Final Reflection 

Reflective practice can be defined as “think about how you teach and refining you teaching practice according to those thoughts” (O’Connor and Diggins, 2002) p.11). Reflective practice is so important for early childhood an educator, because a professional early childhood educator needs to be confident of their own skills and be able to make positive choices for professional development. They will benefit from being open to change. They understand themselves and be aware of learning is a continuous process for every day. From their own learning and knowledge; they help children to build their skills with steps. Also a reflective practitioner will need to love their job, do what they believe and spend more time on what happen around them, and always to have some new ideas for children in daily practice (Manukau institute of technology, 2010).

From reading my group member’s reflections and the comments they have given me I develop some new ideas regarding the use of technology in ECE center. One of the reflections is about vacuum cleaner. We al have vacuum cleaner in our center, but we never thought to let children have an opportunity to experience on it. “Children do have strongly held views about their environment and the place of technology in their world” (Fleer & Jane 1968, p.39). To be honest, what I was thinking before is just to get work done and children would not know how to use the vacuum cleaner, they will mark around and make the place mass again. After reading the reflection on vacuum cleaner I develop a thinking of let children help me to vacuum the floor, I am going to ask one child each day to help me and guide them give them instruction of how to use it and where about the floor need clean. Another reflection is about show children a DVD on TV at mat time, I really like this idea, because I found it is really hard to transition children from activities to mat time. I found TV is a really good tool to attract children’s concentrations. While they focus on the educational program they can also learn from it. According to Te Whariki strand 4 Communication, “Children develop experience with some of the technology and resources for mathematics, reading, and writing” (Ministry of Education, 1996).

Technology is every where surround us in our life. It is some thing as an early childhood educator start to consider. Not only technology is essential to children, also non-digital activities. Our job is to be able to extend the technology to other activities, or make link to non-digital activities. Therefore, children have a sense of what the technology use for and how they help our daily life.  

Reference

Fleer,M.,& Jane, B. (2011). Design and technology for children. Frenchs Forest, Australia: Pearson Australia.

Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki, he whaariki mätauranga mo nga mokopuna ö Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.

O’Connor, A., & Diggins, K. (2002): On reflection: Reflective practice for early childhood educators.  Lower Hutt, New Zealand: Open Mind Publishing.