My blogger experience

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