East+Ravendale+Primary+School

media type="file" key="Ali Major.mov" width="300" height="300"This is the home page for East Ravendale Church of England Primary School

I would like to look at how the use of handheld technology impacts on children's ability to assess and evaluate their learning, and how it can encourage them to take responsibility for next steps in learning. There will need to be consideration of the underlying pedagogy in the classroom, and how that influences learning out of the classroom. How do teachers facilitate children's independent learning - are the cases where children are held back if teachers effectively 'put a lid' on their learning because of their own skills, confidences, etc.

How can (or under what circumstances do) iPods effectively impact children's ability to further their own learning - Assessment for Learning.

I have selected this question because a school priority is to develop children's recognition of themselves as learners, and to improve the use of Assessment for Learning, particularly for children to able to take responsibility for their own learning. As we haven't yet started to use iPods for this purpose, I am very interested to see what the impact might be, and the conditions that effect it.

During the first year I will ask teachers to identify where they think there might be opportunities for children to develop these skills, and carry out observations and look at evidence produced during these times. I will need to be very flexible about expectations of when these opportunities will arise, as the children often surprise us with what they can do. I may focus on a particular curriculum area, eg literacy, or on a particular way of working.

I will begin by interviewing staff and children, and then conduct further interviews each term during the project. I will also observe learning in the classroom, and look at evidence of learning in class and out of school.

Thinking about the project...

Following a CPD day with a number of schools and Ronnie Woods, I'm thinking of using reflective learning journals as a starting point for the research. Children would use their iPods to record their thoughts about learning - how and what they have learned, anything surprising or tricky, questions or next steps - in a format to suit them and the context. This could be a blog, sound or images, annotated photos, text, etc...

September 2011 Over the summer, the more I explored the possibilities of children using handheld technology to better understand and move on their learning, the more unmanageable my initial research question became. I have, therefore, narrowed the primary focus to the use of reflective learning journals, and will note and comment on the many other uses of the technology without full analyses.

During a school staff training sessions that was focused around children recognising their learning and identifying the next steps needed to move their learning on, I re-introduced the idea of reflective learning journals. This is something we discussed as a staff team following a training day with Ronnie last term. I will identify a group of 12 children - 6 Y3/4 and 6 Y5/6. Of these, 4 shall use iPods and 4 shall use notebooks as reflective journals, and 4 will not be aware they are part of the project, and will be the control group. All eight children actively involved will receive the same input at the same time. I anticipate seeing an improvement in the understanding of learning in all eight children, but my research will focus on whether those children using the handheld technology are more engaged, more committed to keeping the journal, have greater understanding and make more academic progress than the children using notebooks. Of course, there will be other factors to consider as children's learning can be affected by any number of different factors from what they had for breakfast, to what the weather is like, but I am hoping to discover whether there is a marked difference between the groups.