Working in Early Childhood Education, there are a lot of
different resources provided to us in order to conduct productive development.
Having students so young, we don’t necessarily rely on technology in order for
the children to learn. At their stages in development hands on interactions
have the most benefits rather than technology based learning. As teachers we do
all have access to laptops, and desktops as well as a tablet in each classroom.
These tools are mainly used for lesson planning and child observations. In some
cases I may have the children watch a short video on the laptop during circle
time. These videos consist of alphabet songs, counting, and songs that allow
the children to do different things as they’re directed. For the most part
throughout the day children will not be granted the opportunity to explore with
these tools, mainly because they are not capable of operating it appropriately.
With that being said, I feel teacher and student technology interactions may
only take place once or twice a week for a small amount of time.
As of
now, my classroom is mixed age, where ages can range from six weeks to three
years old. Looking at my class as a whole, their all between twelve to twenty
four months; we categorize this age group as infant toddlers. The issues my
students may encounter when using technology in the classroom is the fact that
they don’t know how to appropriately operate the tools effectively. Also in my
opinion too much exposure to technology at a young age doesn’t always positively
benefit the child. Working in child care for so long, I’ve seen first-hand that
children learn more effectively hands on, as well as having face to face
interactions with other children. I feel that if I were to teach school age
children, then the over use of technology may be an issue, but for my age group
it’s not something we deal with on a day to day basis.
The
issue I’ve come to when trying to incorporate technology in the classroom, is
again the fact that my children don’t know how to operate technology systems on
their own, as well as trying not to venture away from hands on experiences.
Since I am pretty up to date on how to use many resources it’s not an issue to
have technology in the classroom. It’s more so what’s age appropriate, as well
as what will be beneficial to their development. I do plan to continue to show
short educational programs to them, as well as incorporating some sort of
technology activity on a week to week basis. It is frustrating to see how much
technology has taken over our world already, and I can only hope that
children’s face to face interactions and learning experiences won’t be taken
away for good. This helps with social skills, and hands on learning allows
children to experience a new idea while being taught about it at the same time.
Over all technology in the classroom is great, but for early learners
technology doesn’t always have the same benefits.