Campus Voices
Lower School
Technology has become an integral part of our daily life and, for better or worse, is shaping our world. It has revolutionized communication and is developing faster than most of us can keep up with. Technology advances so fast that it is difficult to look into the future and predict what the world will be like in years to come. What we do know is that technology will keep advancing and the children of today will need to be somewhat fluent in it to function in society. It is because of this that I believe pre-technology skills should play an important role in educating the young children of today.
So what are pre-technology skills? I have yet to officially stumble upon this term in a professional development workshop, educational text, or Google search. In fact, I invented this term as I wrote this article in an effort to touch upon how technology has been used, and is used now, in my early childhood classroom.
Just as pre-literacy skills are early behaviors associated with successful reading development, pre-technology skills are behaviors associated with the use of technology development. Pre-technology skills will allow children to practice and use technology in various ways in an effort to introduce them to the diversity of technology that exists. In addition, just as many skills fall under the pre-literacy umbrella, so too do many skills fall under the pre-technology umbrella as well. Although this umbrella covers many aspects of technology, I would like to touch upon one skill in this article—the awareness of children that technology is another way to communicate their thoughts to large groups of people.
In early childhood classrooms children are given the opportunity to plan, investigate, reflect, revisit, and make connections. Throughout this process the children communicate their thoughts and ideas in various group settings. These thoughts are diverse; they exhibit a wide range of ideas from one child to another. It is through these thoughts that children begin to make connections with the world around them and feel validated as individuals.
One way in which our Beginners class validates children is by interviewing our students on a particular subject. During these interviews, the children are prompted with a question regarding a topic that has been discussed in the past. The thoughts of the children are then documented using various types of computer software and then manipulated to compose a final product.
Our Best Part of Me project, which was inspired by Wendy Ewald’s book, The Best Part of Me, is just one example of a time that we used children’s words to introduce them to the pre-technology skill of using technology to communicate to larger groups of people. In this book, Ewald uses body parts and child-written essays to explore the identity of each individual.
During the first weeks of school we spent a great deal of time investigating self-identity. After a group read-aloud of The Best Part of Me, the children were organized in small groups and asked the question, “What is the best part of you?” Their responses were documented using audio programming software, and a picture was then taken of their body part of choice. Shera Selzer and I then integrated the children’s pictures with their responses and made a video. This video was posted on our classroom website and presented at our curriculum night. Through exploring self-identity and expressing the children’s thoughts using technology, the children came to understand that their words have meaning, that their thoughts are taken seriously, that they were a part of a process, and that each person was important in that process. They were also introduced to the pre-technology concept that technology can be used as a means to communicate to large groups of people.
With technology continuing to advance at such a rapid rate and shifting the traditional roles of students and teachers, educators need to be creative when incorporating technology into the classroom. Although the Massachusetts Department of Education presented a new set of technology standards into their curriculum frameworks in 2008, technology is still viewed as a classroom extra, not a necessity. In most schools, that time has come to an end and if it has not, it will soon.
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