Reflection 3 - Digital Camera

Reflection 3

Digital technology – Camera

The use of camera by the early age children to take photos is a valuable technology that encouraged the children to discover and build up stories and connections.  One of the children’s learning outcome from using digital camera is to starts an open and confident exploration which constructs their self-confidence in taking photos and convey their interest in photos they liked the most.

My four (4) year old granddaughter Louise love taking photos of our family and herself.  She has to be supervised when she wanted to use my digital camera because sometimes once she got the camera; she always wanted to take pictures of everything inside and outside over and over again.  Louise walked around with my old camera around her neck.  “I’m a photo girl!”, she said.  “You mean photographer”?  I called out to her as she ran to take photos outside.  After taking photos outside Louise turned to me and asked.  “Can you take a photo of mine and I’ll take a photo of you”?  We did exchanged shots at the same time.

The Children will normally snap anything they see.  The children learn how to take a clear picture that comes out naturally when nothing interferes, for instance when moving around while taking photos.  While Louise was taking photos outside, at the same time she was developing her photographic skill, like zooming the camera on to a spot.  When Louise viewed her pictures after, I saw her deleted the unclear photos and leave the good ones in the camera. At this stage Louise is learning from her first mistake and she’s aware of it next time she takes another photo.  As she went through all the photos she noticed how the camera works.  Using digital cameras, I believe is a useful technological device in a centre as it gives the children the opportunity to explore technology (Smorti, 1999, p. 7).

On Friday 24/08/12, I reversed my car in front of our house as I was about to go to the shop.  Louise ran from the house towards the car and screamed out crying that she wanted to come with me.  I stopped to let her hopped in and we went off to the shop.  When she seats on her car seat, she saw my digital camera next to the chair where she seats.  While still sopping with tears on her eyes she picked up the camera and clicked two shots facing to her.  I didn’t realise what she was doing, because I was driving and all I saw was the flashing of the camera.  I just found out the next day when I downloaded the photos in my laptop.  When I showed her the photos, she was laughing and called out her mum to come and watched.  Louise was explaining to her mum what happened and why she was crying when her mum asked her why she cried.

Louise starts telling her developing stories to her mum by having another look at the picturesand review what she have taken.  She revisits what she learnt from an experience and developed stories from different shots she took of herself. Louise also recalls her emotional feelings at that time she took her own photo.  As Louise shared her dialogue with her mum about her picture, I noticed that digital camera influenced the cognitive skills to re-think back and brought in memories to develop her story.  Smorti (1999) stated that introducing technology is about changing attitudes; therefore Louise was adopting a positive attitude towards the use of digital camera by using her photos to create her thoughts and improved her language skill.

References: 

Smorti, S. (1999, Autumn) Technology in early childhood. Early Education, 19.

  

Blog 2

Digital technology – Laptop/ Computer

Sometimes Adults or teachers used computers as a reward of good behaviour or as an electronic babysitter (Tsantis, Bewick, and Thouvenelle, 2003).  This is so true, as I often seen it in some centres especially when the weather is not good outside.  When teachers were tired of children running around inside, they just turn on the computers and allow children to play games on it.  I found out that most children loved playing on the computer than any other activities available in the centre.

When toddlers used the computers, adults always at present to help them with holding the mouse and show him/her how to gently press the keys and guide them away from touching the screen.  Teachers often talk to the children about colours, numbers and shapes on the screen to make sure they’re not just clicking blindly.  The centre is not encouraging toddlers to use computers; they said that it is not necessary for a toddler’s development.  The teachers set up limits of using the computers when it comes to two years and under.   They are not allowed to stay on the computer for more than half an hour.

It was a complete different story with my 2 year old grandson, Joel.  My four (4) older sons used the laptop as an ‘electronic babysitter’ for Joel.  When my older sons wanted to change their television channel while Joel was watching his cartoons, they tricked him by turning off the TV with the remote and told Joel that the power went off.   At the same time the boys already turned on the laptop on Joel’s favourite cartoon so that he can easily switched to the laptop.  When Joel became absorbed in watching his cartoons online the boys turned on the TV and enjoyed their movies. Joel refused to let anyone to help him when he used the laptop.  He used the laptop touchpad to click his favourite programme that I saved on my desk top.  No one teaches him how to use but I’m sure he learned by watching me or one of my children when using the laptop.  According to Te Whariki, “toddlers seek social interaction and learn by imitating others”(Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 23).

Observing young children these days while exploring this digital technology like laptops and computers encouraged myself as an educator and a parent to adapt to the children’s world and meet their needs.  Clements & Sarana, 2002; Elliot, 2003 (as cited in Talay-Ongan & Ap, 2005) stated that the use of technology in early childhood centres challenges the teachers to easily fit in the curriculum to meet each child’s need (p. 227).  I also noticed that very young children have shown comfort and confidence when they use computers. Their first impression when site the computer is to tap the keys. They can turn them on, follow pictorial directions, and click on it; sometimes they just click the mouse randomly. Typing on the keyboard is not a problem to them; in fact, sometimes they just did it as a source of pride. Children used computers as a method of social interaction with peers therefore computers do not isolate children (Clements, 1999). Teachers in our centre said that children prefer to spend as much time to talk to friends while on the computer rather than doing any other activities like puzzles and messy play.  Clements and Natasi, 1992, (as cited in Clements, 1999) declared that children make new friends around the computer, they teach and learn from each others.

References

Clements, D. H. (1999). Effective use of computers with young children. In J. V. Copley (Ed.), Mathematics in the Early Years. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Pages 119-128

Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He  whāriki mātauranga mo ngā             

            mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media

Talay-Ongan, A., & Ap, E.A. (Eds.). (2005). Child development and teaching young children. Victoria, Australia: Thompson Social Science Press.

Tsantis, L., Bewick, C., & Thornton, S. (2003). Examining some common myths about computers in the early years. Young Children on the Web, November 2003, 1-9.

Blog 1

Building tower with coloured cubes (non digital technology)

Today, I noticed most of the children were playing in the blocks corner at my centre. This includes N, a three year old girl, and D who celebrates his four years birthday at the centre on Thursday last week.  N and D were like leaders in their groups stacking coloured cubes up and see who’s got the tallest tower.   

N stacked the cubes up and the others tried to hold them and to prevent from falling over.  The cubes are not firm enough to sit on the other because it’s light and the tower can easily fall down when it’s too high.  N and her group’s tower starts to wobble when it went a little bit higher than their heights.  It was funny when N knocks the tower down and the rest of her group laughed and they started to stack a new tower again.  

                                

D and his three other friends were absorbed in building their tower next to N and her group. What really caught my attention in D’s group was how they used the colours to form up a pattern.  D used three colours in their activity which was blue, red and yellow.  He called out what colour will be next and kept on stacking the cubes as his friends handed it to him.  Their tower ended up on the ground when they went too high above their heights.

During my tea break I reflect and asked myself a question.  “Are the coloured cubes, a technological resource”?  I quickly recalled what Smorti (1999) simply define technology as solving problem and or knowledge, skills and resources that combined to find solution to a problem.  Now this means that all resources used by children to create something they are capable of and find solution at the end, are technological resources.  For instance, when the children saw the cube blocks, the first thing comes to their mind was to build a tower.  In this case the children already have their technological knowledge about what to do with the coloured cubes.

 I shared my thoughts with the teachers in the centre and they agreed when I read out Smorti’s idea about technology.  (Fleer and Jane 2011) confirmed that technology is everything we use around us for example, construction, clothing, tools, computers, etc.  In fact, we both had the same insights as the teachers in my centre.   We thought that the term technology is about the knowledge of communication, such as phones, computers and the entire digital devices only, but never thought of non digital technology.

When I finished my break it was mat time already, all the children were sitting down and the teacher used the coloured cubes to extend children’s learning from their activities in the morning. This gives the children more ideas of using the cubes, not only for building towers but to assess their colours and maths like counting, shapes and adding, for example,  two yellow plus 3 blue cubes equal five.  I was so confident this time because I assured that the coloured cubes are technological resources so I started taking photos of the resources.  The teacher also extended the activity by sending one child to go around the room to look for another square shaped object apart from the coloured cubes, or a rectangle shaped block and different other shapes.

      

Next time when I come to the centre, I will introduce more other different blocks and non digital technology that will be more appropriate and firm enough to build a tower.  It is important for children to develop confidence to acquire new knowledge they need as life –long learners (Ministry of Education, 1996).

 References

Fleer, M.  &  Jane, B.  (2011)  Design and Technology for children  3^rd edition,        Pearson Australia,             Sydney.

Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopunao   Aotearoa : Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New   Zealand: Learning Media

Smori, S. (1999) Technology in Early Childhood. Early Education, 19, 5-10.

Hello

Hi everyone
just finally enter into this world of technology..catch u later