Getting started
At the Pagoda, teachers hold deeply to the view that children's interests and ideas should be the starting point for all activities in their programme.
The creation of children's personalised digital stories grew out of a realisation by the teaching team that they needed to find a way to marry this philosophy with parent and community requests for a strong literacy and school readiness focus.
ICT was already part of the programme at Pagoda before this initiative began but it was the teachers using the equipment rather than the children. When two of the teachers attended the ULearn08 conference they were inspired by presentations showing children's active engagement with ICT equipment and decided that this was a change they also needed to make.
"Digital technologies have opened up new opportunities to children to learn about how texts are constructed. Whereas in the past, producing printed texts, animations and films required specialist technology and skills, new digital technologies have made it possible for people to produce all kinds of texts from their own homes [and centres]. Using new technologies, it should be possible to encourage children to acquire their own experience of being producers of texts, becoming involved in choosing how to assemble resources to generate meanings."
Sarah Eagle 2008, p 12
At The Pagoda teachers were already using video to document children's learning. It was through revisiting this footage that they noticed an interest in story telling and role playing. ICT introduced another dimension to the children's storytelling repertoire.
Equipment such as laptops and digital cameras were made available and accessible to children at all times by creating an ICT 'suite' within the children's area. This has power jacks and a docking station which is linked to a big screen, making the process of connectivity very easy.
"Laptops can still be taken to outside or other areas, so this setup is not inflexible, and it means that access is quick. For instance, children don’t have to wait around and lose interest while we hunt for cables."
Ruth, teacher.
Developing teachers' expertise
Teachers attended workshops on digital storytelling, Microsoft Photo Story 3 and Microsoft PowerPoint. The centre also purchased a Flip Video camcorder for making movies. Individual teachers chose the software and equipment they were most comfortable in using and began to develop their own and the children's expertise.