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Using digital technology as a reflective practice tool to boost PD and best practice
Jason Roberts
Aug 29, 2023
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The broad range of use cases for digital display technologies in early learning services is becoming increasingly well understood but thus far the value of this type of technology as a reflective practice tool that can be used to support teachers and educators to drive best practice remains an area ripe with opportunity.
“As a seasoned educator with an abundance of experience I have been quite surprised how usage of our digital display has evolved over time,” Sandi Odisho, Area Manager at Early Education Holdings said.
“Having used it almost exclusively to plan and deliver visual learning experiences for the children we are now finding that we are increasingly using it as a reflective practice tool in our team meetings to support professional development and to strive towards continual improvement.”
Continuous improvement is a core principle embedded in the National Quality Framework that encourages educators to constantly and consistently reflect on their practice with a view to using their learnings to gradually improve.
“As a key preferred provider of digital display technology to the early learning sector we have recognised that the versatility and flexibility of our display technology lends itself to not only child facing applications but also educator facing ones too,”Jonathan Lee, Business Manager for Interactive Display ANZ at BenQ said.
“This is one of the reasons the tech has proven so popular with the education and care sector and certainly is an important driver of uptake in recent years.”
Infinite possibilities for achieving success in QA 7
The aim of Quality Area 7 under the National Quality Standard is to support effective leadership and management of the service that contributes to quality environments for children’s learning and development.
Well-documented policies and procedures, well-maintained records, shared values, clear direction and reflective practices enable the service to function as a learning community, a task made easier with access to BenQ’s responsive technology and infinite planning tools and recording options.
“As part of our obligations under QA7 our team comes together regularly to review our policies and procedures. Prior to us having our interactive displays this exercise was conducted on a laptop, which made it a little bit difficult to properly review as a team,” Ms Odisho said.
The BenQ display allows users to zoom in on important details, zoom out for the whole picture, and most importantly easily annotate on top of pages being reviewed. Every participant can independently navigate the whiteboard at their own pace, catering for the different learning styles and comprehension abilities for the team as a whole.
“But it doesn't just end with policies and procedures,” Ms Odisho added. “We also regularly upload videos of our practice to review collectively as a team. Our ability to control and manipulate the video stream provides ample scope for improvement and professional learning opportunities.”
Going beyond reflective practice - leveraging tech to underwrite safety and compliance
The objective of Quality Area 2 under the National Quality Standard is to safeguard and promote children’s health and safety, minimise risks and protect children from harm, injury and infection.
One of the challenges of working in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector is that there is no “one size fits all” solution for each and every service due to the infinite different shapes and sizes that early learning services come in across Australia.
This diversity ensures a degree of uniqueness when it comes to supervision plans, evacuation diagrams and service specific policies, all of which are essential to fulfill QA2 obligations.
“Another important use case for us is in periodic reviews of evacuation and supervision plans,” Ms Odisho said.
“Armed with knowledge about where bottlenecks might occur or regular incidents are happening we can, as a team, visualise the blindspots on our interactive display and in turn boost supervision or change the space to reduce incidents.”
The collaborative experience that interactive displays bring to a team trying to improve the quality of their program delivery, and safety and wellbeing of their children, is now readily available through interactive display technologies.
Modern interactive displays break down physical boundaries
The portability of BenQ interactive displays lends itself to easy transitions from children’s learning environments to programming rooms or staff spaces to support educators deliver the best program they can and also to develop professionally.
No longer are educators limited by inflexible, wall mounted displays that cannot be moved from space to space.
The benefits of the BenQ board for educators also extends outside of the physical confines of the service, particularly in situations where team members who may not be able to physically attend a service are able to attend staff meetings or professional development remotely.
For some services having a remote attendance option for mandatory professional development or staff meetings is essential, with team members juggling distance, family commitments and other constraints.
“As leaders in the display technology space we work very hard to listen to the full range of needs of our teacher and educator community,” Mr Lee said.
“We are there to not only support them to deliver better learning experiences for children but also to support them to meet regulatory objectives and to grow into even more capable professionals.”
To learn more about BenQ’s unique range of products which are supporting early learning services to help educators on their professional journeys please visit the BenQ Early Childhood Education Solution website.
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