Entry 4

2/09/15

At my centre we only have a limited range of digital devices, we currently have an iPad, a TV and a CD player for approximately 30 children. Even with this small amount of technology, these items are not used every day. One day a 4 year old girl came into the centre asking us to play a song called the ‘Nay nay”, we told her that we didn’t have that song or the CD. The next day she came in with a CD she had brought from home with the “Nay Nay “song on it. I told her to go and put the CD on in our player. She pressed the power button, then pressed the button to open the CD compartment, put the CD in, making sure it was flat and in the right place and then turned it on successfully.

 Once the song started she began dancing to the music. I noticed two other children trying to copy her and were singing along to the song as well.  As her dance moves looked choreographed, I asked her where she had learnt to dance like this. She replied “I just know them”, I assumed she had learnt from her cousins or family members but when I queried this with her parents they said that she watches a lot of YouTube with her cousin, and she probably had learnt it from there.

Following her interest in this song and the dance that goes with it, I decided to expand on this for her and the two other children that were interested in the song and copying her dance moves. I decided to incorporate another aspect of digital technology, so I used the teacher’s iPad to log onto YouTube. With the three children involved, we searched for the song and found many different videos of various people dancing to this song. We discovered one particular video clip of a lady and her daughter dancing and we watched it together. The girl who brought the CD in then informed us that this was the clip that she had learnt the dance from. I held the iPad up for the children to see and asked the children to turn the song on for us to hear while they tried to copy the dance moves.

This child had used her knowledge of ICT to take ownership of her problem of the centre not having the song she wanted, so she came up with her own solution. She demonstrated a high level of thinking and took responsibility for her own learning, thus showing her independence. Through technology children gain “Growing experience in solving problems develops children’s understanding of how technologies can help them and others” (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 96). She has used her prior knowledge and problem solving skills to solve her dilemma and help others become involved in the process.

She was confident in being able to apply her technological skills i.e putting the CD on herself and being able to search YouTube on the iPad without any form of assistance. “ICT can afford many different opportunities for teaching and learning and can therefore suit individual children and their ways of being as learners” (Hatherly, 2009). This young girl is extremely capable of using ICT and digital technology. This is because she is regularly exposed to a variety of technology types at home and her parents allow her the freedom to explore these devices. Without this access to technology at home and the freedom to explore, she would not have been as competent as her exposure to technology in the centre is restricted by our lack of digital resources.