Children Publishers rather than Consumers.
Why should children become creators and publishers?
In my last post, I discussed what would it look like if every child in your class had an iPad? - Read it here. It led to me beginning to discuss children as creators and publishers rather than just consumers of information on the internet
With the introduction of the new primary curriculum in September 2014 schools all over the country are starting to redesign their curriculum to meet the needs of the new requirements.
One thing that strikes me, particularly with the computing curriculum is the need for children to 'give back' to the world.
A thought I very, very much agree with. Children and adults need to move away from consuming information from the internet and begin to publish unique work of their own.
Technology has enabled us to share our work quickly and receive feedback almost instantly.
In our classrooms up and down the country we need to start allowing children to access those higher order thinking skills from Blooms Taxonomy. We need to allow our children to research, understand, apply, receive structured feedback from the world and crucially further improve their work.
In my last post I discussed a model for this approach using the cricket videos the children in my Year 3 class had produced over the last half term. The children learned a skill, applied it, shared it, but then nothing happened. At this point I should have enabled the children to share the video with the world with experts and professionals via social media and then improved further with the feedback they received.
Using this model the children are becoming publishers rather than consumers. They are in a constant state of improvement - they are leading their own learning. An essential life skill.
Giving the children a tablet computer enables the whole world to be at their fingertips - a place they are native too; a place the feel very comfortable in.
As educators we need to equip the children with the skills needed to publish their creative thoughts, receive feedback and improve further
Using Technology to Publish - Tablets and Social Media in Schools.
In our primary schools we are currently allowing children to consume more information than we are allowing them to publish information. More and more children are given opportunities to apply skills in lots of different curriculum areas, but rarely do we allow our children to publish this information anywhere other than a 'topic book,' 'learning journey' or a school website with an audience of a few hundred.
There is a huge connected world out there and we need to show our children from a younger age how big it really is, by interacting with it. Technology has allowed us to do this from the comfort of a tablet computer and a Twitter account.
Share OUR wonderful world, but also with the school down the road.
Give the children experiences of Edmodo, Facebook and Twitter, teach them e-safety, teach them how to blog, how to code, how to create videos, record their voice, sketch, peer assess, and ask for help from the world. Connect with local schools as well as those in far away countries. Share code, videos, blogs, photographs, get feedback, improve and then share again.
If we don't do this, we will have left a world to our children with a lot of outdated, but fascinating information. It's time for them to participate in the world - they have a lot of great creatives ideas. Some would argue they have a more creative mind than adults.
Speaking of code, I'm sure a lot of you will have seen this, but this video is essential viewing for teachers across the world. I'm typing a blog post that somebody created using computer code, using a MacBook Pro that a computer scientist designed and built, sharing with you all via social media and checking updates via my iPad Mini. Get these children coding from the earliest of ages, who knows where we'll be in 2030?
Follow Me on Twitter @chriswaterworth
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/channels/videosformyclassroom
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