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SALT Case Study: The use of Blogs in Early Childhood Studies

Page history last edited by Chris Hall 12 years, 2 months ago

Academic: Jane Walters - College of Human and Health Sciences
Librarians:
SALT Team: Helen Davies

 

 

 

 

Working Context

This module is a level 2 optional module for students studying for a BSc in Early Childhood Studies. The module ‘Outdoor play and learning’ involves students in studying academic theory pertaining to children’s play and learning in outdoor spaces as well as supporting children from a local school in their play. This involves the students in regular trips to a wild, natural environment with the children (aged from 4-7) in order to spend an afternoon supporting the children’s play and learn¬ing. A central feature of the student learning in the module is to use participa-tory methods for accessing children’s own views about this experience. To this end the students and their partner children are lent a child friendly digital camera with which to record their experiences. As a part of their assessment the students present an overview of the child’s experiences using the photos and relate this to relevant academic theory. Students share and are able to comment on the photos via Bb using the Blog facility.

Learning Activity/Approach

The decision to place photos on a Blog was taken for two main reasons: a) to enable students to easily see the photos that other students / children had taken; b) to en¬courage some discussion (out of the lecture room and amongst the students) about the children’s experiences and how these relate to academic literature.
The provision of the Blog on Bb was valuable in two ways: it solved the problem of photo sharing and provided an opportunity for deepening students’ engagement with academic material. One important factor was that, to meet current guidelines, we had to ensure that the images of the children, whilst shared with the lecturer and students, were not viewable externally.

Outcome

There were no specific planned outcomes from using the facility other than those stated above. In future however, to encourage discussion, I would consider organis¬ing a teaching session in a computer suite and asking students to engage with the material on the Blog adding in comments related to academic theory (most of the academic papers relating to this are posted on Bb in a content folder). This may kick-start the discussion /reflection and will also provide a resource on which all students can later draw for their written assignments.

Other information

I would certainly use this facility again; its strength being that once posted the ma¬terial becomes a resource for all the students on the module. Also, by turning off the RSS feed facility, the images are restricted to their intended audience.
In future however I will more directly introduce and guide the students’ reflection on the material available to them through the Bb site (the photos and the relevant academic material) to encourage a greater academic engagement with the poten¬tial of the material.

 

 

 

 

 

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