using computer. My supervisor and team members are so supportive of me, they agreed to buy a laptop for my action research topic, so that we do not have to have a staff member to supervise the computer room, which means children can access it any time from that time on. I am going to provide more computer learning experiences for my children, including what Carly suggested and more. I can imagine there will be lots of fun learning experiences happening and I will be the learner alongside my children. That is so exciting, I cannot wait to start.
Blogging is fun! It helps us connecting with people and building up our relationships. As Yang (2009) agreed, blogs provide people more opportunities to contribute and be more involved in, thus build a stronger sense of community. For early childhood centres, it is a platform for teachers to communicate with parents, families, and the community. Through blogs, it allows parents, families, and community to have a better understanding of what their children have been up to with their interests and strengths leading the way, especially families of the children that live in another country. Also, they can contribute their ideas and suggestions through blogs too, like sharing their children’s learning and development from home and special events. Blogs allow people working collaboratively towards topic of interest (Yang, 2009). What an awesome two way communication media!
Bronwyn from Botany Downs Kindergarten showed me how blogs help to connect and build the relationship between parents, families, and community. I really love her dedication and enthusiasm in helping and supporting her parents and the community, especially children’s learning and development. She did an amazing job with the support of her team members, parents, families, and the community. She is truly a fantastic effective leader. One of the disadvantages of blogging is that it is time consuming. As an early childhood teacher, we are already busy enough with our daily tasks and chores. For my own centre, we have a blog as well, but we hardly have time to update it, same situation as Rosie mentioned in her second reflection. What a pity!
References
Fleer, M., & Jane, B. (2011). Design and technology for children. Frenchs Forest, NSW, Australia: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mo nga mokopuna o Aotearoa .Wellington: Learning Media.
Ministry of Education. (2004). Kei tua o te pae assessment for learning: Early childhood exemplars. Wellington: Learning Media.
Smorti, S. (1999) Technology in Early Childhood. Early Education, No.19 Autumn 1999.
Yang, S. –H. (2009). Using blogs to enhance critical reflection and community of practice. Educational technology & society, 12(2), 11-21.
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