This week in class, we had a small group of ECE students talking about how to use technology appropriately in the Early Childhood Classroom. We came up with a lot of great ideas that I want to share here:
1. Technology should be interactive. Young children learn better when they are not just passive watchers.
2. Technology should be used regularly for real tasks.
3. Computers are intrinsically motivating for young students.
4. Computers enhance children's self-concept and improves their attitudes about learning.
5. Technology gives students more learning choices.
6. Computer use increases co-operation among students.
7. Use of speech synthesizers like in "Kidsperation" gives them both visual and audio re-inforcement.
8. Technology enlarges words for those who struggle with vision issues.
9. We should use technologies that allow students to explore not be task focused.
10. Some things a child could do with technology can be found on the early connections web site: www.netc.org/earlyconnections/. For example: Make and display a graph. Explore with digital tools like a digital microscope or camera. Tell a story in pictures and words with art software, record a book, etc. Put together a digital record of a special activity, or make an electronic slideshow of a class book. Share and document learning with digital photos of skits, projects geometric patterns etc. Take family portraits of a school's open house and send them home.
What if every Child had a lap top? (OLPC) We had a chance to learn about the XO, a new kind of computer designed for children to use. It was invented by a man from MIT named Negraponte. It's cost is about $200 and when you buy one, you also purchase one for a child in a developing country like Cambodia. It was fun to have Dr. Graham's son help us get around on this new computer. I enjoyed reading about some of the activities available for children on this computer in the "OLPC Help Topics" article on Moodle. Kids don't need teachers to show them how to use these computers. They are very intuitive. However, I think a teacher could give them assignments that would enrich their use of the computer.
After our XO experience we did a project using a digital camera. We discussed creative ways we could use digital cameras. Some ideas were:
1. Take pictures of students at the beginning and at the end of the year to show how they have changed.
2. Take nature walks and record observations by taking pictures.
3. Drawings made from pictures.
4. Take pictures for a class story.
5. Take pictures of children doing a class project and make into a power point.
6. Take pictures of a sequence of events (the growth of a plant from seed)
7. Role-play a story , take pictures, and make a class book.
8. Take pictures of shapes
Our group chose Kindergarten content, Standard 1, Objective 3a, which is about identifying and expressing ideas and information about feelings in a variety of ways. We decided to take pictures of people expressing different emotions and then use these pictures to help students be able to recognize emotion in people. The pictures could be of different classmates, and then we would have a discussion about emotion. Perhaps we could draw pictures of these different emotions and label them in another activity. Some of the emotions we recorded were: Excitement (Prof. Graham), Anger, Sadness, and happiness (Prof. Graham's son). See the pictures at the beginning of this post.
What was the TPACK (technology, pedagogy, content, and knowledge) used in this activity? The technology was the digital camera. The Pedagogy was demonstration and practice plus experiential learning by students taking pictures themselves. The content was identifying and expressing emotion from the Kindergarten Core, Standard 1, Objective 3a. The knowledge gained by the students was: gaining greater understanding of emotions, gaining skill in digital camera useage, and learning new vocabulary words about emotion.
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