Looking at a computer network as an integral part of cognitive development in a primary school
Alixe Lowenherz and Claire Tomkyns of the Grove Primary School presented this paper, illustrated by the software mentioned and a display of relevant work produced by children at the school.
From the day they are born our children are exposed to technology. Television, satellite dishes, videos, compact discs, microwave ovens and computers are a part of the life of the modern day child. Even children who are less privileged and do not possess these items, are exposed to technology in public places such as supermarkets and shopping centres. Unlike many of us who had no experience of these items in our formative years, today’s child regards them as natural and essential furnishings in their environment.
It is therefore not surprising that our children adapt to this environment quickly and naturally. We are living in an age of information technology and our duty as teachers is to equip pupils with the necessary skills to operate effectively in this environment.
Computer literacy is therefore a basic skill and it is important that children begin this learning as soon as possible so that their skills can be developed and applied. We have found that very young children are able to master computer skills. They need to do this at the same time as they are learning to master other basic skills, which are the responsibility of the primary school.
COMPUTERS AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Whether you are working in a wealthy, sophisticated city school or an under-resourced rural school, the main aim of educating children is to teach them to think. At last, in our new curriculum, this is emphasised and thus given a central position in the planning and preparation of learning experiences for pupils.
Teaching children to think means enabling them to control the way their minds function so that they can interact effectively with their environment:
The critical outcomes in Curriculum 2005 express what we expect learners coming out of our education system to be able to do. These outcomes will be achieved through all the eight learning areas across the curriculum. The outcomes printed in bold are those directly related to computer use in primary schools, as we shall show.
Learners will:
To maximise full personal development, as well as social and economic development at large, all learning programmes should make learners aware of the importance of
The curriculum emphasises that there are many ways of enabling learners to achieve these outcomes, but for schools fortunate enough to have them, computers can be one of the most effective tools to achieve them. Contrary to what many suspicious parents and other adults expect computer classes to be like in primary schools- especially since we've had access to the Web - there is a very serious side to the enjoyment which makes the computer period so popular in primary schools. The delight and satisfaction experienced by children encourage learning and facilitate long-term memory retention. Learning blocks are often overcome because of the shift in focus from mathematical or language processes to the computer game format, and suddenly achievement is possible.
At our school, we have a catalogue of pupils’ software, and each teacher has a copy. It describes briefly each piece of software in terms of a target age group, the skills needed to use it, and the thinking skills it will enhance. We chose the software together as a staff according to the cognitive gains it would bring to the children. Also, we excluded any software which seemed to replicate what one could do in the normal classroom, in a book. We chose to use our computer time to emphasise very different learning processes and problems to the ones they would normally meet in class in order to extend, enrich, stimulate or re-inforce the learning process. Nearly all our teachers take their own classes to the computer lab so that it truly becomes a tool extending the work of the classroom.
With the catalogue, teachers can plan how to use the time they have available in the computer lab with their children according to what software they need for their current classwork. Each class has an hour a week in the computer lab with one computer to each child, and then children may come and use vacant computers when they have finished their classwork or before school, during breaks and after school.
Once you have mastered the basic keyboard skills, the main sense involved in computer work for children is vision. 72% of long term memory retention consists of data acquired through vision and 14% is acquired through hearing. This makes computers ideal tools for use in the learning process.
There are two other great advantages in using computers as part of the learning environment: the first is for learners with difficulties and the second for very able, fast learners. On the one hand, a computer has unending patience and doesn’t mind how many times you try again. It doesn’t scold or intimidate you. On the other hand, each child can go as fast as he/she would like, so nobody is held back because of slow learners. There is never-ending enrichment to be found in the world of computing.
One piece of software in which it is easy to see and measure the cognitive processes taking place is Shiva: Logic.
Consisting of 5 modules and an enrichment section, the program provides graded exercises in structured logical thinking. The following concepts are clarified: arranging and sorting, one-to-one correspondence, order, negation, reflection/mirror image, difference of one, definition of a set, relationships, states and operators, taking two decisions, intersection/conjunction, union/disjunction, correspondence, and differences.
It is useful from Grades 1-7; as well as for remedial purposes. Because it depends so much on visual information such as shape and colour, non-English-speaking children are not disadvantaged by too much reading and written instructions. The exercises are progressive in sequence; the later challenges requiring higher levels of abstract reasoning.
There is in the same software package a numeracy section which is just as good and interactive.
In this kind of software it is easy to identify all the processes happening. In a similar way, Maths Circus provides specific practice in some mathematical skills:
Maths Circus is a collection of puzzles based around a circus theme. The problems are designed to stimulate and provoke clear thinking in an enjoyable and challenging manner. There are 12 puzzles, each with 5 levels of difficulty. This takes pupils from very easy introductory problems to complicated thinking in well-gradated steps, and caters for a very wide range of age and competence. Pupils must use their initiative, ability to predict and learn from experience. What is so excellent is that there is no one correct method, so children are challenged to find their own methods in non-threatening situations. Children up to Grade 5 find different puzzles in this collection challenging, and its universal popularity depends on clear, attractive graphics, humour and the immediacy of clear results and rewards.
Connections is built around the concepts of connections and patterns. The activities help children learn and understand early mathematical and number concepts in a meaningful and attractive way. The activities include number, addition, subtraction, money, halves, quarters, odds and evens, graphs, place value. For Grades 1-4.
Often, children think they are just playing games, but their sense of satisfaction and achievement is in reality not merely derived from the surface enjoyment of the sound, graphics and vivid rewards which appear on the screen. Some of it comes from the awareness of having solved a problem, having found new ways to think and reflect. This metacognition is something we emphasise, and it is remarkable how early children understand and benefit from it.
Olipa Kalula, a Grade 3 pupil, says "I like computers becausse they are full of adventures and puzzles of all sorts. The educational games are not boring they strech your brain very much. As you go through the computer you discuver things that you never knew before. My favourite things are maths circus and lemings."
With younger children especially, discussing the process when they are stuck, and getting them to verbalise the problem, helps the development of their skills as well as metacognition. Computers should by no means replace a teacher in the classroom: what is happening on the screen is often a superb stimulus for individual verbalisation and discussion, when a one-to-one remedial session can take place while the rest of the class is profitably occupied on the other computers.
From the end of Grade 1 or in Grade 2, children can begin on problem solving games which incorporate just as many thinking skills, but present them in a game format. This is where defocussed learning and skills practice has great advantages for children who have an emotional block about mathematics, for instance.
Super Solvers Outnumbered! (The Learning Company) is a game in which each studio in a TV station provides mathematical challenges needing to be solved in order to defeat the villain who has been spoiling the programmes. There are different levels of difficulty in this popular game for Grades 3-6 with its very lively format.
The Castle of Dr Brain is really for the upper grades in the school, but as exciting enrichment it is played with great enthusiasm by children from Grade 2 upwards.
Players face many challenges as they apply for the position of Dr Brain's lab assistant. As Dr Brain is very intelligent and extremely demanding, they need to use their best problem solving skills to qualify for this unique position. The game can be played at three levels of difficulty, The problems set involve:equation creation, cubic creation, logic, acrostic and other word puzzles, code formation and deciphering, astronomy, binary mathematics and programming.
There are many computer games, like great stories and poems, based on the idea of a journey, where passing from one stage to another depends on the solution of a problem.
The Crystal Rainforest (Sherston Software) is an adventure game with an environmental theme based on rain forests. The problem solving includes mathematics: shape, rotation, translation and reflection, area, angles, money and currency. It is also an introduction to Logo, which is a programming language developed especially to develop thinking skills in children. We use this in Grades 3 and 4. There are many other intriguing adventure game with intriguing problems to solve, like The Crystal Maze (Sherston Software), which is most successful in Grades 5-7.
We also have software which teaches specific learning area skills, like the Mapventure series teaching geography skills, and two of a delightful archaeological series, about the ancient Romans and Egyptians which highlight history and archaeology. And there's the great series of simulation games like SimCity which reproduce all the complexities of real life.
As I mentioned before, computers are a wonderful tool for intellectual enrichment. A start in a programming language such as Turbo Pascal provides the opportunity for exciting interaction with the world of computing, and the more able children can extend themselves without limit. The same applies to HTML and the creation of Web pages.
A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MINDSET
Perhaps the most enriching aspect in the lives of all children is the development of a mindset to become a full participant in the information technology of the twenty-first century. Ubiquitous as it is and will be, this is essential for full membership of society now, and even more so then. It does not just mean being able to operate a computer or an automated teller machine, it means being able to think in a more complex way, and to consciously switch your own thinking processes to suit the problem at hand, whether it is related to information technology or not.
The use of a Windows word processor, the use of multi-media computer technology on CD ROMs and the playing of many interactive computer games illustrate part of what is involved. They all depend on the person interacting with the computer being able to do a number of things simultaneously.
To interact effectively, he/she must be able to take in what is on the screen in a whole-brain fashion, registering the whole screen with all its different information as one interrelated body of information. Simply put, the right brain detects the general and specific patterns and decodes the symbols while the left brain analyses and decides on the logical next action.
Adults new to computing look sequentially at the screen, taking a relatively long time to shift their gaze bit by bit from one part of the screen to another, often zigzagging around in a rather panicky fashion while they wonder what is relevant and whether they will damage anything.
Children do not sit down at the computer with any preconceived notions of technophobia or fear of failing the challenge, so they learn far more quickly to make this wholescreen assessment and then focus speedily on what and how to do it. For this to happen, there are thousands of unconscious calculations taking place within a second.
This is the kind of thinking one needs to survive in the infinitely more complex world at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first.
Having made the whole-screen whole-brain assessment, computer operating skills come into play, and the use of buttons, icons, dialogue boxes, etc, involve yet further kinds of thinking. Analysis, critical thinking, logic, prediction, hypothesising, deduction, and much rapid switching from one mode to another take place. The surface visual excitement of the screen stimulates enjoyment while it is all happening.
Eye-hand co-ordination is of course very important, but computers can be adapted for children with disabilities so that they can equally enhance their thinking skills. Computers are also, of course, a good way for children with deficits in learning and thinking skills to make them up.
Reaction and reward is immediate on a computer, which in turn speeds up the learning process and leads to long-term memory retention. Undoubtedly, technology will undergo radical change before our present primary school pupils are adults, but having acquired this kind of confident, flexible, appropriate mindset as children will enable them to make appropriate changes with the evolution of technology.
The primary school is where one acquires the tools for further education. Confident computer competence, along with numeracy, literacy and life skills must be a familiar tool before the transition to the high school takes place
Something else which has interested me deeply in looking at children and computers, is that the structure which is evident in the operation of a computer and its data storage and retrieval make a deep impression on children as a model for organisation. Once I tried to explain a family tree to Grade 4's using a real tree as an analogy. The class remained puzzled till one boy said "Oh, Miss, you mean it's like directories and subdirectories on the computer!" And then their faces lit up and they understood.
COMPUTERS AND THE TEACHING OF INFORMATION SKILLS
For pupils to learn to acquire information, they need to engage in the following activities at school:
INFORMATION SKILLS which are essential for primary school pupils to master are:
1 READING SKILLS
2 GRAPHIC INFORMATION
3 LIBRARY TECHNIQUES
Many computer programmes provide highly effective tools for the teaching and consolidating of these skills: These are some of the programmes we have found useful in the teaching of information skills.
1 FOR READING:
Naughty Stories, eg. Bobby the Boastful Bird (Sherston Software)
This is an excellent programme for beginner readers and for children whose second language is English. The children not only see the words, but they also hear the correct pronunciation. Pupils may also select words they find difficult and have them repeated. They can click on the picture or an icon for movement or sound in the picture. Pupils in Grades 1 and 2 thoroughly enjoy using this software.
READING FOR INFORMATION, OR RESEARCH:
This incorporates Graphic Information and Library Skills
Sherston Software: Talking Topics (eg. The Body)
This programme provides information on certain topics at a junior level. Pupils become acquainted with the idea of a main heading, sub-headings and main facts. The programme is similar to the stories in that the users can read and hear the information as well as use their mouse to have sound and movement accompanying the text. This software is best suited for Grades 1 to 3, and there are workcards which form a useful introduction to reading for information.
Microsoft Encarta
Frequent use is made of Encarta for research. Pupils find using Encarta more stimulating than ordinary encylopaedias as it provides additional visual and auditory information. Key words are taken directly off the screen or they print out the information and use it in place of a library book in the class. The word processor included in Encarta is very useful for taking notes, which can then be saved into the pupils’ usual MSWorks directories.
Word Processing Skills
As soon as pupils are able to write they begin to use the computer to type some of their work. Projects are done on the computer by pupils in Grades 3 to 7. The pupils are very proud of their work as their are fewer spelling mistakes (after carrying out a spelling check) and the presentation is more attractive. All our children use MSWorks from Grade 2 upwards.
The Internet
Pupils use the Internet, especially the World Wide Web, as a resource for finding information for projects and researching areas which are of interest to them. Information is also obtained from keypals when we link up with schools in other parts of the world for projects.
FOR LANGUAGE:
Sherston Software: Fleet Street Phantom
The user is a reporter, new on the job, at Fleet Street Newspapers. An employee of the company has gone missing and it has become obvious that their is a phantom at work as all kinds of errors keep cropping up in unexpected places. To find the missing person and the phantom, the user has to use the following skills: observation, spelling, matching, sequencing, ordering, deduction, elimination, mapping and punctuation.
Creative Writing and Word Processing Skills
These skills are used when pupils create stories, poems and essays. Some pupils have written and illustrated their own books using their language and word processing skills. Some of these books are on display at the conference.
Communication and the Internet
Pupils have keypals with whom they correspond. Some pupils have regular e-mail contact with family members and friends. There are also pupils who participate in chat groups. Correspondence becomes realistic and relevant and pupils are more inclined to become involved in these forms of communication than in normal letter-writing.
2 FOR GRAPHIC INFORMATION
The Crystal Rainforest (Sherston Software)
The king prohibits tree cutting as it is destroying the rainforest. The Cut Throat Gang are unhappy about this so they poison the king. To save the king, special crystals must be found in the forest or produced by computers in a professor’s laboratory. This programme which has an environmental message, teaches children mapworking skills such as cardinal points, following directions and giving directions.
Maths Supersolvers Outnumbered! (The Learning Company)
This programme, which was mentioned previously for its cognitive benefits, also helps pupils to analyze data from maps and graphs. Pupils have to read and understand questions in order to find clues. Supersolvers also makes use of symbols which must be matched correctly in order to find the Master of Mischief.
Mapventure 1 and 2 (Sherston Software)
Simon and Amy learn about mapwork in order to enjoy a country adventure. They need to avoid the Red Devil Gang who have set out to spoil their adventure.
Mapventure teaches children about overhead viewpoint, keys on maps, cardinal points, direction, co-ordinates, contours and orientation.
The display of work done by children applying their computer skills shows the beginnings of the multi-skilling which already is, and will increasingly be expected of people when these children are adults. Using one machine, the children are expected to use a word processor, spreadsheet programme, find information on the World Wide Web and on a CD ROM, and design products using a graphics program. Global communication via e-mail is also part of normal computer use in learning programmes. All of these differing aspects not only hone and develop their cognitive skills, but make them aware of the technology and the immense resources of our planet and its people.
As Mallin Moolman, Grade 3, wrote:"The Internet is the most fantastic thing. I visited Mars but stayed on Earth. I drove around and saw interesting rocks, I looked at the desolate surface and saw Earth."