Why have I chosen the subject: "4-6 year old and Digital Media"
Spending a lot of time with my 4 year old, I have noticed how thirsty for knowledge she is, at such a young age. Since she was two years old, she has learned to operate an iPhone and iPad, and is indeed, very comfortable with using them. Since we have changed phones and my husband has used various other devices, even though for me, it was (and still is) quite difficult to adapt and learn new operating systems ( he had 2 different ones in the last 3 years), Sophie ( my daughter), picked up any device and learnt to operate it in an extremely short time. She was then teaching me "what to do with Daddy's phone".
Sophie has always loved books: to have them read to her, but also to "read" herself, and by this, I mean, her, picking up various books and turning the pages, while coming up with a new story (always based on the same images, though). We have evenings when all three of us (myself, my husband and Sophie) sit for "story time" with one baby book each (just images on each page and not one single word) and we have to tell each other stories based on those images, and we always manage to "tell" different stories.
The reason I am talking about all these intimate details in our family life, is because, by living them, I have observed something very interesting: even though Sophie is enjoying playing on a digital device, that has not detracted from her love for books, or painting, or outdoor activities (she loves exploring, so walking in the woods is her favourite activity, where she "discovers" something new at every step and makes a big fuss of every little thing). In fact, what I have noticed, was that her creativity is in fact growing with each different experience and she is actually storing every activity in her little mind and uses the lessons learnt from each one, when facing challenges in her new adventures. For example, while watching a cartoon on a children's channel, she has learnt a song about planets, stars and galaxies. In August, when we were talking about the meteor shower that was about to happen, and tried to explain what that was, she started explaining to us how galaxies are made of planets, and she even knew the name of most planets, to our surprise. But this is only a very simple, basic example, of how children's minds are ready to assimilate an enormous amount of knowledge, how through every game they play, every new adventure they live, they increase their vat of information about the world around them, and how, as a parent, I started wondering: How can we, as a society, provide the right support for our children to develop at the pace they are prepared to, what can we do, as parents and developers, to make sure we are not slowing them down?
" The education secretary Michael Gove's efforts to revolutionise learning in England's schools will see five-year-olds studying fractions and writing computer programs in their first year of school, according to final versions of the new national curriculum published on Monday."
(The Guardian, Monday 8 July 2013)
Does the approach taken by the Department for Education, mean that, the situation described above has been recognised, and that schools will change their approach in order to support our children's growth at their own pace? People have very various opinions on this.
jatrius
65
Quite. You regard these changes as difficult, so they shouldn't be attempted therefore. Are you sure that your problem isn't the difficulty for the teacher rather than the challenge for the pupils?
Kaitain
20
I was coding at the age of 7. The basics of getting to grips with logic, branching and other simple building blocks of algorithms are not beyond the grasp of young kids. (I'd probably leave arrays, memory management and meta-programming 'til later, though.)
21
Having had some experience of seeing the way fractions are now taught I can see why. Twenty years ago I spent some time helping my nephew (then aged eight) with fractions. The methods he was using made no sense to me - or to him - but when we started from the basics in the way I had been taught he came on by leaps and bounds. He's now a computer programmer!
Fractions are another thing which depend on knowledge of the 12 times table: quarters, thirds, sixths, twelfths, sixteenths ...
3
What is a set of instructions for humans if its not a human program of sorts?
Is a cooking recipe not a human program of sorts?
Is travel directions not a human program of sorts?
Are DIY instructions not a human program of sorts?
Is travel directions not a human program of sorts?
Are DIY instructions not a human program of sorts?
1
Its your failure to grasp the fact that so much in life has its own parallels with what we do in life that makes learning unnecessarily difficult.
Spotting parallels in something which you are already familiar and comfortable with makes learning easier & quicker instead of building psychological resistance to learning.
Lets compare human instructions and computer programming.
Both are sets of instructions which the platform understands, ie English, French, German or a myriad of Program code in various languages and levels of abstraction from say a 4GL down to Assembler.
Both are sets of instructions which the platform understands, ie English, French, German or a myriad of Program code in various languages and levels of abstraction from say a 4GL down to Assembler.
Both need to be performed in a logical step by step manner ie start at the beginning and finish at the end.
In the case of say DIY instructions putting together a 3 drawer unit, the instructions steps for building the drawers are effectively in a program loop carried out 3 times for example.
So yes there are parallels, you perhaps just dont see life in an abstract way which is no different to abstract art as another example of parallels in life funnily enough.
But there are quite a few, (and probably this second category forms the majority of people who commented in the forums) who are totally against these changes.
16
Does seem to be a curriculum designed to ultimately make kids economically useful rather than inspire a love of learning and critical thinking. Would be nice if the concept of "value" could be expanded to something beyond the purely financial but the emphasis on quantification certainly won't allow for more qualitative accounts.
And also, there are some interesting discussions going on in the forums over pro and con views on this subject, as it is shown in the thread below:
Piskie
I deeply dislike Mr. Gove, but I don't think theses changes are so bad. ICT in secondary school is definitely in need of a complete overhaul. At the moment they only teach office skills.
The biggest problem I see is that all the changes appear to be aimed at the more academically inclined pupils. That's good, because in the current system I don't think those children get enough value out of school, but the reality is that the majority of pupils is not academic, and these changes will force those pupils to study in ways that don't suit them, which will probably make them resent school.
The plan to start this new system in September 2014 is of course completely insane. Does this idiot really think that the entire curriculum can be altered in less than two months? It'll be chaos. Poor teachers. Poor pupils.
The biggest problem I see is that all the changes appear to be aimed at the more academically inclined pupils. That's good, because in the current system I don't think those children get enough value out of school, but the reality is that the majority of pupils is not academic, and these changes will force those pupils to study in ways that don't suit them, which will probably make them resent school.
The plan to start this new system in September 2014 is of course completely insane. Does this idiot really think that the entire curriculum can be altered in less than two months? It'll be chaos. Poor teachers. Poor pupils.
- Piskie
Ehhhr,,, I meant 'less than fourteen months' ... that'll teach me to type before I've had my morning cuppa. - tr1ck5t3r
Its the academics that solve the problems for society so why shouldnt they get the support in education to excel?If academically minded children are not helped, then they cant help society later on life, which means we might just as well go shoot ourselves in the foot right now!
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