When working with the children at Shirley
Warren, our group focused on Article 15 ‘All children have a right to meet,
make friends with, and join clubs with other children’. Having been absent from
the previous trip to Shirley Warren, I had to adapt quickly to what was planned
and how the filming would take place. Luckily, I was part of a group who had a
very clear structure, and so I was able to get up to speed with ease.
The group of children we worked with were very
lively, and were extremely keen to get involved with the filming and to play on
the iPads as part of our short film. The fact that the children were so
comfortable and confident when using the technology surprised me, and I did
feel a little taken aback as they seemed to have a lot more knowledge and
experience than me! This has been referred to by Palfrey and Gasser (2008) who
makes the distinction between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants in
relation to how exposure to technology can impact someone’s confidence and
ability in using such methods in the classroom.
The software we used to compile and edit the
film was surprisingly straight-forward, which surprised me, but it is easy to
see how child-friendly it is and how it could easily be incorporated when used
with children. Overall, I feel that this experience was incredibly valuable as
it gave me an opportunity to learn hands-on with the children about how to use
technology in the classroom and with small groups of children. I do feel that
using such methods in a whole class situation would be a lot more difficult,
and there would need to be a lot of adults present in order to ensure that learning
objectives were met and that the children were on-task. Having had this
experience, I am more determined to gain more experience using technology in
the classroom and I aim to make use of it in my planning and teaching in the
future.
Palfrey, J. & Gasser, U.
(2008) Born Digital: Understanding The First Generation of Digital
Natives. New York: Basic Books (Introduction pp. 1-15)
Was there anything that challenged you or you felt you would change if you had the time to do it again?
ReplyDeleteI like the way in which you had to adapt because as a group we had adapt as well because four turned about to be two. We were lucky enough to have Tom come into our room to help with sound as the macs were on the blink. How do do think you adapt when working with your own class if problems were to occur. This area frightens me a wee bit as I am one of the immigrants that you describe. All I can say is wherever I find a placement I hope they have a really good IT co-ordinater.
ReplyDeleteI feel that if I had to re-do the session, it would have been nice to sit down with the children and to incorporate them and their ideas into the planning process, as this is something I would do with my own class, and feel that this is a valuable experience for children as it gives them the opportunity to think about what equipment and resources they would like to use to create their own film, and would make it more personal for them. I think Shirley Warren are amazingly lucky to have someone like Tom working in the school, as his confidence, knowledge and enthusiasm makes us feel more secure in our use of ICT and he helped us all massively in creating our short films, so I agree and can only hope that wherever we end up working their is also a good IT coordinator! However, if this is not the case I would like to think that I would not let this deter me from using ICT and technologies with children as we have all seen how exciting and beneficial it can be!
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