How can IT support the six areas of learning?
1. Personal and social development
* Social skills -- working in pairs or as a member of a group; learning to share and cooperate with one another; developing independent learning and decision-making.
2. Language and Literacy
A multi-sensory approach -- pictures, words and sound.
* Talking stories/nursery rhyme books -- basic language learning skills (left to right, top to bottom); listening; learning that words convey meaning. Sound and animation aid the interpretation of pictures and understanding of meaning; books presented interactively.
* Talking wordprocessors -- listening to their own words being read back to them; their stories where adult acts as scribe.
* Specific skills -- e.g. letter recognition, the shape and the sound of letters.
* Multimedia authoring package -- create pages that contain pictures, sound and words. Advantage for young children -- not dependent on hand writing/spelling; can be a stimulus to the purposeful development of oral language skills. For instance, after a day out at a farm, photographs taken with a still video camera could be used alongside the children's own recorded voices -- 'I liked the pigs best'; 'We fed the lambs'.
3. Numeracy
Visual representation of mathematics.
* Counting, matching, sorting, sequencing and shape recognition can all be learnt in a colourful, interactive environment. This supplements practical activities and is an introduction to more abstract representation. i.e. it can provide a bridge between concrete and abstract thinking.
* Mathematical vocabulary such as bigger than, in front of, can be developed. Animations can demonstrate the meaning clearly.
4. Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Children have a natural curiosity about the world and about information technology itself.
* Television and video are an accepted part of their life. Fax can send words and pictures to another school or to parents, computers can contribute to all areas of learning, and programmable toys, which enable children to give instructions such as forward, back, left and right, develop spatial awareness, logical thinking and sequencing.
* Software is available which will enable them to become more aware of their environment
-- creating a scene such as the buildings in a town, the contents of a house, the creatures that live in a pond or the animals that live on a farm.
* CD-Rom can open up many areas for exploration -- under the sea, outer space and life in other countries.
5. Physical development
* Using a mouse or other input device to control what is on the screen develops hand-eye co-ordination, controlled movements of the hand.
6. Creativity
* Art packages -- as an extension to other art activities -- shapes produced very simply; changes can be made; whole areas of colour removed or added; Brush width easily varied; effects such as spraying.
* Electronic music devices enable children to use their imagination and express ideas/feelings. Small, free-standing keyboards can play, record and re-play a series of notes with a range of different instruments/effects, including animal sounds. More elaborate systems can be linked to a computer. Music produced by the children can then be added to multimedia presentations, for example to accompany their pictures.
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