Reflection Two – Computers and Literacy Learning

There were two children sitting together in front of the computer during the free play time today.  Child A was playing on a game with matching different objects from the card he had turned over.  When he touched the object on screen, it came up a sound of speaking what the object was.   Child B appeared very interesting in the game and kept asking questions of what to do and how to do this and that.    After their discussion, child B moved himself on practicing and playing the game through the support from child A.

Play is the foundation of all young children’s experiences, so it is logical that the effects of exposing young children to computer would be revealed through their play.  Some searchers found that children use computer for play, they moved through a progression of play behaviours similar to the path they would follow for any other new play materials (Escobedo, 1992; Liang & Johnson, 1999).   Of course, you might be concerned with the proliferation of ICT that new technologies considerably influence young children’s lives.   These concerns might be result from the mostly incorrect belief that using ICT in tools for the interaction with children, it encourages children to be passive recipients, or solitary computer game players isolated from social interactions in learning and playing (Tsantis, Bewick, & Thornton, 2003).   In fact, it provides opportunity for young children to enhance their self-esteem and confidence, engage in collaborative learning and empower their social skills, and contributes in a positive way to children’s emotional development (Crook, 1994).    It proves that a positive social contexts and interactions with more knowledgeable others enabled learners to make sense of ideas and create meanings more effectively in achieving the individual child’s independently learning and the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). 

 

I agreed that with providing child-oriented activities and sufficient play time at the computer can reach the optimum level of symbolic play that leads the opportunities for their literacy development (Crook, 1994).  It is important that as an educator, we need to know how contemporary theories and what practices about learning and development can be linked to ICT use.  For example, using the computer as a prop in the centre for children is resulted in expanded children’s symbol uses, keyboard typing empowered children literacy learning, understanding of computer processes, screen functions and searching information through connection with the internet are all supported their Knowledge and Understanding of the World (Ministry of Education, 1996).  Computers can also be an increasing element in the mathematical education of children.   Its assisted instruction processes provide challenges to children, probing them to think and develop mathematical ideas including special awareness and properties of shapes.  This type of play is contextual play and is perhaps practice play (Labbo, McKenna, & Kuhn, 1996), because children are learning a skill and practising it with the actual object.  After practicing, they are aware that they need to make connection with the computer by turning on the main control button before reaching the computer and screen; they understand that they have to connect the computer with the printer by choosing the printer mode before their printing (Ministry of Education, 2007).  They clicked hypertext items over and over; they moved the mouse across the screen but once they began to transform the computer screen by typing those alphabetic keys on the keyboard, they create their own learning of literacy.      

 

Computers help even young children who `were more able to keep in mind a number of different mental states simultaneously and had more sophisticated theories of mind than those who did not use computers’ (Fletcher-Flinn & suddendorf, 1996, p.229).  In Piaget theory states that children learn when they are able to construct meaning from their experiences with the objects that they encounter.   Children are capable of learning from their sensory-motor experiences with objects, and become capable of making abstractions and formulating ideas and concepts are based on these initial explorations (Piaget, 1972).   This could be reflected from child A who is supporting his own literacy development of what he learned about the programme from one context to another by matching the objects game to learning different vocabularies and different shapes from touching the screen.

 

References:

Crook, C. (1994). Computers and the Collaborative Experience of Learning, London, Routledge.

Escobedo, T. H. (1992). Play in a new medium: children’s talk and graphics at computer. Play and culture, 5, 120-140.

Fletcher-Flinn, C. & Suddendorf, T. (1996). Do computers affect the mind? Journal of Educational Computing Research, 15 (2), pp. 97-112.

Labbo, L. D., McKenna, M. C. & Kuhn, M. R. (1996). Computer Real and Make-believe: Providing Opportunities for Literacy Development in an Early Childhood Sociodramatic Play Centre. (ERIC Document Instructional Resource No. 26 ED396254).

Liang, P., & Johnson, J. (1999). Using technology toenhance early literacy through play. Computing in the Schools, 15, 55-64.

 

Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki, he Whāriki Mātauranga mo ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.

 

Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.

Piaget, J. (1972). The principles of genetic epistemology. New York: Basic Books.

Tsantis, L., Bewick, C., & thornton, S. (2003). Examining some common myths about computers in the early years. Young Children on the Web. November 2003, 1-9.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological.