This week I was given the opportunity to visit Shirley
Warren Primary school again, but this time I was able to work with six year one
children to produce a multi modal text. The children and I used ipads to create
a ‘talking book’ using the ipad app, ‘Book creator’. We based our ‘talking
book’ on Article 13, from the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which focuses on
Freedom of Expression. Book Creator was something I had briefly experienced
before in a seminar session, however, by being given the opportunity to use it
with children in a school setting, it enabled me to assess children’s ICT
abilities and gain a better understanding of the skills and knowledge they have
and gain when using technology and ipad apps. It also helped develop my own
skills and understanding of using apps for learning opportunities ,as we used a
variety of apps including, ‘Veescope’ and ‘imovie’.
At first, I was anxious as to what the year 1 children knew
and didn’t know about ipads and the apps we would be using. However, I become
aware that not only do they use ipads on a regular basis, some of them also own
their own ipads at home. This supports the view that children are growing up as
digital natives (Palfrey and Gasser, 2008) and that subject learning should be
relevant to the digital world they are growing up in (Hague and Payton, 2010). Also, as the use of ipads supported
children’s home experiences, it may have made them more motivated and engaged in
completing the given task (Lambirth, 2003). However, just because children are
growing up in a world that has a heavy focus on technology, this doesn’t mean
all children have developed the skills needed to use certain forms of technology
and apps available. We found that within our group of children, each child had
very different knowledge and skills of how to use the specific apps. Therefore,
this argues the need for teachers to pitch their ICT teaching at the correct
level for children to achieve their full potential (Hague and Payton, 2010). If children
are ready to explore and work independently, then this needs to be encouraged.
In relation to my future practice, at first I was very quick to help and
support the children, however, from stepping back I realised that most of the
children knew how to use certain aspects of the apps available.
A future target that has come to light from my visit is that
it is important to let children provide their own ideas and self-correct their
work when editing. For example, in our talking book we used voice recordings. At
first the children’s voice recordings were too quiet which meant that the
audience of the ‘talking book’ would not be able to hear the children on the
recording. However, instead of letting the children provide ideas of how this
can be improved, I provided the solution for the children. Therefore, due to
discussions and evaluations of my own practice, I now have an understanding
that we as teachers need to let children identify errors in their work and
provide their own ideas in order to promote independent learning (Allen,
Potter, Sharp, Turvey, 2012).
To conclude, in my own experience I have seen topic and
group work be produced in paper topic books and posters. However, after experiencing
the use of a ‘talking book’ to present information, I feel that this is a very
beneficial way of collecting evidence on topic related areas as it can include
sound, animation, movement and videos as well as print and images, which a
paper topic book cannot.
Hague,
C, & Payton, S (2010) Digital Literacy across the Curriculum, Futurelab,
Available at http://www2.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/handbooks/digital_literacy.pdf
Lambirth, A. (2003) ‘”They get enough of
that at home”: Understanding aversion to popular cultures in schools’ Reading
37(1) pp.9-13
Palfrey,
J. & Gasser, U. (2008) Born Digital: Understanding The First Generation
of Digital Natives New York
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