I thought that the discussion on keyboarding was really interesting. Is it worth taking out cursive so that we can teach it earlier? Is it beneficial for students to excel at writing or at typing? Will keyboarding take away their handwriting skills? Will parents be upset about keyboarding being taught earlier than usual?
I thought that this was a good discussion to introduce us to, because it is a discussion and a decision that we will actually be involved in later. I think that for the most part, keyboarding is a valuable skill, and I think that it's not only beneficial, it's necessary to expose younger kids to it. It is a skill that they will most likely be using for a long time. However, it's not a perfect scenario.
I think that students need to know how to write and know how to write well before we can start to introduce them to the subject of keyboarding. I think that they need to be able to write out their ideas on paper and be able to process the spelling procedure before we can start to make them do all of this on the computer.
Overall, I think that keyboarding can teach valuable skills: hand-eye coordination, improve letter recognition, matching of upper- and lower-case letters, fine motor development, computer skills, and many others. However, I think it's also important to note that these skills can be taught in other ways without a computer. I think that in the early childhood classroom, computer time should be limited in the interest of gaining social and emotional skills, being able to ask for help from the teacher, and having time spent away from technology and with other people. In my preschool classroom, a lot of my students would spend so much time at night either playing games on the computer or gaming system, watching TV, going to see movies, etc. At the end of the day when I would drop them off with their parents, I would notice them pick up a Nintendo DS or other small gaming system or turn on the TV for a five minute ride home. And this happened daily with 6 out of my 23 students. I had a lot of discussions with my teacher about this, and she agreed that with these 6 kids, it was an issue. And when we had computer time as a center, these 6 kids would go to the computer and keep it away from the other kids, leading us to close the computer center a lot of the time. (Sorry about the digression from keyboarding!) I think that with some kids, these things happen a lot, and we need to make sure that we are providing them with different experiences at school, especially with experiences that they aren't getting at home.
While I think that computer time is important, and I think that technology is very important, I think that we need to be careful in the early childhood and early elementary classrooms that these things are not pulling away from other classroom instruction that might be even more important. In preschool, my teacher had a digital camera out for students to use during centers, and I was amazed at how social this experience was for the kids. They were in groups and would take pictures and talked about what to take pictures of. I think that we need to be careful to be innovative in the technology, because it seems like those are the lessons where we are providing students with more opportunities to be with other kids and it integrates so many more options for them as far as curriculum areas.
I agree with technology and younger students. I've interacted with students that are always surrounded by technology. I worked with a young boy in NZ that you'd think was American from his accent. Both of his parents were NZ and admitting to letting him watch quite a bit of TV as a child. (Most tv shows are American) My teacher and I were shocked! All he must do is sit in front of the tv at home without any adult interaction. I feel this just proves how much influence technology has on younger child! It's really scary if you think about it.
ReplyDeleteI think that younger children need to be taught keyboarding skills, but I do agree with you with the fact that some students have so much computer and TV time at home that they don't need it at school. If they are exposed to it all of the time they should learn how to play in different ways using their imagination. The digital cameras incorporates technology, but it is widening their creativity at the same time. Computers are an excellent resource for children and they can use them to learn a lot, but some children need to get less of it.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the keyboarding discussion as well because there is a fine line about when it should be taught as well as how it should be taught to students. In the younger grades I feel that it is important to introduce those students to the computer so that they can be familiar with this technology, but it is very important that technology doesn't take over the traditional from of writing with paper and a pencil.
ReplyDeleteWhile student teaching, I did notice that the same students would play at the computers during center time. I think it would be beneficial to create a computer schedule for at least one if not all computers to make sure that every student had a scheduled time to practice exploring and typing on the computer.