‘The discovery of the unexpected phenomena’
The digital age is well and truly here and we support our children to discover the wonder and curiosities it can offer us. Within our centres we use technology to enhance, enrich and challenge our children ideas and theories further.
By utilizing a light source, whether natural or artificial, children have the potential to see objects or materials being transformed as the light interacts and reacts with them. The texture, the transparency and the form of what they are investigating takes on a new magical perspective that arouses their curiosities and thirst for a deeper understanding.
When using a magnifying camera, we are able to support children to get up close to the objects or items they are investigating, seeing the inner workings and formations of these that may have been missed otherwise. Through projecting these images onto a wall for a class discussion, allows for the opportunity for a rich dialogue which enables our children to explore not only their ideas but the ideas of others. This form of technology therefore becomes a tool for collaboration and communication
In the images, our children are examining some bark, carefully collected from the ground by a local tree that they have been investigating over the past few months. This tree has played a pivotal role in the relationships that the children have yet again formed with our natural world and they have fondly named this tree “the cuddle tree.”
This group of children have recently expressed to their teacher that the bark is the’ skin ‘of the tree, and so to take these unique initial theories and explorations deeper this form of technology has been suggested. Through this experience it has provoked many complex conversations from our children and has built the confidence to discuss maybe what may have been thought as ‘abstract’ to now, what is just now the norm.
“In digital environments, as with all educational contexts in Reggio Emilia’s municipal infant-toddler centres and preschools, children act as authors and constructors of their own knowledge, and of their own individual and collective imaginaries, disproving the idea of anaesthetising technology at the centre of attention, and making visible a different amplificatory and generative idea.” Reggio Children, Italy, 2019
Utilizing technology within our classrooms supports our children with ‘the discovery of the unexpected phenomena’ (Boardercrossings 2018) and challenging those preconceived ideas of what something is and opens up the doors to what it could be.
