Following are two scenarios to illustrate Internet and ICT use at Onehunga-Cuthbert Kindergarten.
Scenario one: Ofa's yarn doll
Bev (teacher) was working through an online wikiHow tutorial, How to make a yarn doll, with a child who needed a bit of extra stimulation, when she noticed Ofa’s interest in what was going on. Soon, Ofa was making her own doll following the directions from the Internet.
Earlier stories in Ofa's portfolio indicated that she was an avid 're-visitor' of her portfolio. For example, she had used it as a reference when she was creating watercolour paintings in the art area. Bev therefore decided to include some visual instructions for making the yarn doll to enhance the learning story.
Images were easily transferred into the learning story document from the wikiHow site. Bev felt that because of Ofa's initiative and willingness to drive her own learning, this extra reminder of how she had gone about this project may stimulate her to try again and perhaps extend herself further, at some future time.
View and read Ofa's learning story written by Bev here
About wikiHow, Bev's iGoogle home page, and the wikiHow widget
Bev has an iGoogle home page which displays every time she opens her Internet browser. She has personalised her iGoogle page by adding some widgets that are of particular interest to her. These include such things as:
- latest CNN news
- today's top recipes
- New Zealand Herald headlines
- interesting quotes
- weather
One of the widgets Bev has added is the wikiHow widget, which displays three new "how-to" projects each day. The wikiHow website is described as "a how-to manual that you can edit".
When a project title interests Bev, she views the full article and decides whether to save it to a 'how-to' folder on her computer. Then, if she needs to, she can quickly access the how-to guides during session time.
Scenario two: Emmanuel's tank building
Emmanuel had decided to build a tank from some cardboard boxes in the centre. So, Bev guided him in using Google to find some photographs he could observe and model tank details from. Bev typed the word "tank" into Google, and then clicked on the Google images tab to isolate images only from the search.
Bev assumed Emmanuel intended to build an "army tank", but as soon as the pictures of such tanks appeared on screen, Emmanuel corrected her and explained that what he really meant was a "water tank".
Bev and Emmanuel browsed through several water tank images, with Emmanuel shaking his head and saying "no...o...", until he found a picture of the type of tank he had been thinking of. It turned out that Emmanuel's dad, a concrete and construction worker, had taken Emmanuel to his work site where they used a water tank mounted onto a truck trailer for mixing up the concrete. Emmanuel had associated this water tank with the components he had found in the centre construction and collage baskets.
Once a suitable picture had been printed from Google images, Emmanuel was able to use it to create a replica cardboard model.
Emmanuel’s learning story written by Bev here
Using Google's image search and SafeSearch options
Most people use Google for finding websites. However, another useful search feature on Google is searching for images only. To find images only, click on 'images' at the top of the Google search home page www.google.co.nz or go to http://images.google.co.nz/ then type in your search terms.
Onehunga-Cuthbert Kindgarten use Google's SafeSearch filtering when searching for images. This can be found and set by clicking on 'search preferences' from the Google search home page. This type of 'open' search is always done with a teacher. Children are only allowed to search independently if they are using websites pre-selected by a teacher. The centre has also enabled Apple Mac's parental controls on their computers, which assist children to explore the Internet safely.