Week 9: informal task reflecting on school visit

This week I had the pleasure of returning to a school that I undertook my first year school placement at (SE1). Upon returning to the school it was welcoming to see familiar faces and to be engaging in the technology that the school luckily has; especially their radio station facility. Unfortunately, the school underwent a refurbish during my second block placement during SE1 and had to loose their podcast room in order to accommodate for two form entry. However, they are lucky to still have their radio station room with modern technology and equipment.

When touring the school I was reminded of how lucky the school is to have so much technology recourses; sensory room, ICT Suite, WII consoles and games, radio station and other various resources integrated into classrooms. Duffy (2006) states that ICT is a vital element of the curriculum which has the ability to enhance the learning that occurs within the classroom. In relation, Bazelgette (2010) implores teachers to encourage children to appreciate both technology and media and the uses it has to society; arguably, this is more achievable in a school close to that which we visited this week, which has access to a variety of technology to promote media. Extending this theory, Bazelgette (2010) states that technology can be used to produce media for entertainment purposes, as well as educational aids. Duffy (2006) agrees with Bazelgette (2010) and suggests that when children are aware of the uses of technology and media, they can begin to equip themselves with a set of life skills applicable to our constantly developing world that can be further enhanced at secondary education.

Through input from a teacher at the school, we were introduced to the schools passion with ICT in terms of technology, multimodal texts and apps that can be used to develop learning. It is evident that the school adopts a range of technology and media to teach the curriculum as the new National Curriculum (DfE, 2013) underpins the need for children to engage in a range of sources to teach the skills of ICT. During the visit, we were also able to engage with a few apps on the schools IPads, several of which, such as My Animation, were easy to use and developed my confidence in using technology. The apps that we were introduced to can be used during our challenge that has been set by the school teacher; we will work in groups with a ratio of 3:5 adults:children to create a talking book promoting Children’s Rights to be entered into a competition that the school enters yearly.

Bibliography:

Bazelgette, C. (2010) Teaching Media in Primary Schools. London: Sage

Department for Education. (2013) Primary National Curriculum. [Online]

Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-primary-curriculum (Accessed 17.1.2014)

Duffy, J. (2006) Extending Knowledge in Practice: Primary ICT. Exeter: Learning Matters LTD