Technology affordances

I found the last article in the PGCE ICT readings a particularly interesting one becuase of the persepctive from which it was looking at the use of ICT in schools. It occurred to me that much of what i have seen of laptop use in the classroom, in particular the things that i have seen and do not like are related to the relationship the children have with the technology- ie. they view laptops as a means for fun and games above learning.

For example, children, as is pointed out in the article, view computers and computer software as being 'fun'. While this has it's bonus', especially with regard to maths games and stuff, it has it's problems too. When i have seen children writing on their laptops i havewitnessed a significant deterioration in the content of what they produce. They are so concerned with 'having fun' by putting in pictures, animations and changing colour schemes that the content itself goes downhill. Indeed, the first thing my teacher said to me about the laptops is that the childrens writing on them is always appauling.

I think i better understand now why this is. They view laptop activities as fun activities, thus they engage primariliy with the fun side of laptops tasks and perform poorly on activities that they do not see as befitting with the fun image they have of ICT related work. Getting around this problem is difficult. One might tell the children that they cannot change colour schemes and animate etc. until they have done a satisfactory quantity and quality of writing. However, in so doing you are essentailly saying 'you have to do the boring bit before you can do the fun bit', and suddenly the activity of writing about all the crazy creatures on your imaginary world (which was the context in which i came across this situation), which is usually considered a 'fun' task, becomes more like a chore. Thus i don't think that it would be a particularly good way of dealing with the situation (even though it is the way my class teacher made me do the lesson).

Rather, i think that children sould be allowed to work in whatever way they wish. If they are aware of the expectation that they must have a good all round finished product we should trust them to get there by any means...becuase at the end of the day most of them will.

Essentially what i learnt from my time on SBT 1 is that great care must be taken by teachers not to exacerbate or define the divide over what is fun to do on the laptop and what is boring. This is because anything the children view as boring will nor be engaged with becuase laptops are not viewed as a piece of equipment on which boring things should simply not be done!