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During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Early Years (2-6)
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Growing up with electronic stuff In sixth grade, I used to save my quarters and, on the way home from school, take a detour into the bowling alley where my friends and I would play a few games of pinball before rushing home at a quick pace to hide our deceit. It was a different world then in so many ways. The long walk home, unsupervised and unafraid. The bowling alley with its aroma of shoes and French fries, Cactus Cooler and Tab sold ice cold in the vending machines. That quaint bowling alley pinball machine didn’t teach me much, except that I could, if necessary, run home as quickly as I walked. A kind of a math problem, what we used to, in the old days, call a word problem. But today’s children spend more time with their games and their games are more potent and perhaps more educational than that old pinball machine ever was. Some parents worry. They believe that the pervasive popularity of games both in video and computer form is what prevents real learning and, along with other factors, contributes to the decline in academic advancement of American children. Others cite the rise in attention deficit disorder and childhood obesity and point their fingers at the computer, at the TV screen. Jane M. Healy, in her book “Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect our Children’s Minds and What We Can do About It,” describes herself as a “longtime enthusiast for and user of educational computing,” but confesses that her research resulted in a “journey sometimes shocking, often disheartening, and occasionally inspiring.” She admits “some very exciting and potentially valuable things are happening between children and computers” but cautions that “we are currently spending far too much money with too little thought.” She explores the rift between popular beliefs and what her research suggests: “Computer ‘learning’ for young children is far less brain building than even such simple activities as spontaneous play or playing board games with an adult or older child.” But others believe that children who aren’t readily drawn into traditional modes of learning can be inspired by the medium. The boosters suggest that computer and video games motivate children to read, to develop math skills and strengthen problem-solving skills. And of course, early exposure allows our children to become computer literate in a world that demands it. According to James Paul Gee in his article, “High Score Education,” originally printed in WIRED, “The secret of a videogame as a teaching machine isn’t its immersive 3-D graphics, but its underlying architecture. Each level dances around the outer limits of the player’s abilities, seeking at every point to be hard enough to be just doable. In cognitive science, this is referred to as the regime of competence principle, which results in a feeling of simultaneous pleasure and frustration a sensation as familiar to gamers as sore thumbs.” He goes on to point out: “Good videogames incorporate the principle of expertise. They tend to encourage players to achieve total mastery of one level, only to challenge and undo that mastery in the next, forcing kids to adapt and evolve. This carefully choreographed dialectic has been identified by learning theorists as the best way to achieve expertise in any field.” Gee’s conclusion: “Kids often say it doesn’t feel like learning when they’re gaming - they’re much too focused on playing.” That echoes what many early childhood education experts have said for years: Children learn through play. The challenge is, as in everything, to choose wisely. And perhaps acknowledge that games are one resource of many ways not the only and certainly not the primary to entertain, challenge and teach our children. Make certain to set limits, keep boundaries. For example, some families prefer to buy only multi-player games to ensure the involvement of the entire family and to avoid solitary play. Others review content and age-appropriate ratings. Our family to be honest, my husband and me have decided to delay our son’s introduction to computers and videos. While he has few basic keyboard toys (leap pads for car trips), we plan to refrain from full immersion until schoolwork demands it. We know that he’ll encounter them through friends and family. But our home activities will remain offline and offscreen.m Lisa Alvarez, an English teacher at Irvine Valley College, lives in Modjeska Canyon with her husband and 3-year-old son. |
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