Week 4- Shirley Warren School Visit

Week 4- Reflecting upon my time at Shirley Warren School

Reflecting upon my time at the Shirley Warren School, I found the overall experience extremely informative, presenting a wonderful learning curve. The school ethos is to facilitate technological learning throughout the entire curriculum (reception to year six) with incredible ease, enabling technology to form an important role in the children’s daily lives. I was surprised and equally impressed by the children’s overall confidence when using technology, indeed every child demonstrated complete confidence when using IPads, effortlessly utilising various educational apps provided to ‘problem solve’, developing in the process their IT skills further than I suspect the national average achieves.

Following the recent changes to IT learning within the National Curriculum, the school has used this change positively to embed technology throughout the curriculum, with the support of various technological devices. If we embraced all the technology that children use and re organised our learning system to take account of these, matters would only improve according to McDougall (N/D).  Working with technology to improve learning, delivers engaged, inquisitive children in place of the passive, disinterested children of past years, McDougall (N/D).  I very quickly learnt that incorporating technology into all of your lessons can be really simple and provides an immediate impact that makes lessons interactive and engaging for your children. The school displayed their curriculum grids, explaining how they have combined technology into various subjects utilising various forms of technology (green space, animation apps, easi-speak). Haughton (2013) supports this view, stating that ICT should only be embedded into other subjects once children have mastered skills in the required software applications already.

I believe that a worthwhile challenge would be to encourage and incentivise all teaching staff members, to incorporate technology into the classroom at every opportunity. Shirley Warren School successfully achieves this to the benefit of every child. The driving force of this success was ‘in house training’ for all staff members that enhanced knowledge, but more importantly increased confidence with technology in general. Certain teachers were reluctant to utilise technology in teaching, due to the perceived lack of knowledge and a resulting fear that many of the children would be more advanced. Children raised with the computer think differently from the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds, Prensky (2001). According to Lachs (2000) even if a teacher knows less than a student about how to operate a particular piece of technology, they are still equipped with the higher order critical thinking skills and the subject knowledge to apply to digital technologies.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my excursion to the Shirley Warren School, it provided a first class insight into understanding the importance of technology in teaching today. Whilst illustrating ‘best practice’ for the implementation of technology within a classroom environment. Additionally, I reflected upon my own technological skills/ understanding, improving my knowledge of the utilisation of the latest educational apps available to teachers. As a result of this I intend to purchase an IPad in order that I can trial apps, exploring teaching and educational opportunities that I may incorporate into the classroom. Another point that I realised was how advanced many of the children were with technology. I appreciate that this would be a major consideration when planning lessons and activities ensuring that they always reflected age and skill level appropriately.

Bibliography

McDougall,S. One tablet or two? Opportunities for change in educational provision in the next 20 years. Futurelab:
http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/discussion_papers/One_tablet_or_two.pdf

Haughton, S. (2013) ‘Interpreting the new computing curriculum requirements’. Simon Haughtons Website. http://www.simonhaughton.co.uk/2013/10/interpreting-the-new-computing-curriculum-requirements.html  

Prensky, M. (2001) ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part  II: Do They Really Think Differently?’ in On the Horizon 9 (6) (pdf on LN)

Lachs,V. (2000). ‘Making Multimedia in the classroom: A teacher’s guide: Routeledge Farmer pp118.