For my people, places, things and events
paper I had to write three blogs looking at different forms of technology that
we have within our early childhood centre. These blogs looked at how these
technologies benefited on children’s learning and development. I focused one
digital technology which was the digital camera and two non-digital
technologies which were blocks and bikes. I had four lovely
ladies in my group who read my blogs and left comments on them that could help
me extend my thinking and what not.
I focused my first blog as I said around
digital cameras as we recently purchased one for the children. It kind of
surprised me reading the comments left on my blog that not many people have
digital cameras in their centre for children to use. As the world is becoming
more digitally focused I thought that a digital camera would be a big thing for
children to be able to use within the centre. Especially because they are
becoming quite cheap in price and can benefit the children in many ways. Three
of the people that commented on this blog mentioned how they can see that by
allowing the children the use of the camera the way they do it allows them to
be confident and independent learners. Ministry of Education (1996) states that
teachers should be creating environments that allow children to explore, create
and investigate for themselves, therefore
making them competent, confident and independent learners.
My second blog focused around the use of
blocks as technology in my early childhood centre. I believe that blocks fall
under the term technology as it allows the users to construct, explore, think,
solve and work on fine motor skills while creating their master pieces
(Gonzalez-Mena, 2009). One of the comments on my blog stood out to me as is
suggested having pictures of different constructions on the wall in the block
area to allow children to investigate and solve how to make these. These
Images allow children to creatively produce and reconstruct New Zealand
structures, which enhances their basic motor skills; that improves their hand and
eye coordination, control of their bodies, balance, and overall strengths (Dow,
2010). This is defiantly something I am going to try within my centre.
My third blog focused on bikes as a technological
tool within the early childhood setting. Technology is an increasing resource
and what most people do not understand the most things can be classed as this,
this is because technology is anything that allows for problem solving,
creative thinking, communication and a lot more (Ministry of Education, 2007).
One comment on my blog noticed that I only talked about the boys having an
interest in the bikes. This is mainly because we only have two girls within our
toddler room. The girls do get involved on bike day but do not really show a
strong interest in them. It is clear that safety and rules is a strongly agreed
upon when it comes to bikes as three of the comments mentioned this. I believe that
it is extremely important that children have boundaries that they can explore
openly within (Ministry of Education, 1996). By reminding children of the rules
then letting them explore I feel children benefit strongly.
When beginning this topic I had no idea or did not
really care about technology within our centre. It is something that our centre
did not really have and I never knew the importance of including it. However
once starting this topic and looking at the benefits that technology offers I
have become very interested in how I can incorporate it more into my centre. I
have learnt that technology is not only digital, this being a belief that I had
carried for many years now, but could be made up of many different things
(Smorti, 1999). Non- Digital technology allows children to further their
communication and problem solving skills, which initially allow for them to
then make sense of the world around them (Ministry of Education, 2007). “Growing
experience in solving problems together develops children’s understanding of
how technology can help them and others (Ministry of Education, 2007, P. 96).”
References:
Gonzalez-Mena, J. (2011). Foundations of early
childhood education: Teaching children in a diverse
society (5th ed.). Boston, United States of America: McGraw Hill.
Ministry of Education. (1996). Te whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga ngā mokopuna Aotearoa: Early
childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.
Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning
Media.
Smorti, S. (1999).
Technology in early childhood. Early
Education, 1, 5-10.
