After working with children in school, share your observations and reflections. What surprises you? What were the challenges and how might you overcome these? What have you learnt?

Prior to working with the children and media in school, I had little confidence, which was due to my lack of experience in using media devices, as Palfrey and Gasser  (2008), explains our generation are ‘digital natives’. During the media lesson, we worked with a group of year three children, in producing an advertisement promoting the rights of the child. It was interesting that I observed that the boys were more eager to participate in operating the camera and equipment than the girls. This echoes the view that Wyse and Jones (2008) put forward, when explaining boys have a natural curiosity about how things work and are generally more kinesthetic learners. This implies that integrating media into the literacy lesson, will aid in appealing to boys and inevitably raising their attainment which Oftsed (1996) state is lower than girls, and has been an issue for over a decade.

On reflection, I noted that we were working with small groups of children, and questioned if this would work so well with a class of thirty children. When discussing this with the class teacher, he suggested that it is more manageable when working to achieve a whole class project. He explained that the teacher may want to delegate roles to certain children, in order to make it more manageable to monitor, and then swap the roles over so that each child experiences them all. He further added that this will reduce the time each child has on each stage of the film process, which supports the view of Allen, Potter, Sharp and Turvey (2012) who further conclude this will limit the boredom and fatigue the children may experience as editing is a lengthy process.

Overall the experience of working with children and media has proven to be beneficial to my own learning, and also to theirs. I have learnt that it is a great tool for motivating boys to participate, and their previous knowledge interested me. I did not expect children in year three to have confidence in using the equipment, and expressing their views on how the film should look. This has inspired me to incorporate the use of media into my own lessons as a future teacher, as the children clearly gain a lot from the overall experience, and enjoy the process which I feel will in turn motivate me to improve my own knowledge.

A question, which still remains for me, is that would the children be as engaged if they did not have such specialist facilities, and a knowledgeable specialist media teacher? It would be interesting to teach a similar lesson in a different school, as I am aware this was only a snap shot experience, and I may see different outcomes in a different setting. 

Bibliography

Allen, J., Potter, J., Sharp, J. and Turvey, K. (2012) primary ICT Knowledge, Understanding and Practice London: Sage Learning Matters.

Ofsted. (1996) The gender divide. London: HMSO.

Palfrey, J. and Gasser, U. (2008) Born Digital: Understanding The First Generation of Digital Natives New York: Basic Books.

Wyse, D. and Jones, R. (2008) Teaching English, Language and Literacy (2^nd Edition) Abingdon: Routledge