ABSTRACT
Children do indeed seem to be early adopters of new technology, as Kinnes remarks, but we still need to think about the quality of the electronic resources we choose from the many now available. And of course reflective practitioners give careful consideration to the ways in which we help young children to use them. Do computer games and software packages stimulate a child’s imagination or do they constrain it? This is an important issue as some pre-school software is intended for children as young as two years old. Colwyn Trevarthen doubts whether computer games, however good, are the best way for children under three to learn. He would rather they were encouraged to draw, talk and interact directly with objects and people until the age of about five or six (Kinnes, 2002). We need to ask whether too much visual input at a very young age might lead to less language ability on arrival at school. A survey by The National Literacy Trust suggests that these days some children are less linguistically advanced at five than in the past. While the Trust does not settle on one cause, television and computer games tend to get some of the blame when parents and teachers talk about low concentration abilities (Bourke, 2002). Others take a more positive view pointing out that we live in a highly technological society and that children are bound to absorb what it has to offer. So children now learn to use computers at an early age as they play with them. As I pointed out when discussing the impact of television on children’s learning, the important thing is to mediate between the child and the computer, to talk about the games and programmes. Some of the most well thought of software and sites for the under-threes are listed at the end of this chapter.
