Blogging has been a personal learning skill for me, although I had heard about blogs before. At first I panicked as I didn’t know how I would do this assignment, because I had no idea how to go about blogging. To reach to the stage I am on now, my learning journey had been filled with frustration, as I was spending a lot of time on this assignment than any other assignments. I’m very grateful for the suggestions and feedback I received from the lecture and my fellow students. In certain instances I had to make phone calls to seek help. Getting feedback on how to blog gave me an opportunity to give it a go. Although I can now publish an article, upload photos and send comments to others without any problem, I still need to learn few more things.
Blogs have affected the course of modern history. Through this assignment, the use of blogs as a platform was a quick and effective way of creating dialogue amongst ourselves, getting feedback, answering to questions, receiving help, making significant comments and so on. For instance, my class peers gave comments and discussions on my blog board that enabled me to get few ideas on how to provocate and extend children’s learning. I was also asked questions regarding the activities children did, and the way the use of technology in early childhood centres has been educative to both children and teachers, in terms of how technological tools were used. Scaffolding amongst children was amazing, the children who had skills in certain technological tools, offered to scaffold the ones who lacked skills.
By having children use technology in their activities, I come to acknowledge that as adults we can learn a lot from children’s creative ideas. For instance, on one of the blogs I published explains how three four year old children got ideas from a book and came up with their own different invention of a bird feeder. This was a child directed project, teachers only facilitated with the provision of required materials and technological tools. In certain cases teachers demonstrated how to use and operate technological tools children had difficulties to operate. This is in line with what the New Zealand curriculum for early childhood education, Te Whāriki ,says about empowering children to “understand their own individual ways of learning and being creative” (Ministry of Education, 1996, p.40).
By observing children use technology in their activities, I learnt that smallest things have a bit of technology in them, as simple as pressing on the keyboard, switching on a microwave, and pressing on a remote control and so on. I believe the whole experience had a great impact on children, in that they gained confidence in their abilities to decision making about technology development, took calculated risks in some project and activities they did, evaluated their own choices and developed ways of addressing real problems (Smorti,1999).
Technology can change the way children think, what they learn, and how they interact with peers and adults (Yang, 2009). For instance, environmentally children gained opportunities to explore the impact of technology by using materials and tools around the centre. Economically children learnt creative ways of generating ideas; how to cooperate in working with other children, teachers, parents/whānau in order to translate their ideas into action. Therefore technology pulled together several of the most recommended pedagogies from practical learning, scaffolding, child-centered learning, incorporation of multiple perspectives, and the use of learning communities. This practice supports Te Whāriki’s guidelines of building respectful relationships with people, places, living and non-living things (Ministry of Education, 1996).
References
Ministry of Education. (1996).Te Whāriki: He Whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.
Smorti, S. (1999). Technology in Early Childhood. Early Education, N0. 19 Autumn.
Yang, S. H. (2009). Using blogs to enhance critical reflection and community of practice. Educational Technology and Society, 12 (2), 11- 21.
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