Models of Professional Development: Social Media Professional Development (Reflection)

I decided to do a Wakelet on Early Childhood Education tech resources. As I have transitioned from teaching Grade 1 to teaching Nursery, I believe this direction was the most logical one to take and would give me a head start in collecting digital resources to hopefully create an ICT program for the Early Years Program at my school. The primary places I search for resources was on Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Apple App store and a good old fashion google (Yahoo) search engine. I actually found a few blogs that spoke in favor of using apps and devices with young children, since the common, ongoing debate is for whether young kids that age should even be using devices, and if so, for how long. Some of the information I found suggested that kids can begin with iPads, as it has touch screen and is easier to use, rather than keyboard and mouse (since most kids that age are still learning how to develop their fine motor skills). Another suggestion in favor of using technology with young students is that the students don’t have to be restricted to always using a device, but could be applied offline. A prime example was a game that taught ‘coding” as an outside activity, rather than directly learning it using an app. The other really nice suggestion in favor of young children using devices was that it directly taught social skills to children, example being that kids could learn to take turns with each other, work together on certain on-screen activities in small groups, and the like.

As I didn’t have any social media platform other than the Chinese WeChat platform that I use for school, I had to open a Twitter and Pinterest account to do this assignment. Initially, I was having a challenging time finding the correct hashtag for finding info on Early Childhood Education technology integration. I first used the words “Early Years technology”, which didn’t get me to many places, so I changed the name to the more universal term, “Early Childhood Education technology integration” and that got me more results….not as a hashtag, but as a general keyword in the Twitter search engine and also on the Yahoo search engine. When I changed the key word, I was finally able to find useful articles and blogs about integrating technology in Early Years classrooms. Aside from the articles and blogs, the iPad apps and websites were very easy to find, as well as finding educational YouTube channels and videos for children.

Overall, from this assignment, I did discover the merit in having and using social media platforms to find lesson ideas, to connect with other educators, and to collect resources for good use in the classroom.