Although I may still be young at the age of
nineteen and born in the late 90s, when I think back to my primary school
experience with technology I soon realize how much technology has progressed in
such a short space of time. Thinking back to the early 2000s and the excitement
at the end of a lesson when the teacher would roll in the tv on wheels ready to
play a video tape, or get out the cassette player (image to the right)
to play
music in our gym lessons. To now observe interactive whiteboards and ipads as a
common tool used in schools today. Although ‘back then’ that was seemed as the exciting times of technology, school was also a place for just a text book to be placed in front of pupils and told to simply “read that”. There would be no communication between peers unless told to do so in group work, and the teacher was simply there to observe the children and provide basic resources. The way in which teachers delivered a lesson in secondary school wasn’t that much different than primary school, except for the interactive white boards (IWBs) and upgraded computers; which is perhaps what engaged the children’s attention span and influenced their self-learning abilities. According to Higgings (2007) ‘the resources created and presented are attractive to both teachers and children (Ball, 2003; Kennewell, 2004), and capture and hold pupils’ attention much more strongly than other classroom resources (Smith et al., 2005)’.
Today technology impacts many aspects of children’s lives, including their education. Digital competence will become a cross-curricular responsibility for teachers along with literacy and numeracy (Donaldson report, 2014) meaning that ICT will be equally as essential to children’s learning as their ABCs and timetables. Below I have attached a link that demonstrates 3 ways in which technology is altering the traditional classroom.
References
https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/asset/A788604C-3046-4005-A1EA0EAFF023E0DD/ (Donaldson report)
Higgins, S. Beauchamp, G, and Miller, D. (2007) 'Reviewing the literature on interactive whiteboards', Learning, Media and Technology. London: Routledge.
