Developmentally Appropriate Technology for Early Childhood
	Exemplars

DESKTOP COMPUTERS AND DIGITAL ARTIFACTS AS A NATURAL PART OF THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT For many children the use of technology in school has a high status and they often choose ICT activities before other kinds of activities. This is a problem for many nurseries because there has to be some system for turn taking at the desktop computer. The best way of getting around these problems is to make technology an integrated part of the activities at the pre-school. It is essential that one avoid giving ICT an extraordinary status, using it as a reward or talking about it as something exclusive. Instead some pre-schools set a great example by developing a more unstructured and free approach to the usage of ICT.

Instead of making a turn taking list for computer usage some Swedish nurseries have a card system for choosing different activities. In the morning children just place the card at the activity the want to do.

By placing the desktop computer in the centre of the nursery, instead of in some small peripheral room with a closed door, one can achieve a natural ICT learning environment. Computer work becomes a part of other activities and children can more easily collaborate with different tasks around the computer. The things that children produce on the computer should be displayed with other things they have made. When technology becomes "transparent" the turn taking problems disappear and the didactical work can be more focused on learning goals than on justice.

A picture made in Hyperstudio on the refrigerator at a pre-school. Side by side with other things the children have made, drawings, texts etc.

first published 21/11/01 updated 19/02/02