DIGITAL LITERACY

This session’s focus was on what it means for children to be digitally literate. From an early group discussion, it was clear that the term ‘digital literacy’ is contested and is understood in different ways by people.  The definition provided by Futurelab , 2010 introduces the term effectively: “digital literacy is the way in which people, understand, make and share meaning with digital media and technologies”.

I found myself reflecting on my use of digital technology in my education and in my life in general and it is amazing to see how things have evolved since I was at school. There is no doubt that we are living in a digital culture- where people are increasingly shopping on-line, students are researching projects on the internet and where people are communicating with friends and family through social media sites. Considering this, it is crucial that children have ample opportunity to familiarise themselves with these technologies and build their confidence to explore the use of a range of technologies so they are able to adapt and thrive in this digital age.

The  ‘8 Essential Elements of Digital Literacies’ (Cultural, Cognitive,Constructive, Communicative,Confident,Creative, Critical,Civic) were introduced as we watched a video by Doug Belshaw. Views to reflect upon from the video include (a) not ranking the elements in importance as it depends on the child (b) being wary of one definition of digital literacy and (c) the need to consider context-age/geographical location/stage of development, in determining what digital technologies a child should be aware of.

The task of presenting a  modern day interpretation of a fairytale using the ‘Puppet Pals’ app was an excellent way to see elements of these digital literacies in action.  Reflecting on this task, I feel that it demonstrates how digital technology can be utilised to providing an engaging platform for children to be creative and work collaboratively by sharing ideas and skills and introduce them to ICT skills (collating material using the internet) .

AlthoughI firmly believe that children should have the opportunity to explore a wide range of digital technologies, there are things to consider. The issues involved with safeguarding and wellbeing and e-safety have been previously discussed in our earlier blog posts and these issues cannot be ignored. I have seen how my placement school aim to increase parents’ awareness of the potential dangers that are posed with on-line technology and I strongly believe that this should be incorporated within every schools policy.

Reflecting on this session, our explorations of a variety of digital technologies through this module and my observations on the use of ICT during my school based training has provided food for thought in my continuing professional development. One of my aims for my upcoming placements is to continue developing my own skills and confidence in the use of digital technologies so that I am able to facilitate effective learning and development of digital literacy in and outside of the classroom.

Grant,L. (2010) Connecting digital literacy between home and school [online],Futurelab

Available:http://www.futurelab.org.uk/sites/default/files/Connecting_digital_literacy_between_home_and_school.pdf  [Accessed 25/11/2013)

Safeguarding

Safeguarding

Safeguarding is very important. This is not limited to schools, but I am only going to look at it in terms of school for this blog post. I am not going look at any e-safety issues although these are a significant part of safeguarding.

To first look into safeguarding we must first ask, “What is safeguarding?”

Safeguarding is a combination of things, it involves protecting children (also known as child protection or CP), preventing impairment of children’s health and development, and ensuring children are growing up in a safe and caring environment and taking action to get all children and young people to have the best outcomes.

“the action we take to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm – is everyone’s responsibility. (HM Government 2013)

This quote shows that safeguarding is the process of both protecting children and promoting the welfare of children. It also shows how it is not just schools.

Problems

Keeping children safe is a major issues, almost one in five children today has experienced serious physical abuse, sexual abuse or severe physical or emotional neglect at some point in their lifetime (Radford et al 2011). I find this statistic shocking! I think that it is disgraceful that a supposedly civilized society cannot look after its own children! The more I read around the subject of safeguarding the more I see that the system is failing. When you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs it becomes very clear why some children struggle in school.

(Taken from the slides on http://ev682.wordpress.com/)

This all demonstrates why such a big enthuse is on developing good safeguard policies and procedures.

There are four parts that make up child abuse; Neglect, Sexual Abuse, Physical Abuse and Verbal Abuse. It is difficult to actually know if a child is fitting into any of these categories, which is why the teacher must record anything they think is not normal it could be unusual bruises or something that the child says this then gets passed this onto the appropriate person in school (safeguard officer often a deputy head). The process from what I have seen is a long drawn out affair which currently doesn’t work. Often they only way of anything really being down is when the child specifically says something or makes an accusation.

There is always lots of political talk about making things better but never much in terms of really action the “Every Child Matter Policy (2003)” did do good, and the currently governments version will keep building on this but nothing will change enough to make a big impact, it will be spun by which the political parties so those in power will say it is working very well, whereas, those not in power will say it is not working. Everything is political football even children’s safety and welfare.

This is why as teachers we must promote establish as safe and stimulating environment our pupils. We must provide stability for those children that have none. We must be good role models. I also feel that we have to have the behavior management systems so that adults don’t let children do as they wish simply because they have issues in their home lives because this will not help children develop into good adults.

 

Radford, L., Corral, S., Bradley, C., Fisher, H., Bassett. C., Howat, N. and Collishaw, S.(2011) Child abuse and neglect in the UK today.

What is safeguarding and why does it matter to my organisation? Available at <http://www.safenetwork.org.uk/getting_started/Pages/Why_does_safeguarding_matter.aspx> [accessed 23rd October 2013]

HM Government (2013) Working together to safeguard children [online] Available at <http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/w/working%20together.pdf> [accessed 23^rd October 2013]

DFES, 2003. Every Child Matters: Presented to Parliament by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Command of Her Majesty, September 2003. London: The Stationery Office, Cm5860

Theories of Learning

I found the session earlier this week very informative in regards to understanding the different theories of learning. It was interesting to discuss how these theories are addressed through a range of teaching styles and the impact adopting a particular style can have on different children’s learning.

Initially we covered the three theories of learning; behaviourism, constructivism and social constructivism. Discussion concluded that in the primary setting children learnt through more of an individual process and so the constructivism approach appeared more widely used, compared to the secondary setting which took a more behaviourism approach, in that the strategy of reinforcement and rewards was used to aid learning. When asked to evaluate my own experience of learning I concurred that I encountered this too. However as all children learn and adapt at different stages it provokes the question that during lessons how can teachers ensure all individuals have successfully learnt and achieved the learning outcome? Teachers must use a range of methods to assess children; written, observing and informal talks to name just a few. These assessment tools enable the teacher to gauge an understanding of whether a chunk of the teaching has been resonated and further learning has occurred for all, and so can highlight areas for development which perhaps may need further addressing in future lessons.

Through discussion it was concluded that a blended approach of teaching is necessary to achieve greatest learning for children. Social constructivism is learning through collaboration and discussion with others, as well as the learner making connections to prior knowledge.  This creates the scaffolding for children’s learning. By this we mean

‘helping a child to focus on significant elements of a task, breaking a task into subsequence’s if necessary, or finding other ways to subtly support the learner to meaningfully complete the structure or task, and subtly phasing out assistance as the child’s competence increased’. (Lytle, D. E., 2003)

The idea of scaffolding supports the theory of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), in that a child cannot extend their ZPD as they are unable to move into the next stage of learning without the relevant knowledge from another. In this respect, I find scaffolding, and there social constructivism highly important in the contribution to teaching and learning.

The latter part of the session raised discussions of the effects of nature versus nurture on the different approaches of learning. How a child learns is influenced by the individual’s internal thoughts, views and beliefs. As a result of this great discussion exists as to what creates these personal characteristics. Arguments backing nature state that individuals are born with pre-determined genetics which determine the characteristics and that the individual will live their life without these changing. However arguments supporting the nurture view suggest that many factors can influence, change and adjust these characteristics, such as the way in which the individual is brought up, the environment they are in and stimulations from other outside factors for example other individuals.

Throughout my educational life I have experienced all three theories of learning. I fully agree with the idea that a blended approach is most effective when teaching as this will cater for all different types of learners and so successful learning will occur for all.

 

Lytle, D. E. (2003). Play and Educational Theory and Practice. London: Greenwood Publishing Group. 75.

#livinginadigitalworld #primaryschool

This entry reflects on a highly thought-provoking lecture that initially focused on pedagogy-that was referred to as the ‘art’ or the ‘science’ of teaching and then crossed over into an analysis of the use of technology in the classroom.

What the lecture allowed me to do was reflect on how the use of technology within a primary school setting has changed dramatically since I was at school and how the learning experiences of the modern day child differ significantly to my own.

I particularly enjoyed the Skype conversation with the year 5 pupils. It was refreshing to see these children embracing this technology and gain an understanding of their perceptions of the use of technology in the classroom.

Through my recent classroom based experience, I have no doubt as to the potential of technologies to stimulate teaching and learning. However, I fear that children will become too heavily reliant on the use of on-line search engines to find the answers to questions and thus diminish the social aspects of learning. I strongly believe that the teacher should therefore continually question when it is appropriate to utilise ICT- to allow the key interactive processes to flow and (from a trainee teachers’ perspective) allow the teacher to do their job and be the catalyst and ‘scaffolding’ for higher order thinking.

We have to all accept that we are living in a digital age and the brutal reality is that a failure to get acquainted with technology could leave children behind. Indeed the main reasons why primary schools are seen to use ICT is ‘the simple priority of ‘keeping up’ with the rest of modern life’, Selwyn (2010, pg 6). It is interesting to note that the extensive and efficient use of ICT is a very important factor in many parents’ view of what constitutes a ‘good school’.

I conclude with my personal view that we should not get carried away with the importance of ICT. I fully understand why primary schools feel compelled to use ICT- but other priorities do exist- in the shape of SEN, literacy, numeracy and bullying. I leave you with an interesting statement from the Rose primary review “to argue against the importance of ICT in the primary curriculum is to ignore the increasing digitisation of information worldwide-this will require digital literacy of all children”. Do you feel this places too much emphasis on the importance of ICT learning or hits the mark in acknowledgement of the world we live in?.

By James Exall

References:

Selwyn, N (2010) Primary Schools and ICT: Learning from Pupil Perspectives.Continuum

The Guardian. Rose report places technology centre stage in primary curriculum. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/resource/rose-report-technology-primary-curriculum [Accessed 15/9/2013]