Bee scientific
1 year ago
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Web 2.0 in the Early Childhood Classroom
Something that concerned me when we were talking about blogs and wikis was that even though they could be used in early childhood classrooms, the written aspects of class blogs and wikis were decidedly teacher-driven. This concerned me because I felt these activities would not necessarily help younger students (ages 5-8) develop their digital literacy if the teacher was the only person openly submitting data to these websites. The plethora of visual-based resources introduced in this week's lecture has given me new hope for integrating web 2.0 technologies into the early childhood years - these audiovisual mediums could be used to engage students in literacy immediately and emphasise the fun side to learning. It also introduces students to digital literacy and critical literacy from a young age, whilst not overburdening the students with written text. I was struggling with the blog I have created for my four-week science program because I think I have pitched the written text side of things at too high a level; however after today's lecture I have some new ideas for keeping the students engaged and will help me to reach literacy, science, SOSE and ICT outcomes.
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Matt, I think you're right that a multiliteracies approach (quite apart from being important as a complement to a more print/language-based approach for all students) provides a great access point for younger students. Of course, that's why quite a few of the examples we looked at were from kindergarten/primary teachers capturing images, audio and video of their students, or helping students to capture images, audio and video themselves.
ReplyDeleteI have just seen my nephew's book that he brings home from day care each day. The teacher writes a short one sentence comment about what they did and attaches a small photograph. If they used a blog instead (presuming all families have access to the internet), it could be readily shared with family and would save time and not be at risk of having coffee spilt on it/gettting lost.
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