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andres32a asks:
"I currently run a private preschool located in Latin America. I have been always interested in finding new ways of giving kids a legitimate educational advantage through fresh applications of technology. What technology would you like to have seen applied in your kindergarten?"
Obviously (Score:3, Insightful)
Right back at you... (Score:2)
Dan East
Back to Basics (Score:5, Insightful)
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Legos... and LOGO! (Score:3, Informative)
I had great fun (and learned a lot) by playing with Legos as a kid, but I can also say exactly the same thing about LOGO [wikipedia.org] too. Sure, it teaches you about geometry and programming and whatnot, but more importantly it was the coolest thing since Oregon Trail!
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I would still recommend Squeak as well, but please don't underestimate Logo.
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Cause and effect (Score:2)
The Incredible Machine (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machi
"Back to basics" - check
"Something to keep lego's and lincoln logs out of the plebians' mouths" - check
"runs on cheap equipment" - check
Actually learning something useful - check
Great big fun! - check
You are hereby banned from slashdot. (Score:2)
You would think you would have learned that by now.
For example - I hear kids in Africa don't have enough food to eat or water to drink? Send them cheap laptops!
Re:You are hereby banned from slashdot. (Score:4, Insightful)
I work in a high tech company, where the majority of the Black employees are natives of Africa (Ghana, Nigeria).
Think they started with technology? One guy told me he did not even see a car until he was 16 years old. He was 24 at the time.
He speaks better English than most Americans of any race.
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This is exactly right. Let them build with their hands and socialize for a few years.
After a few more years, when they are ready to move from blocks to a computer, try Scratch [mit.edu]
Why? (Score:2)
I really think kids need to learn to work in the real world before we drop them into virtual worlds. And at that age, interacting with people is far more crucial than interacting with machines.
Unless, of course, one thinks SkyNet is taking over tomorrow. In that case, make sure you start teaching them how to make bombs, tra
Nothing PC like... (Score:3, Insightful)
Limits on technology aren't so bad either, let them go outside and play games, socialize, and begin building personalities.
I am curious (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, for the other posters (mgb68 and more to come), when somebody who is asking for help on something that they may not have loads of knowledge on, please do not put them down by telling them that they are wrong to explore options. It is damaging to this site, to the geek world, and the those that could use the help (and god knows that many in the world NEED help). I think that the director should be able to explore loads of good options. And yes, handling computers is now part of our society. Children will have to learn it.
For those of us with young children, I would bet that most if not all, have their children playing with the computers as well as playing on the jungle gym, the McyD's play ground, games, circle time, nap time, reading, etc. My daughter (and in about 2 years, my son) play with multiple educational packages on Linux. It is fun to watch her and she enjoys it.
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The question is asking for our opinions. If the person already knew what technology to have in the classroom s/he wouldn't have bothe
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The bane of technology, is the isolation it causes.
Communication via an avatar is impersonal, and often involves rude insults and poor behavior... Read /. with a filter of -1, and take a look at the first few posts.
Consider how people often use the cel-phone, palm-top or music-box, as a shield to ignore others.
Observe that regular TV watchers, equate viewing their favorite TV shows, the same as visiting friends. They begin to lose the distinction between reality and TV. Call them on it, and they become v
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I agree that a well-rounded experience is
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You also need to be a bit careful with some of Levitt's popular works is that they are written in an easy to read style, but the exact wording of the conclusions matters so some care needs to be taken. I have known people to misunderstand him before, for example many people take to lack of correlation between children being read to and learning to read to mean that there is no correlation between early teaching of reading and learning to read. I have lent my copy of Freakonomics to so
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The question at hand is, "What technology would you like to have seen applied in your kindergarten?" "Blocks," and so forth is a perfectly valid answer. What expertise exactly is anyone here supposed to draw on when answering this question, either that way or in the terms you want to see? Your objection to the answers invalidates the entire exercise. If we don't know enough to be qualified to say "blocks", we're not qualified to recommend any particular high-tech doodad as beneficial either.
In any event, y
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My wife works in
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Ikea had a touchscreen system ... (Score:2)
I selected the game from the on-screen 2-level picture menu showed him how to touch it with his hand to turn over the "cards" and reveal the different items and let him play. He wasn't very good at matching the pairs but our little friend (the other boy) kept jumping in to do that for us.
It seemed a usabl
Headsprout and Precision Teaching (Score:2)
(I know some people involved with it, but I have no formal connection.)
The second thing I have to recommend is Precision Teaching. This is 1970s educational high-tech, but the important principles are missed in most education I've seen recently. The required hardware is a special k
Depends (Score:4, Informative)
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Unless by "Mac" you're talking about System 7, I disagree completely. It seems to me that quite a lot of the so-called "educational software" advertised today completely sucks in comparison to what we had back circa 1990. Number Munchers, LOGO, Oregon Trail, Hypercard... maybe even Dino Park Tycoon... those were examples of good software for kids! If I were running a preschool I'd go
Great glasses that you have there. (Score:2)
So with all that in mind, lets skip the computers, the blocks, the books, and even the pictures. Instead, just tie down the baby and infant and let them learn it by genetics and osmotic absorption. Now that was the GOOD OLD DAYS.
Or pe
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Actually, my son old figured out the mouse at 18 months with xeyes. Had it doing funny full screen eye movements with his own specific sound effects. Clicking stuff he figured out by just having a blank desktop. I've given him his own account, and sometimes when he bugs me at the computer, I log him in, let him play for a bit and come back to have a chuckle at what he's managed to do. He gets bored pretty quickly and I think that's a good thing at his age (now 2yo).
I tend to think that kids at pre school a
Drip-tray (Score:1, Funny)
Rubber pants.
The irony (Score:5, Informative)
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Certainly! We got lots of stuff for Kindergarten (Score:2, Interesting)
iris scanners, highly sensitive mikes, DRM coded Sesame Street and
to top things off we have George Monbiot to read to them his latest
rantings on man-made global warming and against all the 911
"conspiracy theorists".
Tell you what, kids don't really even belong in Kindergarten. They should
spend their time in intact families than in the arms of the state.
Re:Certainly! We got lots of stuff for Kindergarte (Score:1)
Based on your link to Landover [landoverbaptist.org], I couldn't tell whether you were speaking tongue-in-cheek; but I was just having a conversation with my wife today about the homosexual persecution fantasy (even though homosexuality is the de facto standard nowadays), and that taking a stand for the nuclear family is a radical and violent gesture.
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The usual (Score:2)
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I remember learn how to count games! (Score:3)
None At All (Score:4, Funny)
Biotech was another issue entirely. Our teacher had an extra set of eyes IN THE BACK OF HER HEAD!!!!!! And we learned of a sharp tooth snail that lives IN OUR NOSES and will cut off any fingers that end up inside.
As far as giving kids an advantage, though, I think keeping tech, especially computers, OUT of kindergarten is the best thing you can do.
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Too bad, it has been since learned that by ingesting wind-born particles through the stomach (eating boggers), the immune system learns not to over react to them with a histamine response.
I think the best way... (Score:3, Funny)
Typing... (Score:1)
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If they really need to write something on a computer, give them a tablet with OCR so that they can see the letters they're trying to emulate. Don't t
Nothing at all (Score:3, Interesting)
This is entirely unscientific, but I have a gut feeling that a lot of the autism and similar developmental problems stem from the fact that people these days are not getting enough social interaction anymore. Technology should not be in a kindergarten, the time when children have the cognitive abilities to take an advantage of that will be later on.
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I think there's a correlation between writing articles and being a journalist. Articles probably cause journalism.
There should be an article about how articles don't usually get science right.
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So, my confusion stems from: "stem from" == "causation"; and you said "spot-on". My mistake; you must have meant something else.
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I think it's more than autism causes increased TV watching more than TV watching causes autism. My best friend's brother acts autistic (different diagnosis but simular disease) and he watches TV because he can't do much else and he's still (at 25) at a mental level where the pretty colors fascinate him. My friend also nannies for autistic children and others wi
huh? (Score:2)
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When our first daughter was about 1.5, she always wanted to play with the television remote control, so my wife and I thought, "Let's just buy her one of those universal remote controls that she can play with so that she won't break the real/expensive remote. Nope. Both daughters saw mommy and daddy using the TV's remote and that's the one they wanted to play
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Depends on how much you want to spend... (Score:3, Insightful)
|Disclaimer| I used to work for the company which distributed and supported the following products. I no longer work for said company, but feel deeply about the high quality of the product |end Disclaimer|
It is called "The Waterford Early Reading Program" [waterford.org] [although I believe they now have Math and Science [waterford.org] as well, but haven't personally seen these newer products]. It is currently distributed by Pearson Digital Learning [pearsondigital.com] [It was called Electronic Education, a division of Addison Wesley Longman when I worked there]
Anyway, the idea is that for Level One, a set of one to three computers [depending on class size] is placed in a Kindergarten [or Pre-K] classroom. Each day the students spend 15 minutes on the computer. Much like many reading programs the program guides the student through the process of learning to read, [actually the first couple days are spent teaching the child to use the mouse] using songs and games. In this case, the instruction is backed by research done by the Waterford Institute and the Waterford School [a private school in Utah]. The software is able to keep track of lessons/concepts which the student has or hasn't mastered, and can keep giving lessons on the items the student still needs help with.
In addition to the 15 minutes on the computer, each student gets a set of videos [with videos from the program], a set of cd's [with music from the program of course], and books [can you guess? With stories from the program]. These are for the students to take home, in the hopes that they can get their family to read with them, or at least play the music/video's to enforce the learning.
After Level One, they have Level 2 [First Grade] and Level 3 [Second grade] to continue building on the lessons].
In my years of supporting the product, and spending time in the classrooms, I have to say that I really believe it was a great program. The kids absolutely LOVED it! If the computers were down, the teacher would tell the kids that I was there to fix the computers. Without fail, the entire class would cheer loudly! Of only one system was down, and I had to stop some kids from using the other working computers, they would plead with me not to make them get off the computers until I swore to them that they would not lose their turn for that day.
I even had one kid stand up, turn around, look at me and pee his pants! The teacher said that this was not uncommon. The kids were so worried about losing their turn at the program, that they didn't want to get up to go to the bathroom!
There is a downside to this wonderful system though. It is NOT cheap. I don't know what the prices are these days [when I worked there, Pentium 2's were hot stuff], and I don't know what kind of deals can be done with private [especially out of US] schools. Generally the system was sold with anywhere from 1 to 3 computers plus a printer, and the cost included student sets [books/vid/cd's] and support for three years.
Generally our sales force spent 20% of their time selling the product to school districts, and 80% of their time helping the school districts find grants or other funding.
But if it's something your school might be able to afford, I highly, highly, highly recommend the product. Of course, it's only for English, but your students will get a great start on learning to read English with this program.
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I agree that this sort of thing should be limited, and most time in Kindergarten shoul
Teach the kids... (Score:5, Funny)
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Personally, I find equipping kids with 100 watt irons a bit more fun. At least then they can properly solder on a PL-259 connector onto RG-11 coax.
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My apologies to the tens of thousands of soldiers who can spell and do electronics.
suggestions (Score:5, Funny)
C, Ruby, Javascript, Actionscript/Flash are what I'd push now.
Kindergarten may be a bit early, but certainly by third grade, I think all students should be required to program as an integral part of all the curricula. An emphasis should be placed not on just computer languages, but on robust and secure software design methods.
And yes, you did read that correctly: third grade.
I also think that children should play online strategy games (like prisoner's dilemma, chess, and poker, at different ages) until they reliably and repeatedly win against novice players.
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Kindergarten may be a bit early, but certainly by third grade, I think all students should be required to program as an integral part of all the curricula. An emphasis should be placed not on just computer languages, but on robust and secure software design methods.
Dude, that's a bit over board. What you need to do is push Logo. Heck, each time that I check out the latest Logos I'm more and more surprised by the programming skill set being taught
Does the tool help get the job done? (Score:1)
Kids won't be hurt if they go their entire kindergarten year never using anything battery- or electrically-operated other than the water cooler and ceiling lights.
On the other hand, if you have a particular teaching goal that can be further enhanced by technology, then by all means use it.
When I was in Kindergarten, we had audiovisual technology like record/tape players and movie/filmstrip players
old tech (Score:2)
On the subject of Kindergarten... (Score:3, Interesting)
At the time I had fairly long hair, a goatee and was dressed head to toe in black. Black shoes, black trousers, black long sleeve business shirt, black tie. Not so much trying to make a statement, but I kept most of my wardrobe black so I always had something that would go with everything else. I lacked imagination, ok?
Anyway, I'm setting up one of these machines and I turn around to find a small girl sitting on the table watching me. She was probably five years old.
I said to her, "Hello sweetie, could you please hand that to me", pointing to the mouse sitting next to her and flashing my most pleasant smile.
She looked at me with a really miserable look and said "No."
"Oh" I remarked. "Why is that?" I asked, expecting her to tell me that teacher had instructed her not to talk to strangers, or some other good moral learning.
"Because, you're the bad man." I held back a bit of shock and proceeded to grab my own damn mouse and finish the job.
I wasn't just any bad man, I was *THE* bad man. Knowing I scared children so much kinda broke my heart. The next day I trimmed my goatee, got a haircut and started wearing Hawaiian shirts to work.
So I guess my advice is: When improving kindergartens through IT services, wear Hawaiian shirts.
You're asking the wrong question. (Score:2)
wireless fences (Score:1)
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If you are using a proper Skinner box [wikipedia.org] as your teaching technology, a wireless fence would be redundant.
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tools for education (Score:1)
some Open Source resources (Score:3, Informative)
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If you were in the US of A, I would suggest going to Big Lots, Ross, Burlington, etc and buying any cheap (less then $5) piece of licensed computer kid products (dora, mickey, clifford, etc) you can find. Sometimes you can find a 4 game combo for $5 that will have a mix.
My daughter is 2 yrs, 4 months old and knows the alphabet, numbers, some words, some math, speaks in full sentences, is polite and has already started potty training. Not all of that is because of h
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Your point is well taken. There is loads of cheap kids software to be found in the bargain bins of many retailers. Personally, I use linux with OSS because I am running my software on free, recycled computers that will only run variants of Linux, or Windows 98. And Windows 98 is no longer supported by MS.
I could buy a newer computer and run XP or Vista, but then the $5 software you mention does not seem so cheap any more. I'm not in a position to lay out hundreds of dollars for a kids toy, no matter h
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I was quite surprised at some of the things she understood - like the Gcompris water cycle game.
The list you link to is a bit short. I would add some version of Logo (we use Kturtle), and simple board games.There is a lot more I have not tried yet.
Once they can read and spell a bit, they can start using a web browser. My daughter recently did her first Google image searches.
For old
Stop Motion Animation + Legos (Score:1)
You can let the kids make their own themes, stories, etc. and let them run with their imaginations.
You can handle the hard parts, and if they're curious they can learn how to run the capture/playback software too, but it shouldn't be required.
Kindergarten Robocop (Score:2)
Toy Computers (Score:1, Interesting)
reading, verbal communication, sharing, motor control, imagination, all the
usual stuff.
If you can use technology to do that better, great, otherwise don't bother.
Whether or not you use "real computers," I WOULD put "toy computers" or
"pretend computers" in your classroom so the kids will have something that
"looks like a computer" that is OK to drop or abuse as kids will do. Also,
with toy computers they can pretend to draw and pretend to
A helpful answer (Score:3, Interesting)
You can provide children software without putting any computers in the classroom. All you have to do is give them displays which have a network connection. These are available from an Australian company called ThinLinx. You won't need to put network cables everywhere, either. You can use wireless networking. All you need for this is a wireless router, about $50.
You can add touchscreens to the displays at a very low cost by going with any of the Chinese touchscreen manufacturers. This will give you the ability to provide software that the children can interact with by just using their fingers. This software can teach them virtually any subject that you want to teach them. I have several such programs for children. They are fast learners and typically master interacting with the software in just minutes.
Foundations love to give money to educational institutions and educators looking for ways to apply technology to helping children learn. I'm willing to bet that you can get the small amount of equipment you need (since you don't need computers) from any foundation with children and education as their primary target. This describes most foundations. Any individual with a few thousand dollars could also provide enough money to properly equip your classroom.
With your Internet connection you will be find that anyone in the world could remotely manage, update and support a computer located in, for instance, your office, and that this computer would be more than adequate to support ALL of the wireless touchscreen displays that the children would be interacting with.
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Wow! this IS pretty interesting. Can you give me any more pointers or references on how to implement this?
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Just off the cuff: (Score:2)
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Consider further: a
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Remote terminals of the sort you described aren't that new. I remember something similar a few years back when thin clients were a big thing last (still?). Woo. Hardware and infrastructure still cost money, as does support for same. (They may not need anyone on staff, but they'll still need someone to fix things when they do, inevitabl
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The only technology little kids need is (Score:2)
a webcam (Score:1)
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At first we were trying to avoid that. The installed cameras (16 in total) are CMOS cameras which are really small mainly because we didn't want the kids to feel observed all the time. It took them less than an hour until even the 2 year olds realized that "daddy" was "whatching me on tv". So eventually we just had to go ahead and try to explain how they worked. The first couple of weeks, the classroom (i mean the teachers AND kids)
No Technology! (Score:2)
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Do average kids really just start on pre-reading skills by kindergarten? I know I and all my friends had started reading by the time we got to school. I guess it depends on the parents, and kids do develop differently, but I'd think they'd at least be able to learn to read in kindergarten. Also, can 5 year olds really ride bi
I want words. (Score:2)
I request that this newfangled technology called "written language" be applied in kindergarten.
Yes, I realize it's still in beta as it's only been around for a few thousand years, but I think written language is ready for the kindergarten level.
Such language can be implemented with either a traditional pencil/china-marker or the more technologically advanced "ball-point pen".
Small touchscreen (Score:2)
She can browse through selected pictures of animals, family, friends, etc.
There's an interactive portion where it shows three pictures and plays a recording "Where is the ball". When she touches the correct one, plays a small animation. Amazing what it's done for her vocabulary, and I have it running in English and Mandarin Chinese (wife's side of the family) for each object. She loves to play with it, gets about a half hour a day.
It'
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The copy designed for the touchscreen I used (search eBay for "ramline tablet") doesn't work too well when viewed on non-touchscreen, as I hide the mouse cursor and some javascript tricks to make the 'tapping' of an icon more sensitive.
If you're seriously interested, I can set up a slightly different copy so you can play with it on a PC.
OLPC? (Score:2)
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