Week 11: Group 2; Post-School Visit, Informal Blog Task

I am going to reflect on my experiences from the visit.

After working with the children, I was surprised by how much the children knew about the article we were looking at. The children at first were reluctant to share their ideas. However, once they felt confident to share their ideas they were all learning from each other. Therefore, the children could give ideas of why it is important to use our own language (Article 30) (UNICEF, 2012). Although, the children did not have much experience with using the iPads they had strong speaking and listening skills, which were demonstrated in the discussions and sound recordings of their ideas. Griffiths (2010) argues it is important not to underestimate children’s ideas especially in-group discussions. Griffiths (2010) argues children are extremely intelligent, you can learn so much from their ideas.

The challenges I experienced were that it was hard to assess the children against the learning objectives we had planned. One of our learning objectives was for the children to be able to use different features on the iPads to create their book. We could not assess the children fully against the learning objectives because they did not experience using the iPads as much as we had wanted them to use them. This was because of time constraints. The children did not have much time to use the iPads such as, moving the text around the book. The children did however take pictures and type text using the iPads. I felt if there were more time, I would teach the children how to use the apps: Book Creator, iMovie and Veescope Live (green screen) amongst other skills. This will allow me to assess what the children can do after them knowing how to use the apps confidently.

At times, I observed that the children did not have much to do whilst their peer was working on the iPad. Next time, I could overcome this challenge by giving more iPads to the children because I would know the children are able to use the apps confidently because I would have gone through with them how to use the apps fluently (Smith, 2013). From the previous blog post that I wrote, I said that it would be a challenge for me to know what skills the children have, as I did not teach them beforehand. In this session, I felt I could assess what skills the children had to support them accordingly for example, with sharing their ideas, or helping them find the letters on the keyboard to type the text. 

From the experience, I have learnt that the children really enjoyed working with the apps. Overall, this was a positive experience because learning from the children’s ideas was extremely fascinating. However, next time I would teach the children how to use the apps and allow them time to explore using the apps. This would enable the children to broaden their ICT skills by having experiences to create and present their ideas (Beauchamp, 2012).

Bibliography

Beauchamp, G. (2012). ICT in the Primary School, From Pedagogy to Practice. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Griffiths, F. (ed). (2010). Supporting Children’s Creativity through Music, Drama and Art. Abingdon: Routledge.

UNICEF. (2012). ‘A summary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’ Unicef United Kingdom. [pdf] Available from: https://www.unicef.org.uk/Documents/Publication-pdfs/betterlifeleaflet2012_press.pdf (Accessed: 25/03/2014).

Smith, J. (12/08/2013). ‘Meet your child’s new teacher: the iPad’. The Telegraph. [online]. Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10230335/Meet-your-childs-new-teacher-the-iPad.html (Accessed: 25/03/2014).