Digitally Literate

The blog post you are about to read is centred on the need for individuals to be digitally literate. As there are 3 members in our group we decided that we would each write a ‘mini’ blog post on the lecture. This will allow you to read 3 different contributions with differing ideas and views.

The new 2014 National Curriculum Computing purpose of study identifies that schools have to ensure that pupils become digitally literate. During the lecture a discussion took place around what it actually means to be digitally literate. It was identified that being digitally literate would allow children to confidently use digital technology which will allow and enable them to create and express their ideas through a variety of digital mediums. This will then be able to be applied throughout their life.

It was discussed in the lecture that being digitally literate will allow for individuals to be critical of what they come across using digital technology. It could be suggested that if individuals are not digitally literate and able to take on a critical stance then problems may arise. For example, in order for children to be digitally literate they need to have a good understanding around how the media can manipulate and distort images through the use of digital technology. If individuals do not have a thorough understanding around this then they may not take a critical stance on the information/image and believe in everything that they see. The question raised here is whether this may then impact upon children’s self-esteem? If children do not have a clear understanding of images being distorted then may it make them question why they do not look like the image represented? I strongly believe that if children are not taught how to be digitally literate and be able to be critical over what they see and what they may upload then issues may arise.

Esther

When we are discussing digital literacy, I think we need to be clear about what we mean. Renee Hobbs, an expert on digital literacy, defines it as “it’s the ability to critically evaluate and communicate information and ideas using digital technology”. I think often digital literacy is implied to mean simply the ability to competently use computing equipment and software, or interact with social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

However, in keeping with the more traditional view of literacy, what I think we should be focussing on teaching our pupils is how to interact with the huge range of information available to them online. What they will need to know is not only how to find and share information, but how to critically evaluate what they find, much as they do with non-digital texts and traditional media such as newspaper articles. With more and more of us using digital technology in our day-to-day work lives, the new National Curriculum for computing recognises that the provision must be more than simply coding or training in how to use Word or Excel effectively.

To become digitally literate means to be able to use all the technology available to express ideas and information, to share with others, to find and use information, and to be able to critically examine and evaluate the sources we find. Rather than simply learning how to “do”, we all need to learn how to think, and to engage intelligently with the rich variety of digital media available to us now and moving forward.

Imogen

http://www.providencejournal.com/business/content/20131123-uris-renee-hobbs-champions-digital-literacy.ece

http://www.open.ac.uk/libraryservices/subsites/dilframework/

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2012/feb/10/literacy-digital-teacher

For my contribution to the Blog post I wish to address some of the 8 essential elements of digital literacies that were mentioned during the lecture and the ones that I feel children already exhibit and which ones we as teachers need to install into them through our teaching. The 8 essential elements are as follows; Cultural, Cognitive, Constructive, Communicative, Confident, Creative, Critical and Civic.

I feel children of this generations confidence, levels and skills of communication with digital technologies are already at an extremely high level. Before children step into a classroom to take part in a computing lesson they will have already experienced a variety of different technologies. Mainly; tablets, smartphones, gaming consoles and laptop/desktop computers. For their generation all these different types of digital devices are common place and people cannot function without them, so that is why we are seeing children coming into school with the confidence using these different technologies. Also with their exposure to all these, children are aware of so many different ways of communication and how to do this using various devices, especially with the spike in social media and its useage. Also schools often provide a school VLE website where children can message one another and communicate, so schools have definitely moved with the times and digital technologies.

I think us as teachers need to introduce the rest of the elements for children to become completely digitally literate, they come to us with certain elements due to their usage and exposure to all the technology available to them. We as teachers need to plan and execute our lessons and teaching strategies to enable our students to expose children to the other elements of Digital Literacies. This can be achieved by showing them different aspects of computing and in the activities we set for them. We are teaching more than just how to use a computer but how to access the information and to use it in a way that helps them to learn as well.

Simon

Session 3 – Safeguarding and Wellbeing

Blog Post 3 – Safeguarding and Wellbeing

So in the third session we looked at Safeguarding and Wellbeing for children, this is an extremely broad topic and I feel that during the lecture we only scratched the surface in regards to the areas that could have been covered or spoken about.

The lecture started off by showing which of the teaching standards safeguarding and wellbeing would cover. I thought this was a good way of starting because it gave us an insight into how we might experience or come across it ourselves when in school. So the next topic of interest that was discussed was the government initiative brought in, in 2003 called ‘every child matters’ which was designed to help support and provide children with 5 main outcomes, these were as follows:

1. Be healthy
2. Stay safe
3. Enjoy and achieve
4. Make a positive contribution
5. Achieve economic wellbeing

To help push through ‘every child matters’ the government set up extra plans to work alongside it, they created and opened sure start children’s centres in well known deprived areas which catered for nursery education, family support and employment advice. They also introduced full service extended schools which opened beyond school hours which helped start the likes of breakfast clubs and after school clubs, this is now a regular occurrence in most school at present. They also increased investment into the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), enabling such services the government hoped to be able to help children before they reached a crisis point. They also aimed to improve speech and language therapy for children in schools along with tackling homelessness and reforming the youth justice system. This was only a small part of the lecture but I think it is a key element that has shaped safeguarding and wellbeing within schools.

We then went on to an area talking about happiness; this was a lot more general information on happiness although it was interesting to see that OFSTED had put out something on measuring happiness. As when they are mentioned you get the complete opposite reaction! It did however produce a useful quote of wellbeing:

“Wellbeing is a social construct and represents a shifting set of meaning – wellbeing is no less than what a group or groups of people collectively agree makes a ‘good life’.” (Ereaut and Whiting, 2008, p1)

The lecture then moved on to relationships within the classroom regarding pupil and teacher, once again the standards were highlighted and mentioned to create and ‘maintain positive relationships with pupils’, it pointed out how you as the teacher must create an aura of professionalism but also show a personal interest in children. I found this part of the lecture interesting as I have often thought during SBT 1 am I carrying myself in the right way, should I be more strict should I be over friendly so that all the children like me, it would be interesting to hear if you have felt this as well?

Resilience was also talked about during the lecture but it was not one of my main focuses that I wanted to write about for this blog post, so if you had anything you wanted to add to that section of the lecture that would be helpful!

We finally moved onto e-safety and I feel this is an extremely important part of safeguarding children, as we are currently living in a very digital age. Most children if not all have a computer with the internet at home and it is also a central component to the classroom as well, so e-safety is a must when talking about safeguarding and wellbeing. E-safety was split into 3 categories; contact, content and commercialism. Each with their own sub headings, I think with regards to school, contact and content are the more important and have areas that are more likely to come up when using a computer and on the internet. Two areas under the contact heading, ‘online grooming and cyber bullying’ are two of the more important that I feel need addressing and protocols and policies should be in place at all schools to try and prevent these from happening.

To Summarise I could have talked far more about e-safety and especially those two categories I brought up at the end (but I was running out of words), but I think we as teachers play an extremely important role in the safeguarding and wellbeing of children especially when they are in our care at school, so it is essential that we know about it and know how to respond and help children if they need us!

Thanks for reading,

Simon

Learning and Development

This week we have been exploring the differing facets of learning and development for primary school children, specifically the three main schools of thought of behaviourism, constructivism and social constructivism.

The behaviourists, such as BF Skinner, argue that learning is achieved through the use of rewards and punishments as motivators, and that the ideal classroom setting would be the children passively listening to the teacher who transmits knowledge to the children. Key features of this theory include the children as passive learners, learning individually and being extrinsically motivated by the use of external factors such as rewards. I think it is evident that there is widespread use of at least some of these features in the primary classroom today, for example the rewards of stickers or marbles for “good” behaviour, and the sanctions of missed playtimes for “bad”. It is also not uncommon to see thirty-two primary school children sitting on the carpet, listening to their teacher explain some piece of information, casting them into the role of passive receptacle of knowledge. However, detractors from this theory such as Vygotsky argue that all learning is “essentially social in nature” (Moore, A. Teaching and Learning), so this behaviourist view of the individual learner is intrinsically flawed. So what then are the alternatives?

One of the more famous child psychologists of the last century is Jean Piaget, and his work on the development of the child led him to promote the theory of constructivism. In his idea, although the child is still an individual learner and at least at first not able to work with others for long, their learning is far more active and uses direct experiences to make meaning from their world. Therefore in contrast to Skinner, the child is intrinsically motivated by their own desire to learn, and the teacher is more of a facilitator to learning than the font of all knowledge. Children assimilate knowledge from experiencing different situations, and accommodate this into their existing framework of knowledge and understanding. However, where Piaget has been criticised is in his belief in set stages of development that each child must pass through, and his inflexibility of timeframes for this. Anyone who has had contact with children of different ages and backgrounds can testify that children all mature at different rates, in terms of both physical or motor skills, their cognition or ability to think, and their emotional responses. Thus although Piaget’s stages of development have been widely accepted (even so far as to have informed England’s national Key Stages) there is an argument that they are not universally applicable and leave no room for children that do not fit this mould, potentially causing them to be branded as low ability and leaving them behind the others.

Which leads us to our third choice, the Vygotskian school of thought of social constructivism. This advocates that as learning is a social activity, children learn best through collaborating and discussing with their peers and adults. In fact, for the best learning, children just need to be working with anyone who is more able than them in that task, creating what he refers to as “the zone of proximal development” (Pollard, Reflective Teaching) through which the expert can lead the novice to create understand. This “scaffolding” can take place either through class, group or one-to-one discussion, and always places the learner in an active role, being socially motivated.

With its emphasis on language and discussion, and promoting deep and meaningful learning built on prior understanding, you might ask why all teaching and learning in the primary classroom today is not based on social constructivism. However, as I (and I’m sure many other student teachers) have noticed through my time in schools, this is not the case. There are scores of examples of behaviourist and constructivist approaches in place (like the reward schemes mentioned above), and I’m sure we have all seen especially younger children who appear to be working together on a task, who on closer inspection are merely working on the same task side-by-side or in parallel, with little or no interaction (echoing Piaget’s theory of the ego-centric learner. So what then does this mean for our future practice, and how we approach our role as the teacher? Well I think there is a lot to be said for adopting a more combination-based approach. I think there is definitely a place for some aspects of behaviourism in the classroom (and we all know how mad children go for stickers), however rather than relying wholly on external factors to motivate children’s learning, this can be combined with working in a socially-constructive way as well, building deeper understanding and creating meaningful thinking. And while perhaps too much emphasis on Piaget’s stages of development can be restrictive, I think bearing in mind the stages children go through can help us as teachers assess their progress and development, and plan for their future learning needs.

 

Imogen Marx

Session One!

The first session explored two different avenues. The first part of the lecture focused around our initial thoughts of teaching and learning. The session focus then moved on to exploring learning in a digital age and the impacts this may have on learning.  During this blog entry I am going to highlight the key areas that stood out and questioned my previous views, ideas and knowledge.

At the beginning of the session we were presented with a question which provoked many responses. ‘What are the qualities of a good teacher?’ Having this starter question allowed for great discussion and prompted deeper thinking.

This initial question led to a variety of different attributes, qualities and skills being discussed that a good teacher may have. One of these, which I found of particular interest, is the use of ‘wait time’ when questioning children. It was identified in the session that once a question is asked it is important to allow time for the recipient to digest the question. This is very applicable to children in the classroom. When asking a question to a child I feel that using the correct amount of ‘wait time’ will be very beneficial to the learner. First of all the learner is allowed time to understand the question. Secondly, the learner is able to have time to think about their response and answer accordingly. I feel that this may influence deeper cognitive engagement and development. What are your views on this?

Learning in a digital age and the impact it can have on learning is a highly debated topic. During the second half of the session it was clear to see that there were many differing views on the impacts of digital technology. In particular how it could be used to maximise the potential for learning but also how technology may restrict children’s development.

Let’s begin with the benefits! A variety of positives were identified in the session. Digital technology can help to expand learning opportunities, help to facilitate learning, and allow for greater research to take place. I feel that digital technology also helps to promote multi-cultural awareness. Using Skype in a classroom is a fantastic way of promoting multi-cultural awareness. Children will be able to have conversations with other children from a variety of different countries. This will provide great benefits! Children will be able to share experiences of their own learning environment and also develop a greater understanding for others. Do you agree?

Despite the numerous benefits I have just discussed, there are also possible drawbacks to using digital technology in a learning environment. Let’s start with the use of interactive whiteboards. It would be highly unlikely to not find some form of interactive whiteboard in a classroom in the United Kingdom. The question I am raising here is whether they promote effective learning? During the session it was discussed that these whiteboards may in fact restrict children’s cognitive learning and engagement. Before the session I did not even have an idea that this may be the case. However, I have now been able to address this possibility and I am able to understand the process behind it. It is clear to see that just asking a child to come up to the whiteboard and move things around may not be developing the child’s learning. Are the children really thinking about the content or are they just focusing on moving the item/object to the correct place? If they are just moving objects for the sake of it then cognitive development is not taking place. This may impact on children’s development.

From reviewing the impacts of digital technology many conclusions can be drawn. One in particular that stands out is that yes technology is a great aid for teaching. However, it should supplement the learning and not replace a more personal style of teaching and learning!

Esther