Technologies, learning and belonging for a 3 year old
As I collected my daughter from nursery the other day I was struck by how they were using digital photography and the associated easy editing and printing to decorate the classroom.
When I was at school the walls were decorated with our artwork and it was part of what made my classroom feel like a place where I wanted to be. Now my daughter’s nursery not only decorate the walls with the outputs of what they have been doing, but pictures of them doing it. It is no longer only the artwork you can see on the walls, but the class dancing to the drummers who were at the carnival, visiting the theatre – or just pictures of all the kids eating their favorite food.
These images are just colour print outs, the quality is pretty bad, but it is good enough, you can see what is happening and that it is her and her friends doing it. This is their nursery full of the things they have been doing.
We work in adult distance learning so in the end everything we do has to be online (and not pitched at a 3 year old) but I think there are opportunities with these tools in terms of social presence and belonging that we could be exploring.