In my experience of
early years of education I didn't use as much ICT as children do these days in
the classroom while being taught. For what I can remember in primary school the
main technology used to help learning were mainly things like calculators, overhead
projectors, TV and video players and sometimes we would use the PC's to create
a poster on paint or a typed letter. After completing a week of work experience
in a primary school I have realized how much has changed.” Very few educators would disagree with the notion that technology has
dramatically changed the teaching and learning process.”(McKnight,K.2012) This
quote also supports my point and shows that education evolves around technology
a lot more than it did. For example I realized during my week of work
experience that the children were doing a lot of their work on ipads and also
macbooks. They would use different apps and games to complete tasks and solve
problems, which was very interesting and would make the work enjoyable. “Early research shows that tablets in the
classroom have the potential to significantly enhance learning. UK-based
researchers examined schools using tablets and found a range of learning
benefits, including increases in student motivation, collaboration between students
and teachers, and collaboration among students themselves.” (Tynan-Wood,C.2016)
This also shows the other benefits of having the ipad’s in the class room and
how effective they can be to help the teacher and the student.
Tynan-Wood,C.
(2016). iPads in the classroom: the promise and the problems. Available:
http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/ipad-technology-in-the-classroom/. Last
accessed 18/10/2016.
McKnight.
(2012). Top 12 Ways Technology Changed Learning . Available: http://www.teachhub.com/how-technology-changed-learning.
Last accessed 18/10/2016.
My personal experiences are quite similar to yours. I barely used any technology in primary education other than a computer and a whiteboard. With all this new technology coming into schools, do you think that it’s taking children’s attention away from working?
ReplyDeleteYes, I do believe in some ways it could take away the children’s attention from working but with the experience I’ve had in schools like I said prior in the blog, the tasks and games were challenging and interesting so the children were normally focused and interacting well. Also I noticed that the teacher had more time on their hands to go around the class to help and give feedback to the children. As you can see by this article that I have inserted the link for,it shows how exactly it helps the teacher having different types of technology in the classroom.
ReplyDeletehttp://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/insights/472-technology-helps-teachers-manage-classrooms
Bhaskar,S. (2013). How Technology Helps Teachers to Manage Their Classroom. Available: http://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/insights/472-technology-helps-teachers-manage-classrooms. Last accessed 18/10/2016.
Technology in classrooms are effective yes but it needs to be taught and used in the right way. Whilst I was on work experience in my local primary school I noticed a lot of teachers were complaining about it. Most teachers weren’t trained properly to use the technology and also the older generation of teachers couldn’t get their heads around the new technology. ‘Over a third of teachers in primary schools say that they’re unsure about how to integrate technology into the curriculum leading to many items unused on a regular basis’ (Josie Gurney-Read, 2015). This article was published last year and still shows that many teachers aren’t sure how to use the technology and are also unsure when to use it in the curriculum. The most of my primary education was spent in Berlin and the only use of technology I had was a computer. We were only aloud to use it once a week and that was only for an hour! The teacher had much more control of the class which meant that everyone was concentrating and sticking to their tasks.
ReplyDeleteJosie Gurney-Read. (2015). Classroom technology 'rarely used' by half of teachers. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/12013650/Classroom-technology-barely-used-by-half-of-teachers.html. Last accessed 18th of October 2015
But wasn’t that way of teaching sometimes boring? And couldn’t you keep the children occupied and use technology to help the learning?
ReplyDeleteIt certainly is boring but if a teacher doesn’t know how the technology works then it benefits badly on the children. They won’t be learning anything. In my work experience the teachers used a lot of the interactive whiteboards which kept most of the students occupied. The use of whiteboards are a lot better than the old fashioned blackboards. It gets the children more involved and keeps everyone engaged as I noticed on work experience as the teacher would ask questions and the children would come up to the whiteboard and answer it themselves. ‘Evidence suggests that the IWB can present a fluid medium through which teachers can deliver not just ideas, but ended frameworks for pupils to develop metacognition’ (Beauchamp and Parkinson, 2005). This is obviously better than any old fashioned blackboard.
ReplyDeleteBeachamp and Parkinson. (2005). The Interactive Whiteboard. Available: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zh0SXdGJVz4C&pg=PA88&dq=Evidence+suggests+that+the+IWB+can+present+a+fluid+medium+through+which+teachers+can+deliver+not+just+ideas,+but+ended+frameworks+for+pupils. Last accessed 3rd of November 2016.
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