The Validity of ICT’s in the Early Childhood Classroom

When I was writing my previous post I was trying to make the range of ICT’s I spoke about as wide and varied as possible – however I was having great difficulty. It would seem that many technologies that would have been separated by function previously now can be accessed by the same device – the iPad. We recently bought iPads for the children in the preschool I work in and they replaced so many different technologies – digital cameras, video cameras, voice recorders, the computer, paper… these little gadgets do an awful lot! The best bit about them is that they are so easy to use RE: the children’s accessibility, autonomy and independence. Additionally the children can be responsible for their own learning – whilst the responsibility is a skill that needs to be fine tuned initially (as Candy Crash Saga is understandably more fun than researching snakes on Google), the students learn that if they take the responsibility they will be able to do ‘fun’ things later on. Responsibility is an important skill for starting kindergarten, and it is great to see that ICT is one way to teach children this skill.

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