Week 8
Informal reflection of ipad & Tablet applications
“There’s an app for that”
Apple had been
awarded a trademark for the phrase,
"There's an app for that." The tagline has been used to promote the
App Store and iOS devices almost since their inception, and is now a well known
phrase, even amongst primary pupils. As part of today’s seminar, we had the opportunity
to explore the interactive applications available to children on the ipads,
particularly those which encourage digital literacy. Evidently applications are
becoming ever more present in today’s digital world. Subsequently Halsey (2007)
suggests that ‘As a teacher we can no longer ignore technology’ (pp99), we must
however embrace technology and envision new ways of using emerging technologies
within our classrooms. However Turbill (2001) highlighted that many teachers
often felt guilty about letting children play with such technology merely
because activities didn’t appear to be essential literacy learning. (Turbill
2001 cited in Turbill, 2003)
I had chosen to focus on the application ‘Read to me’ as I have heard
about the application and wanted to experience it for myself. It has been
identified that ‘Experienced readers already have a repertoire of text knowledge,
which can help in discussing multimodal approaches’ (UKLA, 2004:24). ‘Read to
me’ is an app which essentially has many e-books which are read aloud to the
person operating it. The words on the page are highlighted as they are read
aloud and almost resolves the problem of parents/ teacher not having enough
time to read to a child.
Stainthorp, R (2004) emphasise how children
more commonly appear to be teaching themselves to read before the age of
schooling, these are also known as precocious readers. In hindsight I would
have loved to have focused my research proposal on whether there is a
correlation between the rise in precocious reader cases and the rise in digital
literacy usage at a young age. Beldarrain (2006) says one way to afford
students more control is to integrate second-generation, web-based technology.
These technologies support a constructivist approach to teaching and learning,
and are most effective when students have autonomy over the process
(Beldarrain, 2006).
Despite this, children need to have
experience with books and develop a love of reading via interacting with them
with other children. During my previous placement within year 1, I had
witnessed a child go to the book corner and frantically start swiping her
finger across one of the books. Therefore I hope to achieve a balance between
digital text and print based text, as both are just as equal as the other.
Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance
education trends: integrating new technologies to
foster student interaction and
collaboration. Distance Education, Vol 27, No 2, PP 139-
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