Rip. Mix. Feed. Physical Education, Technology and Literacy.
The concept behind these picture collages was to display connections between literacy, physical development and technology. I am a kinesiology major so I enjoy figuring out ways to relate technology to my field. The ways in which all of these are interconnected are actually plentiful. Initially I found it difficult to find pictures that displayed these connections but found that as a whole the collage told a great story.
First, the connection between literacy, physical development and technology is a simple one. The act of using a hand held device, tablet, kobo, or operating a computer mouse; each of these require a certain amount of fine motor skills that can only lyrics be developed through practice and repetition. This is a key concept in physical education and therefore technology as well. Literacy comes into play in understanding directions or processes of using programs on those hand held devices.
I have also found that physical literacy and typical literacy are developed using the same basic connections. The body-mind connection is important when learning new basic skills like running, skipping and hopping but it is also something students use when learning to read or write. Knowing when your mind say write the word “hello” translates to certain muscle movements in your hands.
Technology relates to all of these in the evolution of how these skills are learned. Young individuals can learn to jump, skip and run using video games that have them mimic those movements. Students can now learn to write by writing on a touch screen, or better yet, have their thoughts written down on a voice to text technology.
Note-I did initially try to upload these photos to Flickr but they proved to be too large and I could not produce an adequate photo stream. I created two collages on my own.
Thanks for your thoughts on physical development and how it ties in to literacy. This is something that I hadn’t really thought of before. I can certainly see how physical development, especially fine motor skills are required for literacy to develop. I have an almost 4 year old daughter and we have used the LetterSchool ap with her to help learn and understand how letters are formed. While she has been able to perfectly trace the letters on the tablet or my phone for quite some time, she has only recently been able to use a pencil to create these letters. The amount of physical development that needs to happen for them to be able to write is pretty incredible.