Summarise your own significant learning from this module. Identify its implications for your future role as an English or IT subject leader.

Throughout this module, I feel that I have learnt a significant amount about the positive use of technologies within classrooms as well as the exposure children face through the use of technology. I have learned a lot about the use of comics and graphic novels within classrooms, and would not have thought they would have ever been involved within the learning of children’s reading, due to them not being deemed ‘educational’. I have enjoyed the sessions in which we were hands on and learned different ways to incorporate iPads and different apps into the classroom learning, and feel I benefited hugely from these sessions. After reflecting back on my time within school, I am keen to become more familiar with newer technologies that are being introduced within school and try to incorporate more technology within my planning, as I feel now that there are so many more ways to interact children within their learning than just using an interactive whiteboard.

Palfrey and Gasser (2008:82) discuss the lives of ‘digital natives, who live so much of their lives in networked publics’ and how they ‘are unlikely to come to see privacy in the same terms that previous generations have’. I feel that within my own future practice, I will struggle to be accepting of the fact that children I may teach, will potentially be using the same social networks as myself, and therefore will mean that unless I remove myself from the online world, I will never be able to keep aspects of my online networking private from children more than half my age. Palfrey and Gasser (2008:85) highlighted that ‘young people around the world are spending an increasing amount of their free time connected to the internet’. As well as my own privacy online, it is also a struggle to come to terms with the fact that children are not protected from the exposure of online ‘nasties’. Popadopoulos (2010) discusses the notion of children being able to access everything on the internet, and depending on their parents, will continue to be exposed to content that is way above their levels of understanding and maturity, and will damage them in many ways. Due to this factor, I feel that if I were to use aspects of the internet and online social media, such as blogging or emailing with my children, I would not feel comfortable with allowing them to roam these sites freely, due to the fear of exposure or inappropriate behaviour around certain subjects.

Overall, my learning throughout this module has been positive and there are many aspects that I can take away and try to incorporate into my classroom practices within the future. Despite the increasing use of technology in schools, to which I am personally a supporter of, I do worry about the implications that come with using technology within the classroom, and the impacts inappropriate content exposure has on children of such young ages.

Bibliography:

Papadopoulos, L. (2010) Sexualisation of Young People Review Home Office (Executive Summary – link on LN)http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100418065544/http://homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/Sexualisation-young-people2835.pdf?view=Binary (accessed 31/10/14)

Palfrey, J and Gasser, U. (2008) Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books.