Final reflection

At the beginning, I felt very confused about the relationships between ‘People, Places, Things and Events’, ‘Social Sciences’ and ‘Technology’, and why they were put together to discuss in this course? However, this first task of creating a blog and working as an individual but within a group helps increase my understanding of these issues, and why they are important in our and the children’s technological learning and development.

According to The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007, p.30), social sciences are described as being “about how societies work and how people can participate as critical, active, informed, and responsible citizens”, drawing from “the past, present, and the future and from places within and beyond New Zealand”. Social sciences are about children investigating the world both within and outside the centre environment.

When I read through the feedback from Nina of my reflection ‘Father’s day, gingerbread man and technology”, I realised that Nina’s comment is very true, as if I could give the children opportunities to involve them in thinking and creating the shopping list and even going shopping together, which would be contribute more to our children’s social science learning process. This process involves the children to gain the skills of competency or positive relationships (belonging), researching (exploring), asking questions (communicating), gathering information, finding answers (contribution), and continuing to develop more understanding of the relationships between community, places, centre and their families within their social world (Ministry of Education, 1996).

          

This group assessment creates a learning community which plays a crucial role in helping me develop my understanding and knowledge in technology. I believe that this assessment also provides a learning opportunity for all of us to share our learning and understanding of the nature of technology, and how to enable them to enhance our children’s learning in our centres.

Through the process of reading each others’ reflections and writing comments on them, I realise that my team members (Carly, Luana, Nina and Rosie), all have very good understanding of what technology is, such as Carly’s Dancing Dynamite, which stimulated me to think use more music technology in my home centre. I have also learnt that as an ECE student teacher, I should recognise that the purpose of technology is challenging the children and learning with them, in order to help them to refine their ideas and develop problem-solving skills to the learning area that interests them (Mawson, 2002). For example, Luana’s Pulleys, which encouraged me to suggest and work with my teaching team to create a similar system for our children.

In here, I would like to say thank you to Rosie, for her assistance which helps me to create this blog at the beginning. Through reading Rosie’s reflections, I feel happy about Rosie has already build good relationships with her new centre (teaching team, the children and parents). I notice that Rosie’s joining brings a lot of learning opportunities for the children and teaching team of the centre.     

Before starting this course, my understanding of technology was only focused on information and communication technologies (ICT) and electrical products. Fortunately, Nina’s reflections – Construction technology in early childhood setting and Children’s learning in food preparation technology, opened my understanding of the processes such as problem-solving, designing, reflecting, planning construction and evaluation are integral to learning with technology. Furthermore, Luana’s, Carly’s and Rosie’s reflections and the feedback they gave me which showed me that technology is evidently showed in our children’s play. Whenever they are inventing, designing and constructing with play toys, open-ended resources and materials within the centre’s planned and emergent curriculum.    

       

Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 1996) stated that a child’s learning consists of the sum total of the experiences, activities and events, whether direct or indirect provided by people (family members, teachers and peers), places (physical environment of home, centre and outside community) and things (materials and resources) within the child’s environment (p.10). This means that children’s learning happened within the relationships with other people, the learning places and learning resources.

As an ECE student teacher, I understand that ‘children learn through responsive and reciprocal relationships with people, places and things’ (Ministry of Education, 1996, p.43). To consider further extending the relationships between children, their learning and those issues, as well as utilise those issues to support children’s learning, social science is an effective tool for me, as it focuses on ‘the study of society and of the relationship of individual members within society’ (Ministry of Education, 1997, p.58). This means that as the co-learning partners of children, we need to develop our personal pedagogy which provides a lot of learning opportunities for our children in order to enable them to participate in a changing society as informed, confident and responsible citizens (Ministry of Education, 1997, p.8).

New Zealand is part of a world revolution in communication, technology, work, life style and environment. Change and adaptation are two features of our everyday lives. As an ECE student teacher, one of our roles is that we should support children confidently to develop their own point of views, as well as competently continue acquiring new knowledge and skills to cope with such changes and adaptations (Ministry of Education, 1996).      

Believe or not, our lives are increasingly influenced by information and communication technologies (ICT). ICT defined as electronic or digital equipment which allow us to get information, to communicate with each other in order to make our lives easier and better quality (Ministry of Education, 2005). ICT is all around us, we all use ICT in our daily lives, from mobile telephones, tape recorder, DVD players, computers, digital cameras and even traffic lights, supermarket scanners, or remote controls; obviously, our everyday activities are increasingly being shaped by ICT.

To implement my responsibilities of learning and teaching with children in learning about, with and through the current exciting technological advances in area of ICT, this assessment --- ‘Blog to evaluate the significance of use of technology on children’s learning and development’ plays a crucial role to encourage me to further develop my understanding of the meaning of technology, as well as the significance of the people, places, things and events in children’s learning and development.              

      

References:

Mawson, B. (2002). Developing technology in early childhood seeing. Early Education, 29(Winter), 11-16.

Ministry of Education, (1996).Te Whāriki, he whaariki mātaurauge mo nga mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.

Ministry of Education, (1997). Social studies in the New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media.

Ministry of Education, (2005). Foundations for discovery: Supporting learning in early childhood education through information and communication technology: a Framework for development. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.

Ministry of Education, (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum: for English-medium teaching and learning in years 1-13. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.

blogs I have commented on

Rosie's blog

http://rlandsberg.blogspot.com/2011/08/where-to-next.html?showComment=1317070422502#c7278687463427755789

http://rlandsberg.blogspot.com/2011/08/after-having-spent-week-at-my-centre-i.html?showComment=1317070324719#c8775027002584696468

http://rlandsberg.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-does-technology-and-ict-benefit.html?showComment=1317079716162#c872868703029637005

Luana's blog
http://unknown-luanasspot.blogspot.com/2011/08/digital-technology-in-early-childhood.html?showComment=1314672983959#c5503943615805819274

http://unknown-luanasspot.blogspot.com/2011/08/little-machines-that-help-us-clogs-and.html?showComment=1315880558770#c7315129329093085519

http://unknown-luanasspot.blogspot.com/2011/08/reflection-3-pulleys.html?showComment=1315880464296#c6770265424907280468

Nina's blog

http://ninalovesjesus.blogspot.com/2011/08/construction-technology-in-early.html?showComment=1315881019297#c418524100113729707

http://ninalovesjesus.blogspot.com/2011/08/childrens-learning-in-food-preparation.html?showComment=1315875440800#c2079502886070495044

http://ninalovesjesus.blogspot.com/2011/08/information-and-communication.html?showComment=1315875753936#c3174073609634770225

Carly's blog

http://carlys-space.blogspot.com/2011/08/dancing-dynamite.html?
showComment=1315880662550#c3363089993802092236

http://carlys-space.blogspot.com/2011/09/you-tube-it.html?showComment=1317069901118#c1912521349180349672

http://carlys-space.blogspot.com/2011/09/little-puddings.html?showComment=1317069953609#c7546843123576842436

Father’s day, gingerbread man and technology

(01/09/2011) Today we have had a lot of discussions between the children and teachers of what should we do for Father’s Day. I wrote down all the answers which were gathered from the children and teachers. The answers included making cards, drawing and painting pictures, taking photos, and making biscuits. As we all agreed that every father is the most important person in our lives, we decided to give a big surprise to our dads. We would like to make Father’s Day cards today, bake gingerbread man tomorrow and use both of them to celebrate this important day. As shopping is one of my favourite activities, I took the task to buy the ingredients.

(02/09) This morning, I prepared the ingredients and displayed them on the low table. In order to invite all the children to work together, we put two tables together. The children immediately gathered together through observing, smelling and touching the materials to study and sense the ingredients after the hygiene process. After investigating of “what does this look like”, we took turns to use the measurement cups to measure the ingredients and put them into a big bowl. The children were also encouraged to take turns stirring the ingredients, making the shapes and adding the chocolate buttons on. We sent the beautiful gingerbread men to the kitchen to bake after we finished the making process. Most importantly, during the whole activity, some children shared their own cooking and baking experiences with us.     

Cooking and baking activities are popular in our room. In the play dough corner, family area and the sandpit, children always engage in these kinds of play. In the cooking and baking activities, children make their own decisions on what they would like to make? And how they would like to make it? During the making process, children actively explore different kinds of materials, tools, methods to solve their own problems and make sense of the physical and material world (Ministry of Education, 1996). Mawson (2006) emphasised that exploration is an important part of learning technology.

In today’s real baking activities, the children developed their working theories to use equipment and materials in an appropriate way in making gingerbread men. Fleer and Jane (2011) stated that the process of baking helps to develop children’s technological skills as they are confidently experiencing the process of choosing tools and equipment, measuring and mixing ingredients and presenting the products that they make. Furthermore, in the activity, I noticed children encountered two stages in the development of technological capability which were identified by Ian Napper (1991, cited in Mawson, 2002). These two stages are the exploratory stage and the problem solving stage.  

The chances to explore material, tools, equipment and fixing methods in order to help them to develop their abilities to solve problems are important elements in the technological experience of young children (Mawson, 2002). Smorti (1999) stated that process cooking provides relevant technological learning opportunities within an early childhood service to meet children’s learning needs. Process cooking is not only a creative process, but also a purposeful activity – to produce food. During the cooking process, children are encouraged to use their prior knowledge to solve problems, at the same time, they also grow in other areas of knowledge and skills, such as science, mathematics, literacy, language, physical, social and emotional skills (Smorti, 1999).

Process cooking is one of the hands-on, natural, and meaningful activities which can be use to develop technological knowledge and capability of the children (Mawson, 2002). As ECE teachers, that is our responsibility to actively create a rich learning environment and opportunity that allows children to explore further problem-solving skills.  In this activity, the children understand how many ingredients we have prepared; and how to use water to mix all the ingredients together. Most importantly, as the gingerbread men were made for the children to celebrate Father’s Day, this activity creates a connection between the children’s families and the centre.  

Fleer and Jane (2011) states that creative thinking and critical thinking are part of problem-solving and are fostered by providing children with experiences of looking at a problem from different perspectives. In this activity, the children were working together observing, questioning, discussing, investigating, listening and reasoning to foster and develop a positive learning environment to encourage collaborative learning. The children scaffold and facilitated each other to think, discuss, and reflect by asking relevant questions, investigating their ideas and challenging their thinking. I implemented the following steps in encouraging the problem-solving skills and developing children’s technological learning dispositions in the activity: understanding and identifying the problem, working together and planning to solve the problem, carrying out the plan, and reviewing and reflecting the solution to the next step of investigation (Ministry of Education, 1996).

This activity made me understand that children’s development of technological knowledge and capability happens in a supportive and positive context I am a part of and co-constructing technological, science and mathematics learning with the children in our daily routines.      

References:

Fleer, M., & Jane, B. (2011). Design and technology for children (3^rd ed.). Frenchs Forest NSW: Pearson.

Mawson, B. (2002). Developing technology in early childhood settings. Early Education, 29(Winter). p 11-16.

Mawson, B. (2006, December, 7-8). Capable and competent: Young children, Values and technology education. Paper presented at the 4^th Biennial International Conference On Technology Education Research, Surers Paradise, Queensland.

Ministry oāriki, he whaariki mātaurauge mo nga mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.

f Education, (1996).Te Wh

Smorti, S. (1999). Technology in early childhood. Early Education, 19, 5-9.

Laptops and cameras as tools to enhance learning

(11/08/2011) (V)’s 4^th birthday is on the next Monday; however, her family would like to celebrate this very important day a little bit earlier with all of us, which was today. We held a small party during morning tea. We sang the birthday song and all the children and teachers had a great time. We took a lot of photos during the party. During the weekend I wrote a learning story about (V)’s birthday party; however, I did not put any photos on it. I planned that (V) can choose her favourite photos for this learning story on her own next week.

(17/08) Today I brought my laptop and sat with (V) to choose the photos. At first I showed (V) how to insert the photos on the learning story, and after that she inserted two other photos all by herself.

Other children in the room also asked to do so; I thought that this is a good opportunity to enhance our children’s learning, so I gave my camera to the children to take photos. Some of them took photos of their peers, some of them took photos of their work, such as the puzzles they had done, the blocks they had made and the toys they played with. We were working together to download the photos from the camera onto my laptop and made our decision on which ones we would like to print. At the same time, we had a lot of discussions, as some children were also curious about what other functions were on my laptop.

Since then, every time I go to work, I prefer to take my laptop and camera. I used the laptop as a revisited tool to show photos of what they did last time. I also apply the laptop as a resource to play songs and stories. Now we not only could listen to stories and songs, but also could watch the stories and the songs.

All these experiences made me realise that ‘technology cannot be effectively used unless it is used widely and equitable among all groups in our society’ (Young, 2001, p.13). I also felt happy because the laptop and the camera continually provides a lot of learning opportunities for the children and me to work together practicing our technology skills and increasing our knowledge. As an ECE student teacher, I understand that early years are crucial in children’s physical, social-emotional, language and cognitive development. This means that when used appropriately, technological products can support and extend the children’s and adults’ learning in valuable ways to increase everyday educational experiences.

Furthermore, to promote children’s learning of technology, Young (2001) stated that the learning process within children creates a social learning environment which encourages children to work, interact with and learn from each other (Young, 2001). In our room, these two technological products do create a social environment which supports the children to develop strategies and skills for initiating, maintaining and enjoying relationships with other children, such as turn-takings, problem-solving, expressing their opinions and taking others’ point of view (Ministry of Education, 1996). Most importantly, this social environment involves collaboration between the children and the adults which provides scaffolding for each child to achieve their own ‘ZPD’ at their different learning stages in this learning process (MacNaughton & Gillian Williams, 2004).

In our centre, although the young children have opportunities to attend the Cherry.bytes technology-based programme, as ECE student teacher, I still need to work with my team members to provide more learning experiences for the children in order to support their technological development. Fortunately, digital cameras and laptops are easy to carry as well as definitely providing the children with relevant learning experiences of Information and Communication technological (ICT).

References:

Ministry of Education, (1996).Te Whāriki, he whaariki mātaurauge mo nga mokopuWellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.

na o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum.

Young, M. E. (2001). Technology and early childhood development. TechKnowlLogia. www.techknowlogia.org

MacNaughton, G., & Williams, G. (2004). Techniques for teaching young children: Choices in theory and practice (2^nd ed). Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson.