Summarising my learning from this module.

During this mini module, I feel that I have learnt a great deal about popular cultural, digital literacy and advertising, in particular I have learned a lot about the use of iPads within the classroom and seen how effective they are at our visit to Shirley Warren School.  I also enjoyed our workshops with Pam and now have a bank of websites to use in school. On school placement I would like to observe and teach and IT lesson to try out some of the things I have learnt, and to see how much IT is used within the school.

McCluskey, 20011 and Turvey, 2006 say ‘The idea that interaction between individual and collective experience leads to deeper learning – learning which is more reflective and transferrable’ I completely agree with this quote, as in my future practice, technology will just continue to grow and digital literacy will play more of a part in schools. Palfrey and Gasser (2008) ‘young people around the world are spending an increasing amount of time connected to the internet’. I do not like that this is how the world is developing, children are becoming so engrossed in technology, during one of our sessions my table discussed how as children we went out and played in the street. However, now children sit and play on the xbox or on computers. Technology is taking over childhood memories. ‘And they’ve never known any other way of life.’ (Palfrey and Gasser, 2008) This is a fear that I have when in class, that the children will not be engaged in what is being taught because it is not up to date enough or interactive enough.

From this module I have a deeper understand with a wide variety of technology and how these can be used within every topic in the classroom. What I have learnt I feel will help me progress when becoming a subject leader in IT. However, one fear I will always carry is the children becoming more knowledgeable than myself in new technologies, and will end up teaching me rather than the other way around.

Palfrey, J. and Gasser, U. (2008) Born digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives. New York: Basic books.

Younie, S. and Leask, M. and Burden, K. (2015) Teaching and Learning with ICT in the Primary School. Abingdon: Routledge.