We try to hammer it home that children need early and often exposure to technology to help them build the skills of tomorrow. Generally, the common belief is that this should start around first, second, or third grade. What if it could start earlier, though? Like as early as preschool. Those extra couple of years could wind up making a pretty large difference in the development of a child and, who knows, could ultimately help them reach greater heights. It’s very much possible to use technology in preschool classrooms and it’s pretty easy to get started if the right mindset is being used.
The Possibilities when Using Tech in Preschool
Today, toddlers live in a world in which technology is all around them. A lot of them know how to navigate a smartphone before they can even talk, for example. They also see adults and even their older siblings using it all the time because it makes such a difference in their everyday lives. Why, then, are parents and teachers so quick to shut down the beneficial use of technology among preschool students? Preschool classrooms have always been places where children got to dive in to hands-on learning by building, playing, and experiencing new things. Since much of the hands-on learning in later years involves technology, wouldn’t early exposure (a managed amount of it) be helpful to preparing these young kids?
Going out of your way to guard preschool children from accessing technology, in our opinion is, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, delaying their development. It’s a waste of time because they’re going to find a way to access it and use it. It’s delaying their development because they could be learning the skills they would be learning two or three years later at the time they are in preschool. They have the ability to point out shapes and colors on a child-friendly tablet, for example and they’re not going to get distracted by doing something like surfing the web because they probably can’t read yet and, most likely, have not set up a Facebook account. Rather than shielding children from technology in preschool, it should be a time in which teachers can introduce technology and model appropriate ways for them to use it.
We mentioned that preschool-aged children are more than likely already familiar with smartphones since they see them every single day. They know that there are appealing games they can access, so this could be spun in a positive way. There are hundreds if not thousands of digital games available on various app stores that encourage hands-on learning for preschoolers. There are even some apps that encourage them to get up and get active while they learn things like shapes, colors, numbers, and sounds. Interacting with this digital content has been known to boost communication and conversation skills, which, of course, is a good thing. And, observing how these children approach these games can provide very valuable insight into their learning processes. So, next time you think it’s too dangerous for a 3-year-old to use a tablet or other digital device, remember that they may just be trying to learn.
Teaching Preschoolers How to Think for the Future
Clearly, it’s beneficial for students to begin building future skills as early as possible. The problem is that we don’t necessarily know which skills will be the most important for them to possess some 20 years down the road. There are, thankfully, some skills that, if they possess them, pretty much everything they set out to do in their careers will be easier. One of those skills is computational thinking. Many scientists are predicting a future filled with artificial intelligence and machine learning, meaning that today’s students will have to find ways to be more valuable than these technologies. There has been some disagreement over just how to prepare students for this, but one very viable option is teaching them how to think like these intelligent machines.
The phrase ‘computational thinking’ is being used more and more frequently and refers to the idea of getting humans to think like computers. It sounds a bit high end, especially for students in preschool, but computational thinking definitely has value at this point in a student’s life. Their teachers can guide them toward problem solving in a way that highlights computational thinking and helps it become second nature for them in the future. Preschool students can use simple technologies to help them learn to think like computer scientists by formulating problems through data analysis and algorithmic thinking. The hands-on nature of these tech tools also encourages them to collect, analyze, and present data, all of which are important real-world skills.
Computational thinking also enables students to break problems down into smaller parts and sort the known information they have. By extracting information in this way, they’re able to better understand the larger system that they are working within. Finally, they can use algorithmic thinking to develop sequences and test solutions, which is certainly similar to the responsibilities many workers have in our workforce today. This seems a bit complicated, but it all comes back to teaching these young students how to think like a computer does. Eventually, it will become second nature to them and they will be much more inclined to succeed in a future filled with uncertainty and omnipresent intelligent machines.
Closing the Gender Gap Starts in Preschool
We’ve discussed this topic before and, more than likely, we’ll be discussing it at some point again in the future. Girls tend to lose interest in STEM subjects very early on in their lives and, as a result, more and more of them have no interest in pursuing a STEM degree. This creates a disparity in the workforce in which many more men than women are holding the top STEM jobs and earning the top salaries. Many school and district leaders have launched comprehensive programs to try to stifle this trend and many of those efforts center on consciously making STEM available and interesting to girls from a very young age. When they see that they can ‘hang with the boys’ for lack of a better term, it’s more likely that girls realize they can, in fact, make a future for themselves in STEM. How exactly can this be done, though, and what steps can be taken as early on as preschool?
Just like their male counterparts, preschool-aged girls are familiar enough with everyday technology, like smartphones and tablets. They’re perfectly fine with plugging these tools in and using them at a basic level. At such a young age, however, they lack the foundational knowledge, critical thinking skills, and reasoning skills to be able to absorb the content they’re seeing on a deeper level. Educators have reported this as a common problem among their students and, after some time, the conclusion has been made (among some) that students need this kind of technology earlier in their lives. It’s had some success, too. More and more teachers are finding they are better able to engage their preschool girls in learning when they’re able to make use of technology to play and complete challenging, educational games. When it comes to engaging these girls, the best approach is to be proactive—not reactive.
Children are very active learners when they are between the ages of one and three, which means that educators are wasting an opportunity if they’re not engaging them with technology at this age. Though it seems a bit over the top, these children can genuinely benefit from the opportunity to shape their foundations at this very young age. In fact, it’s come to be common thinking in the STEM fields that early engagement is a necessity for these children and this belief is starting to reach parents, who have a role to play in creating these experiences in preschool, too. This includes other steps, like making sure not to use discouraging language and always steering girls in the right direction, as well. Even though preschool is traditionally thought of as a time for playing and building social skills, it—perhaps more than ever before—also needs to be a time in which children can explore STEM and build the resilience they’ll need to tackle challenging obstacles in the future.
How to Prepare Preschoolers for an Automated Economy
The children who are in preschool now are going to be in for something pretty incredible when they enter the workforce in 20 years. What’s going to be so special about it? Well, nobody can know for sure what it will be like. A lot of experts are in agreement, however, that it will be largely automated and those trying to break into the workforce will need some particular sets of marketable skills. Now, of course, preschoolers cannot be expected to master some of these nuanced skills when they’re three or four years old, so it’s up to educators to give them learning opportunities that will help develop them on a foundational level. Using tools that are appropriate for children that age, preschool teachers can help these children learn things like building with blocks, persevering, and experimenting with different problem-solving approaches. Of course, they have no idea, but these are also the skills necessary to persevere in whatever the future economy holds.
As we know, advances in technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have eliminated a large number of jobs in recent years. Technology is only going to get smarter, too, so the assumption is that this will continue to happen. In fact, it’s believed that, eventually, parts of most jobs will be at least partially automated. Because of this, it’s near impossible to predict what the job market will look like when preschool-aged kids are ready to enter it. Jobs could be extremely different from what they are like today, we don’t know which ones will still exist, what will be newly created, and what will be done partially or completely by machines. This high level of uncertainty has led to the conclusion that children need at least some preparation for this starting in preschool. Students need to begin developing these foundational skills early before achievement gaps start to appear and they need their teachers’ help.
Since there is so much uncertainty about the future, it’s no longer uncommon for students to be learning things like coding before they even turn three. Some people have even gone as far as saying that this is just as important as learning basic literacies, like numbers and letters. It’s the other things children pick up on while they’re coding, however, that are just as important. This helps them begin to see what machines are good at and what they are not good at accomplishing, which is important because they will be the ones filling in those gaps. Do keep in mind, however, that no toddler should be expected to decode high-level programming and solve highly complex problems. Exposing them to technologies that help introduce them to coding is designed simply to lay the groundwork—not turn them into experts overnight. While this will take time, the eventual payoff should be noticeable and profitable.
How to Introduce STEAM Early On
In all grades of today’s top education systems, the best learning often takes place when kids are allowed to get messy and collaborate on hands-on projects. We ask, though, why should this be limited to elementary, middle, and high school? While there is usually not much of a formal curriculum for students this young, they certainly can still benefit from structured learning experiences. Even giving them a few random materials could (hopefully) result in them building something that at least resembles something useful, mimicking the idea of a makerspace in an age-appropriate way. For children this age, different learning approaches tend to work best when they’re combined, thus increasing stimulation and helping these young kids explore on their own.
At this age, the brains of children are developing incredibly rapidly and they very much benefit from active learning experiences as opposed to those that are not. This is the time to introduce simple game-based learning because kids are so drawn to bright colors and shapes, making interactive learning much more likely to occur. Of course, you’re aware that there are hundreds of apps designed for this purpose, so it may take some monitoring to be sure kids are using the best ones. Some may not offer the best learning experiences, for example, while kids may master others quite quickly and be left essentially going through the motions. Remember that every child learns differently! Taking that one step further, tablet-based games that also offer a tactile component, like Osmo or Puzzlets, offer greater benefits and deeper engagement if it’s possible to integrate something like that.
Utilizing tools like tablets and educational apps allows children to not only develop tech skills, but also work on softer skills, like creative problem solving and computational thinking. There are even tablets designed for toddlers if you wanted to take that route rather than introducing them to something like an iPad. The main goal of introducing STEAM learning experiences is to help these children discover how to learn. Technology promotes active curiosity in kids, especially when they’re around this age, and that’s a huge step towards remaining creative while they progress. As they realize that they’re allowed to use what they thought of as toys for tools to learn, children tend to show a stronger thirst for knowledge and cultivate this desire into experiential learning opportunities with the help of appropriate technology.
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