Part 1- Entry 4

We do not use a lot of technology in our centre so I took in my son’s tablet which is designed for children with security locks on it. When I first gave the tablet to the children they found the games. One of the children was holding the tablet up to me and said “say cheese”. I figured that the children wanted to take some photos. I took the tablet back to the main home screen where the little boy saw the camera icon. He clicked on the camera button with no prior knowledge of using a tablet, which took him to the picture taking screen. He then started pressing all the buttons on the screen, clearly trying to figure out how to take a picture. This was his way of solving a problem; he was pressing all the buttons on the screen because he knew one of them would take the picture. What he ended up doing was making a 2 second video. He then saw the play button appear on the screen to watch the video he made. “ooohhh movies” he said as he clicked play. The children then decided they wanted to make a movie, so two children had the tablet and videoed other children movie around and dancing. The children enjoyed watching the ‘movies’ and figured out the red dot meant you were making a movie and the play triangle meant you could watch the movie. After a while a different pair of children found the button which changed the video section back to taking pictures. The children then enjoyed taking photos and scrolling through the photos talking about the photos.

Belshaw (2011) suggests that digital literacy is having the ability to access media and understand it and evaluate the different aspects of it as to create communications in a lot of different contexts. It also talks about digital literacy being about learning the basics knowledge and discussion of the digital world.

Futurelab (n.d.) suggests that digital literacy is about engaging critically with technology and in turn learning how different things can influence the ways we use technology and to transfer information and its meaning. It also states it is having the ability to communicate knowledge to other people in different ways.

The digital literacy I noticed was the children making the connection and talking about the triangle that showed up on the screen meant it was the play button and that if they wanted to watch the movie they had made that they needed to press the play button. Other digital literacy I noticed was that most of the children knew how to swipe the screen to move to the next photo or video. While they were swiping they would say “no, no, no” then when they found the photo they wanted they would say “look there is you Vicki, you look silly face”. The children saying no to the photo’s showed me that even though these children were approximately between one and three years of age they knew which photo they were looking for and kept swiping until they found it.

If I was to do this again I would set up an activity where the children can make up stories or tell stories through the photo’s they have taken and they can share the stories with the rest of their friends at mat time to improve their social skill because some of our children can get quite shy when talking at mat time. I would also print off some of the pictures so we could re-visit the activity and see where the children would take the activity with some scissors and other technology to extend the activity. 

References

Belshaw. D. (2011). What is ‘digital literacy’? Retrieved from: http://dmlcentral.net/wp-content/uploads/files/doug-belshaw-edd-thesis-final.pdf

Futurelab (n.d.). Digital literacy across the curriculum. Retrieved from: http://www2.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/handbooks/digital_literacy.pdf