Informal Blog Task 1- week 1

Annabel Wilson

I believe the increased use of technology is a good thing but it depends on how we teach and use it and how we make it available to children as to how good it is. The technology we have allows for a more multi-sensory approach to learning and therefore allow for a more inclusive curriculum as children can physically interact with it, for example on my first school experience the school had bought an interactive whiteboard table which allowed for more than one pupil to use at the same time which helped children learn to work together, take turns as well as engage them in all areas of the curriculum.

Since technology is a part of our culture and society to not engage with it, resist it and prevent children from accessing it would therefore prevent them from fitting in with society (Johnson and Kress, unknown). Additionally technology can be used to support children’s learning such as using e-books to encourage children to read, interactive games to aid phonics learning or even simply using word to allow children to get their ideas down as they get used to the processes of physically writing them down. Rather than resisting it we should be finding ways to balance the technology and the physically carrying out of activities such as writing, solving maths problems, learning outside the classroom etc. Furthermore in the APP reading assessment AF7 (DfE, 2010) requires child to read a wide repertoire of texts which could be interpreted to mean multimodal texts and technology (UKLA, 2010).

On a personal level the difficulties I will face is in having the confidence to use the technology and resources partially because ICT was not my strongest subject at school. In teaching in general the possible difficulties might include planning the use of such resources and teaching, how cost and time effective they are, how can we judge the appropriateness of the resources, how can we safeguard the children from the dangers that may occur and how can we assess their ability in using multimodal texts and technologies effectively.

Bibliography

                Johnson, D & Kress, G, ‘Globalisation, Literacy and Society: redesigning pedagogy and assessment’   Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice Vol 10, (1) pp55-14

Matthewman, S. Blight, A & Davies, C (2004) ‘What does Multimodality mean for English? Creative Tensions in 

                 teaching new texts and new Literacies Education’ Communication and Information, Vol 4 (1)

DfE (2010) The National Strategies Assessing Pupil Progress A teachers’ handbook London: DfE

UKLA (2010) Teaching Reading: What the evidence says Leicester: UKLA