Kia Orana everyone first of all I would like to take a
moment and thank you all for the positive feedback, the suggestions and the on-going
communication from my group. This blog
idea is such an awesome experience for me personally I hope that we could carry
this on with our own personal reflection on our daily practices in the future.
Technology is great for our children to get use to and
adapt their life style to, but don’t you all think that this is limiting the
full development of the child. Example climbing
a tree is such a fantastic experience but in our days we don’t support children
to climb the tree everything that children experience and do is planned around
children’s safety! Safety! Safety! Ministry
of education, (1996) states that “Children will have the opportunity to create
and act on their own ideas, to develop knowledge and skills in areas that
interest them, and to make an increasing number of their own decisions and
judgments”(p.40). We say that we are
empowering the children, for me I referred this to my own personal philosophy
it says that I believe in free play, and empowering children to facilitate and
make a choice. So we have all the
resource available for the children to use, but do they really want to use them
or they only use this because it’s the only resource available to them or they
just find it interesting to see or use this tool.
In class we identified some of the different technology
that we practice with children, but it never occur to me that what I have been
doing with the children was technology I always thought that technology was
something that involve electricity. Technology
has taken away the fun in playing I say, it has also taken away the creative
thinking of children and it has replaced it with swing, slide, the plastic
resource, man-made resource that we see every day. Technology has taken over the children daily
interacting with the natural environment and resource. “According to Piaget (1962), children’s thinking
shows their unique way of understanding and interpreting the world” Arthur,
Beecher, Death, Dockett & Farmer, (2007).p.92.
In my centre children is exposed to different types of
technology because it’s our duty as educators to keep up with machinery and, we
extend and support children interest regardless of what it is. Technology also helps us with our daily chores
to document children learning, but we still need to realise its more attractive
when its handmade using the natural resource.
Yes I agree “technology is about helping people and solving problems” Smori,
S (1999)p.5. But we need to rethink about the different technology that
children are exposed to. I find that
technology plays a huge part in our everyday life, it provides for us in
different ways and it takes care of us also, but it needs to be positive and
support children to reach their full potential.
What I learnt from this assessment is that doing a blog
to reflect is great, it gives me the chance to communicate with others, and
their feedbacks and suggestion on the spot also benefits my practice to do
better and make the learning experience more fun and interesting. I also learned that this is easy, it only takes
a couple of minutes to document and record but it’s a long time impact on me as
an educator to know that I can write something and others can suggest ideas or
give me feedback on my practice. I also
understand that a reflective teacher is a great teacher, so I’m glad that I got
the opportunity to take part in the blog, I have gain so much from doing this
it will help me in the future. My centre
is now in the process of putting through a proposal for our centre to start up
a blog for our parents and our Cook Island community specially our early
childhood centres we have relationship with here in New Zealand and back home
in the Cook Island.
Arthur, L.,
Beecher, B., Death, E., Dockett, S. & Farmer, S,. (2007). Programming & planning in early childhood settings. (4th ed.). New South Wales, Australia: Cengage Learning
Smori, S. (1999) Technology in Early Childhood. Early
Education, 19, 5-10.
Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki, he Whāriki
mātauranga mo nga mokopuna o Aotearoa:
Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media
