Electronic toys do have a place in our homes and classrooms, not as a primary method but as reinforcers.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Electronic Learning....Yeah Right!
Today's electronic toys are making "learning" if you want to call it that, way too easy for children. From toys that talk to you, read to you and clue you in, authentic learning has just about gone out the window!
If I have a toy that will read every word that I point to, why would I want to learn to read! It's toys like these that are helping change the dynamic of teaching in the classroom. Teachers are getting away from teaching the process of learning "how to" to teaching memorization skills.
On another note, these toys are also taking away from parental involvement. While I recognize the new parent ( appointments, activities, networking, single parenting,) giving a child an electronic toy that talks to them cannot replace the learning that will take place from loving conversations between parent and child.
Electronic toys do have a place in our homes and classrooms, not as a primary method but as reinforcers.
Electronic toys do have a place in our homes and classrooms, not as a primary method but as reinforcers.
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Not disagreeing with the benefits of parental involvement, but just sharing a story.
ReplyDeleteI have a 2yo boy who loves playing on the iPhone. (I select apps for the age group.) On two occasions I almost fell off my chair with things he picked up. We have not spent lots of time drilling him on colors or the alphabet, but a while back (before he could talk) when asked to "pick up the red pen" he got every one right. I almost fell off my chair! Then later (starting to make 2 word sentences) looking at the alphabet I asked him "what's this letter" and he said it correctly, then for every letter but "W" (too hard to say!). Again, almost fell off my chair. We did not teach him all the letters. The only thing I can think of is playing on the iPhone he learnt them himself.
A limitation of iPhone apps I have seen so far is they can teach simple stuff: shapes, colors, letters, words, maths. They rarely teach concepts like emotions, art, social skills etc.