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athy Thomley's classroom in Memphis, Tenn., brims with the
stuff of kindergarten -- blocks, books, modeling clay, construction
paper, paste, and paint. Her 26 students listen to stories,
sing, dance, and finger paint. And nearly every day, they spend
time on the classroom's three Tandys, five iMacs, and a G3 Tower.
Using a reading program, they write their own stories and hear
the computer read their words back to them. They play counting
games and create graphs.
Once considered the domain of older students, computers are
becoming standard equipment in preschool, kindergarten, and
the primary grades. An increased emphasis on achievement and
standards is transforming early childhood education, and many
educators see computer use in the early grades as a way to engage
children with academics. Early use also allows young students
to get comfortable using technology.
For young children, computers are great motivators for learning,
Thomley says. "We're not the big authority we used to be. We
are in competition with special effects. We have to try to be
entertaining," she says. "The computer is giving us a little
bit of magic to put back in the classroom."
Enthusiasm for early computer use is not unanimous, however.
A group of early childhood educators, teachers, and researchers,
Alliance for Childhood, is calling for a moratorium on adding
more computers in elementary schools until research is done
on the effects of computer use in young children.
"There's no solid research that young children need computers
to learn," says Joan Almon, a former kindergarten teacher and
head of the Maryland-based alliance. "There are risks that people
need to take into account." These risks, according to the alliance,
include lack of imagination, social isolation, repetitive stress
injuries, concentration problems, and poor language and literacy
skills.
Technology proponents dispute the alliance's conclusions. Like
Thomley, they believe computers are powerful learning tools
for young children, whose interest is held by the high-tech
stimulation. "[The alliance] takes the worst example and says
we should not let any elementary school students have [computers],"
says Keith Krueger, executive director of the Consortium for
School Networking, a Washington, D.C., group that promotes the
use of telecommunications in schools. "It's like saying because
bad things are written on chalkboards, we should do away with
chalkboards. To not use the power of these tools in education
means a lot of children will be bored with learning."
Even the National Association for the Education of Young Children
(NAEYC), the large and influential champion of early childhood
education, believes technology can enhance children's cognitive
and social abilities when used correctly. "It's the teacher's
responsibility to see students use [technology] appropriately,"
says Kathy Thornburg, president of NAEYC and professor and director
of the Child Development Laboratory at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Adults, she says, must control how, when, and what young children
do with computers, just as they do with television. Any learning
tool -- including blocks and paints -- can be misused by students
who aren't supervised. "Why do we think of computers differently?"
she asks.
Computers were a mystery to the high school students in Lowell
Monke's first computer literacy class in Des Moines, Iowa. It
was 1984, a time when classroom computers were scarce. But despite
their inexperience, the students flourished. "They did wonderful,
creative things with these computers," says Monke. "They brought
a wealth of their own experiences."
As computers became as common as pencils in schools, however,
Monke noticed a disturbing change in his students. Teens who'd
been tapping away on computers since kindergarten could find
no use for the machines outside the prescribed programs. "Creative,
imaginative work was almost gone," he says. "They couldn't even
brainstorm or hold conversations with each other."
Monke, now a professor at Wittenberg University in Springfield,
Ohio, and coauthor of Breaking Down the Digital Walls: Learning
to Teach in a Post-Modem World, believes that it was the
early and pervasive use of computers that left his students
unable to, literally, think outside the box. His work is cited
in the Alliance for Childhood's report, Fool's Gold: A Critical
Look at Computers in Childhood, released last fall. Monke
and the alliance would prefer to see computers gone not only
from preschool and primary classrooms, but also from all elementary
school classrooms.
 Can
the computer, the cornerstone of our technology revolution,
really be so harmful to the little ones? According to the alliance,
the computer and its entertaining software distract young children
from each other, from adults, and from their most important
mission: play. Young children, especially preschoolers and kindergartners,
should be spending their time pretending and experiencing with
their whole bodies, child development specialists say. Giving
them blocks, puppets, clay, sand, and other objects to play
with is the best way to prepare them to learn abstractions such
as reading and math -- and the best way to teach them how to
get along with each other. As Edward Miller, former editor of
the Harvard Education Letter and coauthor of Fool's
Gold, puts it, "We know a lot about the educational needs
of young children -- lots of direct, hands-on experience, creative
play."
Computers, being mostly a visual and abstract medium, are great
for adults, who no longer need to experience everything with
their whole bodies. But, the alliance report says, what's best
for adults isn't necessarily best for little children. None
of this is being considered in the current rush to wire schools
and get computers into every classroom, Miller charges: "Before
we go ahead with ambitious plans, we should know more about
the long-term effects of computers on early childhood."
Fool's Gold is uncompromising in its argument against
early computer use, but some early childhood technology professionals
object to what they see as the report's lack of balance. Dara
Feldman, president of NAEYC's Technology Caucus and a former
kindergarten teacher, says technology should be viewed as another
instructional tool, albeit a powerful one. Teachers should be
trained to use the computer appropriately in their classrooms,
she says, and no one would suggest using computers to the exclusion
of all other activities. "Yes, [children] need hands-on, tangible
experience," Feldman says, "but they are getting valuable experiences
at the computer that they wouldn't get otherwise."
For example, she says, the computer can be a tool in teaching
early literacy skills. Composing stories at the keyboard is
easier for children who don't yet have the coordination to hold
a pencil. Programs that read aloud what the child has written
are powerful as well, she says. Children can read their own
composition, but they're thrilled when the computer reads it
back.
Imagination
and creativity
Helpful rabbits and singing hamsters. Dancing crayons and counting
cats. Talking numbers that zoom across the screen in red biplanes
and purple zeppelins. These are not characters on Saturday morning
cartoons. Instead, they inhabit the latest educational software
targeted at preschoolers, kindergartners, and first- and second-graders.
One of the alliance's main concerns about early technology
is its potential destructive influence on children's ability
to imagine. "Images on the computer are so powerful that children
feel unable to bring their own images out," says Almon. And
blotting out children's imagination leaves them without access
to their own ideas, she says, ultimately affecting the way they
learn.
Psychologist Jane M. Healy, author of Failure to Connect:
How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds -- for Better and
Worse, agrees. Most children's software is garbage, says
Healy. The images are so seductive and powerful that they distract
children from using their bodies, make them dependent on outside
stimulation, and rob them of the ability to rely on a rich inner
world. Children's software also gives students the mistaken
impression that they must be entertained at all times, even
in the classroom. "Learning is fun, but it is not entertaining,"
says Healy. "It comes from interaction between a student and
meaningful content."
Healy believes computers can be useful tools for students in
the upper elementary grades. However, children before the age
of 7 can't think abstractly, she says, and a great deal of the
work children do on a computer is abstract, such as working
on math problems. "You can do sums on a screen, but you need
to understand the act of subtracting and counting with blocks
and other objects," says Healy.
Art is another subject that might be affected by computer use.
Judith Pack, preschool teacher and early childhood specialist
at Child Care Services of Monmouth County, N.J., is dubious
about computer-generated artwork created with drag-and-drop
images and a cornucopia of fonts and colors. The results are
so slick and professional looking that kids could become reluctant
to make their own art with paper, crayons, and paints. "They
aren't creating their own things," Pack says. "They're using
someone else's software."
In fact, Lowell Monke says, computers impede creativity in
children. Young children cannot develop intuitive, creative
powers if they spend a great deal of time on the computer, he
says. "Everything you do with the computer is a rational activity.
When you talk about students being in charge, it's bogus," he
says. "When you sit in front of the computer, it sets the limitations
on how much that child thinks. There's no thinking outside the
box. They must respond to what it feeds back."
Another of the alliance's concerns is that time young children
spend on the computer is time taken away from interacting with
each other and their teachers. Little children with poor social
skills often gravitate to the computer, which doesn't require
social interactions. Indeed, Monke is convinced the computer
exacerbates poor communication skills because it doesn't ask
the user to understand subtle or nuanced social cues.
Monke says the students in his Des Moines computer class preferred
to communicate through e-mail even when they were sitting just
feet away from each other. When he asked them to discuss the
social implications of computer use, they were unwilling to
discuss the topic aloud -- they wanted the computer to mediate
their discussions.
Monke conducted a study in which he observed teachers and students
working together on computers. In 18 hours of conversation,
not once did he hear a full sentence. "It was oral communication
out of a Tarzan movie," he says. Even when students were working
together on the computer, he says, their focus was on the machine
and not on relationships with other students or their teachers.
Communication on computers is yet another way that abstraction
is introduced to children too young to handle it, says Healy.
She cites e-mail pen pal projects as an example. "Why should
kids in California be sending e-mail to children in Massachusetts
when they have poor communication skills with students across
the hall?" she asks.
But, responds Dara Feldman, children will be only as isolated
as you let them be. Good teachers monitor computer use among
their students, and they don't allow children to spend too much
time alone at the machines. "Technology is just a tool. If you
train educators to use it appropriately, children will go there
to gather information and collaborate," says Feldman. "They
won't just sit in front of the computer."
Young children, with their developing muscles and bones, could
be at risk for repetitive-stress injuries when they work at
computers, according to the alliance. Adults who use computers
for years sometimes experience these injuries, often as the
result of poor posture, furniture and equipment that doesn't
fit properly, or lack of frequent breaks.
More teenagers and young adults are showing up with repetitive-stress
injuries, which once were seen only in adults, says Margrit
Bleeker, neurologist and director of the Center for Occupational
and Environmental Neurology in Baltimore. Repetitive stress
injuries in younger children are like a time bomb waiting to
go off, she says.
Bleeker believes these injuries are preventable, however. Schools
need to pay attention to ergonomics for all their students,
but especially the youngest ones, who are acquiring work habits
at the computer that will last into adulthood. "You wouldn't
hand a child a pencil without telling him how to use it," says
Bleeker. (For advice, see "Ergonomics 101," Electronic School,
January 2000.)
Ergonomic studies show some students are experiencing a high
level of discomfort, says Alan Hedge, a professor in the department
of design and environmental analysis at Cornell University.
Hedge works with schools and teachers to teach proper computer
ergonomics to their students. "We want to avoid exposing children
to unnecessary risk," he says. "The kinds of postures they're
learning -- if we saw adults working that way, we'd be very
concerned."
Most schools don't have adjustable computer furniture for children,
leaving them vulnerable to injury. Warning signs can be seen
in children whose feet don't touch the floor, who tilt their
head and neck back because the screen is too high, or who hunch
forward over the computer. Some keyboard positions force children
to overextend their wrists and neck, and if a mouse is placed
out of easy reach, children will overextend their shoulders
to use it. Laptops are actually worse ergonomically than desktop
computers, says Hedge, because they violate the principle that
the keyboard should be lower than the screen. (Not to mention
that children use laptops in nontraditional ways, such as lounging
on their beds or the floor, or that laptops add 10 pounds or
so to a child's already overloaded backpack.)
Despite these concerns, Hedge doesn't agree with the alliance's
call to ban computer use by young children. He says there's
no evidence of any long-term physical effects on young children,
as long as they use proper ergonomics.
Cathy Thomley has been a kindergarten teacher for nine years.
Though she integrates computers into her classroom at Millington
East Elementary School, she's mindful of the uses and limitations
of technology for her young students. "We need to make sure
they are still manipulating at their age," she says. "The younger
the child, the more important that is."
For example, when Thomley's students count Gummi bears using
a software program, they have a set of plastic bears next to
them to count, too. On screen, they use the mouse to drag apples
onto an apple tree. Then they take construction paper apples
and apply them to a construction paper tree in the classroom.
Thomley says computers allow her to individualize lessons in
ways she couldn't before. Children who learn a concept move
on to the next level, while Thomley can instantly create more
activities for a child who's still struggling. "The computer
has a place in the classroom," she says. "To say one way of
teaching will meet everyone's needs is not right." Some of her
students don't like to use the computer, and those children
have opportunities to pick up skills in other ways. "[The computer
is] a way to reach kids you couldn't reach before," says Thomley,
who continually monitors what the students are doing. "I don't
just sent them over to the computer and let the computer do
the teaching."
Delaying the introduction of computers can even put children
at a disadvantage, some argue. In Sara Price's kindergarten
class at Saigling Elementary School in Plano, Texas, students
watch short video clips of animals, design habitats for various
animals, and compose reports -- all on the computer. "You can't
wait too long," says Price. "There will be a gap between those
who can use the computer and those who didn't have access. It
will be another form of illiteracy." Delaying children's use
of the computer, she says, means it will take longer for them
to master the language of the computer and feel comfortable
with it.
Children who don't start using computers early run the risk
of falling behind other children who are more fluent with the
machines, says Price. When children reach the third grade, teachers
will want them to use even more advanced programs and Internet
projects. The children who have been using them all along can
jump onboard. Teachers will have to take time to teach the students
with no computer experience a whole new language. "Computers
are becoming more a part of life, and children who don't use
them will be at a disadvantage," says Price.
The alliance's call for more research has been answered by
at least one group: The American Academy of Pediatrics is funding
yearlong research grants to investigate the possible connection
between early and frequent computer use and children's gross
motor and visual motor development.
"It's worthwhile to raise questions of the appropriateness
of sustained use of computers in school," says Larry Cuban,
professor of education at Stanford University and former president
of the American Educational Research Association. "There's no
evidence that it will help kids achieve."
Cuban looks at computer use in preschool and kindergarten in
his new book, Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom
1980-2000. The uses of computers in the classrooms he studied
were mostly benign, he says. But he argues that the money spent
on hardware and software could be used for things that have
a research-proven track record of improving achievement in young
children, including smaller class sizes and more preschool classes.
For Thomley and teachers like her, though, the computer will
continue to be a teaching tool -- one to be used with thought,
preparation, and moderation. She's mindful of the possibilities
and limits of technology. Next to her iMacs, Thomley keeps an
old record player, which she uses to play music for her students.
She says, "It's a reminder to me that kids have lots of needs
that computers can't meet."
• The Technology Caucus of the National Association for
Education of Young Children is online.
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Copyright © 2001, National School Boards Association.
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