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?
After today's session working with the children in school creating a film, I feel that the time spent with the children was successful and I am proud of the outcome of our film. Although it was only a short time with the children, they were all engaged throughout, probably due to having new visitors, using interesting technology and allowing them to use their own ideas as much as possible. In reflection, making the film with the children went better than I thought. I was anxious beforehand as I was not sure about where things were in the school and how to use the camera etc, but the process wasn't complicated and the children were engaged and well behaved. What surprised me was how much the children knew about the filming process and when questioning them about what they would like to include in the film, they were aware of aspects such as credits and sound effects. I would question whether this was due to their age and being 'digital natives' (Palfrey & Gasser 2008) or was it due to the resources and teachers within their school?
From today, a challenge that became apparent was teaching a lesson like this to a class of 30 children on your own. To support this, it would be beneficial to give the children roles so they all have something to do, which worked well with our group today. I have learnt that the use of technology is schools is beneficial to engage children's learning across a wide range of subjects and to 'discover the digital world’ (21st CFP: 4).
Bibliography
The 21st century Fluency Project Understanding Digital
Palfrey, J. & Gasser, U. (2008) Born Digital: Understanding The First Generation of Digital Natives New York: Basic Books
I wonder if children from a different school who did not have a passionate teacher and the resources Shirley warren have would have the knowledge to produce a media project ? I think the knowledge the children have will differ depending on the resources and the knowledge of the teacher.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to hear how giving the children roles worked effectively . This is something I may try next week when I am teaching.
After reading the section about 30 children , I would be interested to know how a teacher plans and teaches a media based lesson using new technology with 30 children having one adult. As I think this would be a challenge as children would have different starting points due to having different experiences with new technology . I also question how a teacher of KS1 is able to provide 30 children with support in the editing stages, as not all schools will have additional adults in the classroom ?
Emma, I am glad that you had such a positive experience with using technology in the classroom and yes it always seems daunting but the children take it in their stride and you learn together. Its the not being afraid to use the technology that really helps in a classroom and Annabelle you have hit the nail totally on the head when you disscus the schools' ethos you do need a passionate teacher and good resourcaes
ReplyDeleteand it will be interestin g to hear Tom's views if you ask him that question in our final week 30 nchildren doing animation in one go seems a lot but it can be done and done well with a few extra hands and perhaps a staggered approach to the teaching.
There are many different issues that we may face as teachers attempting to implement this kind of technology and indeed lesson into schools without the expertise of Tom or considerable technology of Shirley Warren, but that shouldn't mean we give up on trying to implement them, as I am sure we agree there are a number of very influential benefits of doing so.
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