Monday, 29 September 2014

New technologies in the English Classroom

New technologies in the English Classroom

In todays society technology is becoming increasingly popular, and playing a major part in children’s lives both in education and at home. Using interactive whiteboards, iPads, Laptops and other small technologies play a positive part in education today. I feel that the use of technology in the classroom means that teachers are able to do more with fewer resources.
However, I do not think the media has a positive influence on technology, 1 in 10 children have a mobile phone by the age of 5!! I find this statistic shocking, our world is becoming increasingly dependent on technology. But having said that I can see the positive outcome of using technology whilst teaching.
The school I worked at during my gap year and as a teaching assistant very much encouraged technology in the classroom, each day the children were greeted with a morning task on the IWB. They also had weekly sessions using the iPads to play on apps helping with fine motor skills, phonics, spelling and mathematics. It was surprising yet interesting to see how many of the children were so competent using technology, most of which whom have their own iPads.
Stephenson (1997) states that as children gain more confidence using technology, the technology will soon become invisible, meaning the children are able to fluently use these ICT skills.  
In this module, I believe that I may struggle on the seminar based on advertising purely for the fact I do not have young children in my family, which could mean that it is hard for me to define what age should be watching what.


Bibliography
Stephenson, D (1997) Information and Communications Technology: Expanding the Space of Learning, vol. 7. New York: Springer.


http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/aug/23/children-first-mobile-age-five (Assessed September 27th)



2 comments:

  1. Is it the case that the media do not have a positive influence on technology, resulting in very young children having mobile phones?

    Or is that statistic more of a parenting and/or cultural issue?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I believe that the media does have a negative influence on technology and I do feel that it plays apart in young children having moblies, although ultimately it is down to the parents to buy them one.

    ReplyDelete