Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Playtime is Important

In the afternoon yesterday Danny (Ravensbourne Year 5-6 Teacher) and I taught his class the basics of using Powerpoint. Danny does a lot of computer based work with his class and has access to 8 Macs with his class (I was a bit jealous), he has really got a lot from all of these resources and uses these computers constantly in his classroom programme.

With his class I did a short demonstration of the things Danny would like them to be able to do. Then we let the children have a go and work out how to use these new skills. Although computer skills will not be the main emphasis of Danny's teaching we felt that it was an appropriate place to start. One of the things you have to do when you learn to use a new technology is play with it.

One thing that really upsets children is making a mistake that ruins work that they have put a lot of effort into creating. This happens as a natural part of learning something new, and we need to learn to cope with this, but having a bit of time to play with new skills where there is no risk of loosing precious work is really important.

What Danny and I did was get the children to share back what they had discovered after their play and share their learning with the class. This is also a great way to let children take the driving seat and facilitate their learning rather than you as the teacher having all of the knowledge. One of the children discovered something I didn't know which is what will happen. The teacher will also be the learner.

It is important after this learning for the skills to be used in authentic ways and Danny is planning to do this, the children in his class will be creating some digital portfolios of their work as the year goes on. What a worthwhile play session as all of the skills these children learnt in that hour will be used for the rest of the year in real and authentic ways and the class have been modeled the process of shared problem solving and learning.

I am looking forward to seeing Danny and Room 4 again to see how their profile work goes.

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