| Computer Use
- some broad milestones These are some of the broad milestones that we can observe about children's use of computers. It is difficult to be more precise about an area where ever younger children are doing ever more incredible things with technology. Children entering school are more computer literate than their predecessors, forcing teachers to revise upwards their expectations about what all children should be able to do. |
|
ICT Milestone Information and Communications Technology |
What it means |
|
| Uses a computer mouse to play a favourite program | 4 years |
Four year olds need to have already had computer experiences
to get them to this point. Much of that could be 'assisted' experience
such as working with an aduAlt or older sibling to watch and listen, draw,
play music, play games, move and click the mouse, use the keyboard,
etc.
By this stage children should be capable of left clicking on an icon and opening their favourite game, playing it with the mouse, and exiting the program. They should be able to do this with a little supervision and assistance from someone else. |
| Controls the computer to play simple games | 4 years |
The important word here is control. Before going to
school children should be able to independently control the mouse making the
cursor go where they want it to, and left clicking to activate it.
They should also be able to use the keyboard to 'enter' or to use important
keys for an activity. The focus here will be on favourite games and activities where the child can independently open the program, carry out the activity or play the game, and then exit it at the end. |
| Explores computer programs and discovers new information | 5 years |
The key to this milestone is the attitude of 'having a go'.
Healthy learners explore new programs without any fear of doing the wrong
thing, or of breaking something. Their approach is quite
fearless. In fact children continually astound their teachers and
parents with their ability to teach themselves about computing. This is in contrast to adults who are learning about computing for the first time. Therefore adults must recognise this difference and permit (actively encourage) their children to explore new programs in depth. |
| Uses a variety of computer programs such as games, writing, and drawing and painting | 5 years |
Knowing that computers can be used for a variety of purposes
other than playing games is the key to this milestone. Children should
demonstrate this by using at least two programs which feature writing and
drawing. In this way they begin to build their ideas about computers
as tools to assist their learning as well as a source of recreational
activities. The skills learned through doing this type of activity are quite different to those needed to play games. For instance the functions of the mouse and keyboard need to be learned and practiced. The best way to introduce this to your children is to provide them with new programs which they will enjoy using such as Kid Pix Deluxe which uses sound effects as they paint and draw, and reads their writing back in a computer voice. |
| Uses the computer as an aid to learning (focus on writing and reading) | 5 years |
This milestone is about using the computer to improve reading
and writing skills. It probably says as much about what the adults
allow the computer to be used for as it does about the children's use of the
computer.
For instance children who use the computer to write must find the letters on the keyboard first, but because keys are always in capitals they must be able to transpose between upper and lower case letters as well. These are real learning challenges which children don't usually have any difficulty with. In fact, most children enjoy using the keyboard so much that they write much more freely that they would if using a pen and paper. Children love programs which encourages them to draw or paint and then write about it, and then print the result in colour. They will then want to read this to everyone. Reading skills can be improved by using routine tasks to reinforce word recognition. For instance opening and closing programs, using commands such as name, save, close, open, exit, and back all require the user to know where these words are and what they mean. Seeing the difference between commands becomes very important too (such as 'save' and 'save as' ). Then there are those programs which actively seek to teach reading. The best of these are read-along e-books where the child can follow the print and hear the story. But there are many other programs available which teach every aspect of beginning reading. |
| Uses computer keyboard and mouse to write and draw | 6 years |
This milestone is about the child's ability to use the
computer to create a product such as a drawing or a typed message. To
do this they must become familiar with the range of uses for the mouse and
keyboard.
Most programs that use drawing and writing use the mouse to change every aspect of their tools. For instance you can change line and font size, type, style and colour. Some allow writing in boxes, with highlighters, 3D effects, and moving text. Colour can be drawn, sprayed, painted, and filled. Lines can be placed, pulled, dragged or dropped, and can be made into wire frames, solid objects, or plane figures which can then be rotated, spun, elongated, compressed or filled. Children only have to be shown how to do these once to want to use and explore these features over and over again. Next the mouse itself presents two main features, right or left clicking. But where you left click on the page and where you move the mouse while clicking produces many different results. Then there are right clicks for extra menus, but you usually get the menu for the position of the cursor when you click. The keyboard seems simple enough at first but there are many features that must be taught (or shown) such as some of the most used: caps key, delete keys, backspace, shift, shift+numbers for symbols, maths keys +,-,x,/,?, and the number pad and numlock, the arrow keys for moving about, page-up and page-down, enter, escape, and ctrl+alt+delete for getting out of those dead-end situations. After they know this you can get them one of the new keyboards specifically for multi-media and the Internet with a host of built-in functions and progammability. |
| Explores new programs in depth | 6 years |
This milestone is about the ability to persevere and go
deeply into a program to discover all of its secrets. It is about
deepening knowledge and becoming an 'expert'. Contrast this with children who 'browse' superficially across many programs. These children can give the impression of knowing a lot, but really only know a little about many programs. There may be a time for all children to do this, but eventually it will be time to delve deeper and this requires perseverance. |
| Operates the computer with more than one program open at a time, 'multi-tasking' between one program and the other. | 7 years |
This milestone is about multi-tasking. I
was working at a very progressive school as their IT teacher trainer and I remember a
year two student (seven years old) who showed me what she was doing for her
research task on Dinosaurs. She typed the word 'dinosaur' (copied
from the board) into the 'Google' search engine and came up with a page of
internet links which she proceeded to explore until she found the picture
she wanted. She then copied the picture to the clipboard and pasted it
into her MSWord document (which she had previously opened) on her desktop. She then
resized it until she was happy with its position on her page, and proceeded
to label her picture. She then navigated back to the internet
site and read about the dinosaur, selected an important line of text and
copied it before switching back to her word processor to paste it in under
her picture.
Her teacher addressed the class and told everyone about stealing other people's work, and the need to put the information into your own words. Every child in that class was able to find dinosaur information on the Internet and work between MS Internet Explorer and MS Word to create a sheet of facts. They then printed out their work for others to read. If anyone is any doubt about the value of computers for teaching children I remind them that a few years ago this research task was appropriate for 12 year olds, but they were using books. |