Anya Kamenetz on Fastcompany writes about how smartphones and handheld computers sparked an educational revolution and how your kid will start their ABCs with A for app.
As smartphones and handheld computers move into classrooms worldwide, we may be witnessing the start of an educational revolution. How technology could unleash childhood creativity — and transform the role of the teacher.
Gemma and Eliana Singer are big iPhone fans. They love to explore the latest games, flip through photos, and watch YouTube videos while waiting at a restaurant, having their hair done, or between ballet and French lessons. But the Manhattan twins don’t yet have their own phones, which is good, since they probably wouldn’t be able to manage the monthly data plan: In November, they turned 3.
When the Singer sisters were just 6 months old, they already preferred cell phones to almost any other toy, recalls their mom, Fiona Aboud Singer: “They loved to push the buttons and see it light up.” The girls knew most of the alphabet by 18 months and are now starting to read, partly thanks to an iPhone app called First Words, which lets them move tiles along the screen to spell c-o-w and d-o-g. They sing along with the Old MacDonald app too, where they can move a bug-eyed cartoon sheep or rooster inside a corral, and they borrow Mom’s tablet computer and photo-editing software for a 21st-century version of finger painting. “They just don’t have that barrier that technology is hard or that they can’t figure it out,” Singer says.
Some people will criticize such early exposures to tech and gadgets, but it’s really part of our standard environment. My 1 and half year old can’t be fooled with a toy phone and she’s always after our mobile phones. Even though we don’t allow her to carry phone, she still manages to speak to our remote and says “Hello & Bye”. Kids learn by mimicing, experimenting and exploring and these devices allow it so easily.
Image Credit : Karen Horton on Flickr
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I’m not surprised. Kids nowadays are “born” into a digital world; they are not refugees like the generations that came before them.