Educational Technology Perspective

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.