Having been in school, share your observations and reflections in terms of the use of technology/new literacies. What surprises you? What were the challenges and how might you overcome these? What questions arise for you? What have you learnt? Make links to any relevant readings.
On the 14th of September we visited Shirley Warren School in Southampton for the day to work with their year 6 pupils. Their task was to compare their school community to the book ‘If the World Were a Village’ by David J. Smith. For this comparison task the children worked in groups of six using three iPads and a multitude of apps, the main one being ‘Book Creator’.
I have had previous experience using Book Creator but not for collaborative work and thus I was extremely interested about how the children would manage working in such a large group, with what I have always viewed as a very solitary piece of equipment. Higgins, Xiao & Katsipataki (2012) highlighted the idea that collaborative use of technology is usually more effective than when children use it individually. However they also added that children may require some guidance on how to work effectively within a group. During the day that I spent at Shirley Warren school I did find that although the children were in year 6, they needed a lot of support to work collaboratively. I think that this was mainly due to such a diverse amount of experience and confidence that each child had with using the technology effectively. In order to overcome this challenge I facilitated the children to work in a team effectively by being very aware of the children that needed more support than others and guiding them to create work of similar standard as the other children so that they felt like a proper member of the team.
However, with the exeception of a minority of children I was extremely surprised at how efficient the children were with using the iPads. They had an extensive knowledge about the different apps that were availible to them, and knew when the appropropriate time was to use each one. I feel that this was due to a number of factors. The school are strongly supportive of the use of technology which supports the view of Halsey (2007:p1) that ‘We must embrace technology and envision new ways of using emerging technologies in ourclassrooms’. I therefore feel that because the school has been using a variety of technology alongside the curriculum for a number of years their children have become digitally literate. This is not to say that only children at Shirley Warren are digitally literate; as a study by Ofcom (2012) showed that 46% of parents say their child knows more about the internet than they do and around one in three parents say their child helps them to use technology.
In order for children to be described as being digitally literate they now have to be able to understand composition and framing of shots, edit items effectively and be able to know the most effective duration of aural and visual material for a given item(Dean, 2010). The task that the children completed during the day I spent at the school covered all of these aspects. They were using video, animation and voice recordings to compile their information page. During the day the children were also using Airdrop to work collaboratively. I have had no experience with this and was astounded at how easy it meant sharing work was. At the end of the day the class teacher got each group to Airdrop their work to his iPad, and it was then compiled into one book on ‘Book Creator’ and put onto the schools blog. By making the children’s work public it helps them to see it as purposeful, and also allows parents to see what the children are working on whilst they are at school which can then improve parents relationships with the class teacher (Halsey, 2007).
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the time that I spent at Shirley Warren and was extremely impressed with the amount of technology they used within their lessons. From the visit I can now see that using iPads is not as daunting as I once thought, and that they can be a very powerful aid to collaborative learning.
Bibliography
Dean, G. (2010) ‘Rethinking Literacy’ in: C. Bazalgette, (ed) Teaching Media in Primary Schools London: SAGE
Halsey, S. (2007) ‘Embracing emergent technologies and envisioning new ways of using them for
literacy learning in the primary classroom’ English Teaching: Practice and Critique 6 (2) pp.99-107
Higgins,S., Xiao, Z., and Katsipataki, M. (2012) The Impact of Digital Technology on Learning: A Summary for the Education Endowment Foundation[online]
Ofcom, (2012) Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report [online] http://learn.winchester.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/357893/mod_resource/content/1/Ofcom%20media%20report%202012.pdf (16.10.14)
I like the way that you have explained the positive experience you had at Shirley Warren and how, despite having some knowledge of the apps on the iPad, you enjoyed learning new things and were impressed with the extent to which iPads could stimulate learning. However, do you think that the use of iPads in schools could have a negative impact on pupils' learning, and if so, what do you think these would be?
ReplyDeleteI can see your point of view Sophie, and in regards to this I have two points. I feel that by using the iPads children may not get the experience they need writing without the use of technology to aid them. However, I think that the opportunity for differentiation within the classroom is so large when using iPads that this outweighs the negative effects. I do however think that they should be used in moderation, and at appropriate times so develop collaborative skills.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you Tessa, that iPads can aid and support collaborative work in the classroom. Do you think within your own classroom, you will utilise iPads, and if so, which areas of the curriculum do you feel IPads could benefit the most?
ReplyDeleteYes I think I will use iPads - if my school has access to them. I feel that they are extremely beneficial in the classroom. I think through English and all other curriculum subjects - for example I am interested in what iPads can do to support the teaching of art. This would be something I'd really like to investigate.
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