I have taught iPad class in K for three years and I found that it is tough to make a meaningful learning experience for this level’s students but the competency to select and organize recourses to construct knowledge is important to their Elementary BYOD learning one year later. My iPad class is paving the path. I want to do the research on this topic in order to improve my class to develop students’ skills for 21st-century learning.
Background:
10 years ago, our school district recognized
technology played an important role in the education revolution which can
prepare and equip students with competency for the 21st century. We piloted the
BYOD initiative in Elementary school. In order to gain more benefits for
students from it, educators need to seek different ways to weave technology
into curriculums seamlessly to step into the augment and modification stages
(SAMR), and students are required more digital skills. In this case, we have
started iPad class in K for 5 years, which is an understudy for future learning
based on technology and device. I have 3 years experiences of teaching this
class, in which I found out students in this period of age are full of curious
and interests in the connections of technology and real-world. It is the right
age to direct them how to use iPad to curate resources from the digital world
to construct knowledge and foster their critical and logical thinking to
produce creative artifacts to demonstrate meaningful connections. How can I
pave the path for my students? It is the question to myself and any other
kindergarten educators.
From my relevant research, I realized that
technology-driven teaching and learning in early childhood education (ECE) like
a blind area in the past 10 years which is recently recognized as necessary as
other levels of school. Since the concept of developmentally appropriate
practices brought up, it transformed early childhood education to a mix
learner-centered model which provokes younger learners to drive their learning
from appropriate activities positively with teacher’s moderate directions.
Thinking about my iPad class, I am seeking a way to pass more agency back to
students to build their confidence to adapt student-centered learning
environment and seeking different strategies and tools to develop students
ability to curate digital recourses, evaluate valuable ones to build knowledge
with the connections of the real-world and also can produce meaningful
artifacts with iPad. Considering the specific characters of this age,
appropriate strategies should focus on motivating curiosity and interests from
observation and collaboration; appropriate tools should focus on voice capture
and picture-based rather than requiring so much typing. From my research on
this topic, I will adopt three strategies under two frameworks, and variety of
tools to cultivate younger students competency of curating recourses to
construct knowledge and producing creative artifacts with iPad.
Play-based Learning-How to use this App?
Playing is one of the most effective strategies
for kindergarten students’ learning. In my class, my students always ask me
when they can play the iPad. I think exploring how to use a certain App can
motivate their passions. As the teacher, instead of pushing them all boring
knowledge about an iPad App, I want to weave my directions into the
student-centered learning process. Students will be asked to separate into
several groups to dig the features of the App intentionally by collaborating
with peers and teacher’s proper help. In the learning process, students will
employ effective research strategies under the teacher’s guide to make sure the
learning is on the way to the end goal and also the resources credibly or not.
Students will use App Store to get more information on the App. They also will
use Siri to capture voices to help them Google the recourses online (Teacher
can change Siri’s settings to make the searching efficiently). They will be
asked to share their findings and give a conclusion together to demonstrate
their understandings of the App. For the final artifacts, they can choose
digital or non-digital forms. Stop-motion, Little Bird Tales (with screenshots)
and video recorder can be the options for digital artifacts. In this learning
activity, they can construct knowledge by exploring an issue (how to use this
App), collecting digital information from two research strategies (App Store
and Siri) and create an artifact to demonstrate the meaningful learning. In the
play-based learning, I will be a person to scaffold the developmentally
appropriate practice to direct students to construct knowledge from curating
digital resources with effective research methods. Students will have a
meaningful learning experience in collaboration, communication, and sharing. With
this strategy, students will learn more and more Apps critically and logically and
they will have more and more ways to produce digital conclusions.
Project-based Learning-I-LEARN framework
I-LEARN is a framework supported project-based
learning with six steps: Identify, Locate, Evaluate, Apply, Reflect and kNow.
The appropriate project for kindergarten students needs to focus on their
interests closed to daily life and surroundings. This age of students are the
best observers and explorer. So the project’s driving question (Identify step)
can be about class pets, garden, favourite animals. These questions can foster
students ability to construct knowledge from observation in the real world and
curate digital resources using iPad in the digital world to make meaningful
learning. In the Locate step, I like them to think about what keywords or
questions they want to search online to support this project first and record these
in audio or video in the iPad which will be reviewed and modified by the
teacher to enhance wisely searching. They will use the improved keywords or
questions to do research through iPad’s Siri. In this step, students can learn
more and more research strategies including locating effective keywords and
finding what format of sentences can let Siri understand them better. The
teacher’s intervention will be ideally less and less, students’ competency on
research will be stronger and stronger. In the Evaluate step, even the
searching for this age is simple, the students still need to hold critical and
skeptical attitude on any information’s accuracy and relevance. I want to adopt
“my little consultant” relationship in which upper graders will provide their
suggestions to my students’ resources and my students will learn from their
consultants. This is a reciprocal relationship can improve digital citizenship
and digital skills. In the Apply step, they will need to organize their
resources to prepare the final creative artifacts. The “Little Bird Tales” will
be a good tool to gather all information into audios and pictures as a little
e-notebook for documentation which will be significantly different from the
beginning to the end. In the Reflect and kNow steps, students need to create a
creative product using iPad Apps from which they will experience various tools
for their reflections. KidBlog, Story Creator, Stop Motion, Balloon+ will be
the options for students’ artifacts and it is also the best time to practice
the Apps they have learned. They can choose the appropriate tools with
teacher’s scaffolding to present their meaningful learning experience for them
and others.
Problem-Solving Learning-STEM framework E&T
As we know, STEM framework is a direction for
high-level schools learning which focuses on interdisciplinary integration of
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Since K level’s students are
at the appropriate age for hands-on learning of engineering and also at the
crucial stage of developing logical thinking, I want to integrate iPad with
Sphero in my class. Sphero is a robot with programmable sensors, LED lights,
accelerometer, and gyroscope which can inspire students creativity and
invention through connected coding from the App named Sphero Edu which provides
a kind of closed-packed code fits younger learners. In my class, I want to give
my students a problem to motivate their enthusiasm likes how to program Sphero
to trace this line to move; how to program Sphero to move out the labyrinth.
This problem will be harder and harder from which students can build knowledge
by actively exploring difficulties and pursuing solutions. They will be suggested
to use mind map to organize ideas while dealing with the complex problems which
can develop logical thinking. The teacher will produce a mind map depending on
students’ narrative. They will use this mind map to guide their solutions.
Finally they can use iPad to record videos for the problem-solving learning
process and share with others as demonstrating the learning outcomes.
As weaving these three strategies and different tools in my iPad class, I think it will help to cultivate students abilities to curate resources using iPad to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences. Kindergarten is the special period with limited but potential capabilities can be developed by appropriate practices. As the tech teacher in the ECE, I need to inspire students curiosity and creativity with digital technology to pave their path for future’s learning even lifelong learning.
Reference:
Lu, Y.-H., Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. T., Ding, A.-C., & Glazewski, K. (2017). Experienced iPad-Using Early Childhood Teachers: Practices in the One-to-One iPad Classroom. Computers in the Schools, 34(1/2), 9–23. https://doi-org.ezproxy.spu.edu/10.1080/07380569.2017.1287543
Tecce DeCarlo, M. J., Grant, A., Lee, V. J., & Neuman, D. (2018). Information and Digital Literacies in a Kindergarten Classroom: An I-LEARN Case Study. Early Childhood Education Journal, 46(3), 265–275. https://doi-org.ezproxy.spu.edu/10.1007/s10643-017-0857-7
Tippett, C. D., & Milford, T. M. (2017). Findings from a Pre-Kindergarten Classroom: Making the Case for STEM in Early Childhood Education. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 15, 1. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=eric&AN=EJ1138636&site=ehost-live
Khoo. E., Merry. R., Nguyen, N.H., Bennett. T., & MacMillan. N. (2013). Early childhood education teachers’ iPad supported practices in young children’s learning and exploration. Computers in New Zealand Schools: Learning, teaching, technology, 25(1-3), 3-20.
Frensley, B. (n.d.). MIND Research Institute. Retrieved from https://blog.mindresearch.org/blog/project-based-learning-kindergarten
Edutopia. (2016, November 1). Solving real-world problems through problem-based learning. Edutopia. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/practice/solving-real-world-issues-through-problem-based-learning
