As a preschool teacher, I object to this very adult activity introduced to the preschool child at school. Internet is fine to play with at home; it becomes a good mommy and me activity, but at school it easily becomes anti social, passive, and a stupefying button pushing take-me-away toy a little like TV.
The question is: Is this what very young children are supposed to be doing with their play time?
Very young children don’t know how to read and write, so for the most part, they are helpless. They are learning what letters are supposed to do, so until they read, it makes using the internet an adult led activity, and that’s what good preschools are trying to help children escape from -- dependent play. Kids need to invent play not once again be pulled into an adult forum.
Will they learn to read on the computer? Perhaps a child will learn to play some games and maneuver through some things, but try to translate it to the same level book. I think you will be surprised because computer reading is an altogether different kind of reading than the book.
Points of reference in very young children vary. So taking them to a web site only adds confusion. Children learn from listening; they are not visual learners, so pictures must be added to the sound of a familiar voice for the child to grasp the content. Kids will love the attention, they will love the pictures, but they won’t make the connection between a small picture from a website and an idea. Ideas build imagination.
"Young students don't differentiate between the face-to-face world and the Internet world."
That’s the problem. Children can learn to understand the world a little at a time in the regular course of stories and questions and answers, but if you micro it into the monitor and serve it up at light speed, the world becomes just another toy.
"They were born into the age of the Internet. They see it as part of the continuum of the way life is today."
Bunk. Very young children do no such thing. They simply take the monitor and the funny box with the light and consider it something that distracts mommy and daddy from them. When they get to play on the funny box, they’re delighted because mommy or daddy is finally paying attention to them.
Life is always beautiful and delicious, and children should learn this from going outside to play. Dependency on high tech is an add on not a preliminary even when they see mom and dad tirelessly play at the funny little box. Children need other things first, and they won’t get those things from a computer.
“One of their favorite computer activities is writing an e-mail to a grandparent,” said Alexander, author of a children's guide to the Internet. "It's great for letter recognition," she said. "Everybody likes to get mail and little kids don't have great tolerance for waiting. So the whole idea that they can write grandma and get an e-mail back a half-hour later saying, 'I got your note' - they love that."
But are they writing that letter to Grandma as much as say they are drawing a picture and having mommy mail that? No. They can’t read or write, so how is it their work? But they can draw, and this is a table and crayon activity.
School work too is a dubious thing. Does anyone know that computer math and paper math don’t mesh? A child who has mastered a program on the computer for math will often not be able to translate his work to paper. It’s just not the same.
Choose one: My child spent five hours on the computer today.
My child ran and played for five hours at the park today.
Which is better for a child? In a time when obesity and lack of social graces are chief components in a child’s failure to thrive, adding a computer in the preschool years is tantamount to dropping a forty pound weight on him.
At the Arnold & Porter Children's Center in Washington, 4- and 5-year-olds have the option to spend time on a computer, working in small teams.
"It helps them become more relaxed, more adventurous, and more willing to take risks as they learn," she said.
"Kids have a tremendous ability to expand their learning, and a computer is just one tool," said Mark Ginsberg, executive director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The potential danger, he said, is putting 3- and 4-year-olds in front of a computer lesson that demands graphic skills or word-recognition knowledge for which they are not ready.
The potential danger is making a three year old sedentary. Developmentally appropriate activities for three year olds are mostly active not passive learning. Active learning means using the senses and moving.
Computers are great for kids who can read, but for children learning to be, a computer introduced into a classroom too early could be very destructive because computers don’t get a child into the real world. What a computer does is simulate the world on a TV screen, and that can be very confusing to a very young child.
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