Over the last four months, ten Pasifika early childhood centres have been involved in a project to build their interest and readiness for the development of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in their centres.
Research commissioned in 2005 showed that, of all early childhood centre groups, Pasifika early childhood centres required particular support to increase their resources and understanding of ICT and how it could contribute to family and community engagement; and teaching and learning.
The ten centres worked with Rim Consulting, specialists in community development through ICT, to gain everyday skills, such as:
Creating a newsletter for parents and whanau
Creating a template for meeting minutes and agendas
Internet access, email use, etc
An understanding of Microsoft Office and Outlook programmes
Excel spreadsheets for tracking payments
Child portfolios
Development of ECE Centre letterheads for communications
Revision and update of policy and procedures manuals
Setting up of shared folders and networks.
Participants found that if they dedicated some time to the project that they developed some useful skills and they appreciated the portability of the ICT skills they had acquired. Participants also realised that with training they could create some useful resources for their centres.
Major project findings were:
- Currently, the ICT resources in the centres are acquired on a vendor-driven basis that does not always fit the needs of the centre.The centres’ investments in ICT needed to be made in an informed way that reflected the needs of the group.
- Participants in the preliminary self assessment tended to rank themselves higher than their actual skill ability. Most participants were at a beginner level, so foundation skills were important in all the training work.
- One on One, on-site learning was the most effective way of training participants. Most were Pasifika women over the age of 45 years and a trusting, relationship-based learning platform was needed.
- None of the centres were regularly incorporating ICT into teaching and learning. Feedback from management staff was that teachers had not taken up opportunities to do this in the past.
- Those centres that had access to ICT literate volunteers enjoyed much more robust ICT management systems.
- ICT use was viewed in most centres as a management tool, not for something to be used for teaching and learning and establishing wider community connections.
- Often third party family members were using the ICT. This often led to operational and system issues. Much of this use was also unregulated.
- Many centres did not initially prioritise time for the project. Project enthusiasm and reliability increased over time.
- Most of the centres had old, unreliable ICT resources.
This project seeded an understanding amongst the participants that ICT capacity, even with limited resources, can be of significant benefit to ECE centres. The completion of the projects demonstrated to participants, in a practical way, the ease with which ICT skills can be attained and the benefits that they produce.
The support for this initial work has come from Manukau City Council, in order to deliver on the key goals identified in the document launched last December: Early Childhood Centres Plugging Into ICT: A Manukau Perspective.
