week 7 - reflection on Shirley Warren School

Having reflected on the use of technology and media at Shirley Warren Primary School, discuss anything that surprises or challenges you. What questions arise for you as a result of the visit? Make any relevant references to readings.

Shirley Warren School provides a vast amount of opportunities for using technology and media in the classroom through animation, film and podcasts. The school also had their very own radio station used daily, played around the school and gave the opportunity for children to share their learning; this is supported by Halsey (2007) who highlights the importance of creating a real context for learning. It was suggested that children are really enthusiastic about this opportunity.

Having an ICT leader passionate about digital literacy seemed to hold a crucial role in the school being fully committed to ensuring children use media and technology. He expressed his dedication to training as he stated one aspect which holds teachers back is the lack of knowledge to use the equipment; this was also expressed by Marsh et al (2005) who found the digital divide can influence teacher’s confidence. I feel this training of how to use editing programs and equipment to create animations and films has given me confidence in how simple but effective using digital literacy can be. However this could be a challenge which may occur in other schools, if there is not an ICT leader who is as enthusiastic to provide training and help for teachers will this affect other teacher’s outlook of using it?

I was surprised at the extensive resources the schools has, as stated by the ICT leader having a permanent set up for animation, filming and media readily available makes incorporating these aspects into the curriculum a lot easier. However this is the only school I have viewed this in and many colleagues also expressed that they had not experienced anything like this before. Therefore, if many schools do not have these advances in technology will this be a challenge to share resources and time consuming to set up, resulting in digital literacy not being used at all opportunities?

 

Halsey, S. (2007) ‘Embracing emergent technologies and envisioning new ways of using them for literacy learning in the primary classroom’ English Teaching; Practice and Critique 6 (2) pp 99-107

Marsh, J. Brooks, G. Hughes, J. Ritchie,L. Roberts, S. Wright,K. (2005) Digital beginnings: Young children’s use of popular culture, media and new Technologies University of Sheffield