The role of technology in earlychildhood development

The role of technology in earlychildhood development

Introduction

Computers have in recent times become commonly present in the settings of early childhood education. Recent studies indicate that computers are present in almost every preschool. Computer to student ratio has changed significantly from 1:125 in 1984, 1:22 in 1990, 1:10 in 1997 and 1:5 in 2000. The latter is better than the minimum ratio favorable for social interaction (Coley et al. 1997). Researchers have thus moved to try and understand how best technology can aid learning, how best to serve the needs of the vast population and the type of learning to be facilitated.

Technology helps the social interaction among children. Children who have access to a computer spend about nine times talking to their peers while on the computer than while doing puzzles (Muller and Perlmuter, 1985). More open ended games foster collaboration e.g. Legend of Zelda. However, some other video games with aggressive content can lead to aggressive behavior and competitiveness among children. Hence children have a more spontaneous and greater peer helping and teaching when using computers.

Diverse backgrounds can be categorized into different genders, abilities or cultural. On gender issues, it is generally observed that female students are less receptive to changes in technology than their male counterparts. This is explained by the low number of female students in different technical courses. Secondly, background can be looked at in terms of physical disabilities or impairments. A student mobility and interaction is affected by physical impairments thus slowing down their development progress. In addition to this, learners with intellectual disability take a lot of time to process information and thus making it hard for them to grasp technical concepts. Finally, learners may be from non-English speaking backgrounds and thus face challenges in achieving communication in the classroom. This leads to the use of translation software while trying to take these learners into account.

With regard to adopting educational activities, technology offers a greater access, efficiency and quality of education. Integrated curricula can circulate to learning institutions at faster rates. However, this can be impeded by the slow rate of absorption of technology in different learning institutions. This thus leads to inequalities among the different learning .............