After reading all the feedbacks from my group members, I was happy with the ways that they have responded constructively to my personal reflections. One of the most common comments on my blogs was that I am a very good observer in noticing, recognising and responding to children’s learning. I believe that “close observation helps us to see that childhood is filled with curiosity, creativity, and unlimited possibility. Children are born to dive in, take apart, rearrange and invent, using whatever captures their imagination and curiosity for a whim or an intense purpose. As grownups, we have a balancing act to do. We must offer the words and tools children need to make it safely in the world and provide multiple opportunities and materials to expand their curiosity and inventiveness. We must focus on their curiosity and investigation as much as we emphasise their safety and security so as not to squelch children’s natural curiosity and their right to learn in their own effective ways. “(Curtis & Carter, 2000, p 45).
One member questioned my feelings towards technology as well as how technology influences my teaching today. I really believe in technology and that it is a very significant tool for children’s learning. I also believe that children’s development is expanded through “experiences and understanding of people, places, events and things” (Ministry of Education, 1996, p.21). Technology supports children by providing them opportunities to explore different avenues in order to find solutions and answers to their own questions. Technology also promotes children’s creativity because “young children need environments that provide resources, challenges, and support for their widening interests and problem-solving capacities” (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 26).
I was also surprised at how we did not take much notice of non-digital items that we are using daily at our centre and its technological role in children’s learning like the stethoscope and so on. But this showed how “children marvel at the things adults find ordinary, messy, or even boring. From their point of view, there are so many new things to look at, to hold in their hands, to rub, to taste and to smell. These are the details we need to record and embrace so we can remind ourselves and others of some of the most meaningful and vital experiences in the lives of young children.” (Curtis & Carter, 2000, p 39).
Technology plays an important part in my teaching practices today, because they help me as a teaching tool to enhance children’s learning and development. Cameras supported us in documenting children’s learning experiences and help in building good relations with families after all, “children learn through responsive and reciprocal relationship with people, places, and things” (Ministry of Education, 1996,p.43). Different teaching techniques were used such encouragement and group members believed that it was important like MacNaughton and Williams (2004), suggest “staff use encouragement as a teaching technique to reassure and support children attempting new or difficult activities. The aim of such encouragement is to help children to persevere with the task and to learn new skills and dispositions” (p.61).
Technology fosters good relationships with children. It also promote good social skills so that children could develop appropriate languages to express their feelings and ideas like the use of the banana as a telephone to support the child’s feelings when transitioning from home to the centre. Te Whāriki states that this is how children “discovered different ways to be creative and expressive” (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 72).
Overall, this is such a good experience for me, to be able to share with five different beautiful members our ideas and understandings of technology and its significant use in children’s learning and development. All these ideas and recommendations made will help me as a teacher to redefine technology and to contextualised it to accommodate children’s learning and development in order to “grow up as competent and confident learners and communicators, healthy in mind, body, and spirit, secure in their sense of belonging and in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to society” (Ministry of Education, 1996, pg.9).
References
Curtis, M. & Carter, M. (2000). The art of awareness: How observation can transform your teaching. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press.
MacNaughton, G., & Williams, G. (2004). Techniques for teaching young children: Choices in theory and practice (2nd. ed). Melbourne: Addison Wesley Longman.
Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He whārikimātaurangamo ngamokopunao Aotearoa. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.
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