Morgan Birdsong
TED 400
Funds of Knowledge Technology
For this assignment, I sought to gain perspective into how the children I work with use technology and what their interest in technology is. I work at a preschool so our use of technology on school grounds is very limited. Teachers use technology, computers, cameras, and tablets, for documentation and assessment purposes and to communicate with parents but children use technology very infrequently on school grounds. The children in my class are 4 to 5 years old so because of limited literacy I had to customize my inventories. I created a parent questionnaire to get a sense of how children are using technology outside of school. Results follow.
The first question I asked the parents was regarding their children’s access to technology and what forms of technology their children use. All three parents said that their children had smartphone access but were only allowed to view pictures of family on them or to skype with grandparents. All three also said their children had access to TV. Two parents said that TV time was “limited” but did not specify what that meant. The other parent said TV was only “on weekends, shifting to 1x a week and focus on slow programs that are educational for the most part and movies”. All three also stated that their child has access to a tablet (1 Kindle, 2 iPads). One parent said that her child was allowed to use the iPad “every other week when the cleaning lady is here, for shows only”. I was curious about this limitation because I am aware that apps used on a tablet offer interactive material for children so I wondered why a parent would limit a child to viewing, consumption mode. This contrasted with the other parent who stated that her child’s tablet use was “preschool kid items only – no internet / youtube”, and also indicated that her children tend to stay engaged when using the tablet because “it’s interactive”. This indicated to me that one parent was being a bit more observant about the tablet use and also may be more informed as to what materials are available.
My second question was, “Have you noticed anything positive about their interaction with technology?”. All three had positive observations to share, largely related to learning and exposure to cultures and topics they would not otherwise have access to. One wrote, “we watch Dora – kids speak Spanish”, “we’re able to use lessons, songs from Daniel Tiger help with transitioning. Practice sharing & using words to problem solve (only one tablet 2 kids)”.
I noticed some underlying content in this last quoted questionnaire that I wanted to comment on. The “positive outcomes” this parent refers to appeal mainly to her own interests and motivations. The show Daniel Tiger, for instance, has an episode and a song called Grownups Come Back that is meant to help children transition to a daycare setting. It is something I have heard parents and children use during morning transitions so I believe it is useful for this mother when she just wants to drop her kids off at daycare and get to work. She also wrote about helping her kids find words when they are fighting over the tablet, the very thing she is trying to find positivity in! This ties into a larger observation that a good deal of why parents allow their children to use technology at this age may be to just occupy them so they can get some work done.
For the third question, I asked the parents if they noticed anything negative about their child’s interaction with technology. One parent kept it simple and wrote that her son gets upset when she turns off the TV or takes away the tablet. The other two commented on personality or possible neurological impact. One parent commented that her children “zone out” watching TV. The other parent said about her daughter that she has noticed “her attention span or listening to be affected if overexposed”, “Excited, irritable, aggressive – very unlike her”. This indicates to me that this particular parent believed that being “overexposed” to technology can have a neurological impact on children. This is clearly a concern for her but it appears she has justified the usage by a belief that using technology and watching TV in limited amounts do not have such an impact.
Next, I asked the parents if anything surprised them about the way their child uses technology. The dominant observation here was how quickly the children pick up on the technology, or how “intuitive” it is to them. This is something I have heard from others and something I have observed myself. One three-year-old child got a hold of my phone and was able to open youtube and start playing a song she wanted to hear because I had played it recently and it was in my viewing history. This is often surprising and sometimes a little creepy to adults because we do not think of children as being capable. I believe it speaks to the design of the devices themselves, they are expertly designed to be intuitive, and that fact that children are exposed to them from birth even if a lot of that exposure is just watching their parents use them.
Reading between the lines of parents’ answers to these questionnaires I couldn’t help but feel they were not being totally forthcoming with their answers to the question of what their children’s access is. One parent who said her children were only allowed to use her phone to look at family pictures also said that her two-year-old daughter was “better with her phone than she was” so the child is clearly using the phone for more than just looking at photos. She also stated, “they don’t have a lot of access” but provided details about what they were watching and several times mentioned her children fighting over the tablet which indicates to me that there is a considerable amount of access going on.
I found it interesting to pick up on parental anxieties about their children’s use of technology but was generally surprised at their level of permissiveness with technology usage. Through much of childhood, parental approval of technology usage is a major factor in the way children use technology and I think it is important to develop a communal understanding in approaches to the issue.