Incorporation of technology in Early Childhood Education in Chiledu Academy

The purpose of this research is to assess the incorporation of technology in early childhood education.  This research is a case study of Chiledu Academy where the school’s teachers were respondents. It also incorporates observations made in the school’s educational setup. The content analysis technique is used to analyze the data that was obtained from the institution. Findings from the research show that the institution has already acknowledged that technology is improving the skills of their students. It is also evident that it is a collective obligation of the government, the teachers and the parents to make sure that the resources available for the young students are educative and relevant for the students. They, however, acknowledge that without monitoring, this resource can be possibly utilized to corrupt the minds of the innocent young children

In his article about Computer education and use by pre-school teachers, Towns clearly acknowledges Tsitouridou and Vryzas acknowledgment of integrating ICT in the teaching of young children (Towns, 2010 p. 28). He clearly states that teachers have a big role to play in imparting knowledge in young children using technology. They are the ones to also exercise control over the gadgets that are available for the students to use to learn. For this to achieve its intended purpose, teachers have to recognize the contribution that the use of this technology is going to make in the development of young children’s learning.

In support of this in his article “Point and click: Theoretical and phenomenological reflections on the digitization of early childhood education” Mangen details that the use of technology in early childhood education needs to be focused rather than just offering new information and new technology to the young ones. What they access to the technology needs to be vetted and administered by a trained teacher (Mangen, 2010 p. 417). The government should take the initiative of providing this content and disburse to a common online resource for access by all schools. Other governments have developed curriculums that have incorporated technology in student learning. This is not an exception for Chiledu Academy. The school has television sets in each of their five early childhood classrooms. Each class also has an assigned digital radio as well as enough tablets to be shared amongst the school’s students in the ration of four children for each tablet. The school has a student population of 120 with each class having about 25 students.

BENEFITS OF THE RESEARCH

There is increasing growth in the use of technology in human day to day activities. With the emergence of mobile devices, game consoles, tablets, and personal computers, most households are embracing the use of these technologies in helping their children learn. The world is waking up to new child-friendly content being uploaded onto the internet on YouTube and other platforms. The content comes as learning or gaming content. Most of the content requires child interaction with the application, for instance, talking Tom where the child practices pronouncing words and the animated application pronounces them back for the child to listen.

Perhaps the driving force behind this shift of including technology in teaching young ones is the urge to develop their skills and improve their creativity. This will be best achieved if the technology employed exploits all communication means such as voice, gestures and other movements to emulate face-face communication rather than using computer peripheral devices only which has failed to exploit fully, the creativity and various communication mean at human’s disposal. The purpose of this research is to come up with the various technologies that are employed in early childhood education, their various utilizations and the various social and behavioral impacts that they are intended to achieve (Flieller, Jarlégan & Tazouti, 2016 p. 318). In this research, we set out to uncover the various benefits that are related to using technology in classrooms especially for teaching young children. This research will also unearth the various thoughts that exist about the use of technology in childhood education and a general view of whether parents and teachers are in support of its use in teaching.

Improving engagement

It is attributed that technology is known to catch one’s attention. This is one of the reasons why it is being employed in teaching. Students learning a concept being displayed on a digital media say television become more interested and pay attention as opposed to having a teacher present the same concept in class. In fact, there are different ways in which technology can make learning more fun. Children can be taught through games, virtual field events or even the use of readily available online resources. Having an animated event that teaches children how to do something say wash their hands; has proved to impart this knowledge faster in children and it is more captivating to them. This is solely because the children tend to have a different perspective than they are watching unlike they are being taught which is the scenario they see in the traditional learning environment.

Knowledge retention

Remembering what one has learned is dependent on how much the child retains in the lecture. Presented with two scenarios; one where a teacher presents a learning concept in a typical learning environment and the other where a digital device, say television, is used to show a recorded clip of the concept. However much the concept is the same, the teaching means are different. Children will recall faster a clip that they have seen about how something is done as opposed to having someone stand in front of them and do it. Perhaps this is owing to the fact that they will pay more attention to watching the television than setting their eyes on the teacher in front of them. Notably, one can recite word by word what they heard being said in a recording than they could if said by a teacher in class.

Encourages collaboration

When well utilized, technology encourages students to practice collaboration. Resources are shared in online forums and students can be put into groups and tasked with completing the tasks as a group. This will encourage group participation which in the long run will harness their collaborative skills. In a children’s class, tablets can be used by groups of say three children to answer mathematics questions presented in a mathematical randomizer application. The children are instructed to consult one another and when they are in agreement with the correct answer, one of them selects an answer from the available choices and the application responds whether the chosen answer is correct or not. It can also say the correct answer if they got it wrong.

Acquisition of useful life skills

The world is changing very fast and the world is transforming into a global village owing to the invention of the internet. Neglecting technology changes in life will render some if not all our life skills obsolete at some point in the future. Currently, most products and services are taking a technology shift. One can render services in a different part of the world remotely using available remote access applications and be paid for the service without leaving the comfort of their house. For instance, a consultant can hold a video conference with different members located in different parts of the world and these members pay the consultant through available digital platforms for the service. It is, therefore, important that young children become conversant with the use of technological tools available so that they are not disadvantaged in the future.

Benefits for teachers

There are numerous resources available online for teachers to use in preparing for their lessons. The various sources of resources give the teachers a variety of choices from which to make a comparison as well as get different ways of presenting the same concept to the students in different ways. In addition to having a variety of teaching material, technology helps teachers save on time used in completing tasks such as grading and even administering assessment tests. Students can be given online assessment tests which are prepared by the teacher and uploaded together with answers. As the student answers the questions, they are assessed and graded and given an overall grade on completion of the assessment.

 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES

This research is set out to determine whether there is any technology that is incorporated in teaching young children in Chiledu Academy. It is also set out to determine how the technology is impacting the children’s learning as well as the views that the teachers have concerning the use of technology in teaching young students. The research hypothesis is that the use of technology in early childhood education is beneficial and has the support of most of the teachers involved in teaching young students.

Research questions

In the quest to find out how technology is being utilized in the teaching of young children, this research is guided by the following research question

(1) What tangible technologies are being employed in childhood education?

(2) What are the educational uses of tangible technologies in childhood education?

(3) What pedagogical approaches are being used in the incorporation of technologies in childhood education?

RESEARCH DESIGN

Research Methodology

Participants

Once permission was obtained to collect responses from teachers in Chiledu Academy, interviews were conducted with each of the teachers teaching young students. Teachers were considered as participants since they are the ones better positioned to acquaint us with the information of whether incorporating technology in teaching them is beneficial or not. This formed the start of the data collection exercise as attributed by researchers that there has to research for any project or research (Marshall & Rossman 2011 p. 108). The first part is to identify where the research is to take place.

Data Collection

A questionnaire was the most appropriate tool for use in collecting data for this research. The questionnaire gave room for pre-determining core questions that the teachers were to respond to as well as have followed up questions that will clarify any unanswered questions that may arise during the interview (Brenner, 2009, p. 362). The main question was “Do you incorporate any technology in your teaching”. This was followed by a provision of where to include a reason for incorporating this technology in their teaching and a provision for listing the various technologies that each of them uses. It then sums up by inquiring about the outcome that they have got from incorporating this technology into teaching. This includes providing the advantages and the disadvantages that they have experienced in using technology in class.

Data Analysis Technique

Content analysis was preferred since it enables researches to analyze written data as this case study employed the use of a written questionnaire. It can also be applied in a context such as this where systematizing and quantifying of data is required (Fraenkel &

Wallen, 2009 p.484). In qualitative data analysis, the data can be broken down into manageable units and patterns be sought in the organized data.

Research Strategy

This research is a case study research carried out in Chiledu Academy. Its analysis also entails other researches carried out in various schools to ascertain that this is not a singularized finding of the benefits and other impacts of incorporating technology in teaching young students. the major limitation of this research strategy is that it may not reflect the feeling of all school teachers. Schools may not have the same resources at their disposal to use in incorporating technology in their teaching especially purchasing computers and television sets or tablets to cater to all their student population.

SAMPLING STRATEGY AND METHOD

The research targeted teachers teaching children. The teachers formed the largest data source. Data collection was through a questionnaire where each of the teachers involved gave responses to each of the questions provided. This is in accordance with good research preparation and planning as supported by Marshall and Rossman (2011 p.107), who say that sampling has to start with accessible sites. The research took 1bout 5 hours with a mix of an oral interview and questionnaire filling sessions for each of the teachers. It also involved a session where the use of a tablet to teach young children addition concepts in basic mathematics.

DATA ANALYSIS

The data obtained from this research is qualitative data which is subjected to analysis based on the number of respondents and whether they are in support of technology use in early childhood education or not. The data collected from Chiledu Academy is straight forward as the respondents gave their answer whether they support technology use in teaching young students and gave a reason for their respective support or decline.

It was a unanimous response that all the teachers at Chiledu academy employ the use of technology in teaching the young students. The most used technological media are television, tablets, computers, and radios. They all acknowledged that the incorporation of this technology in teaching the students has eased their work and is positively improving the students’ performance in class and other school activities.

The rate at which the student grasp concepts presented in this technology incorporated lessons is higher than when a typical learning environment is employed. The teachers observed that the young students pay more attention to watching even their own teacher present a concept through the television or listen over the radio than have the same teacher stand in front of them and present the same concept.

ETHICS APPROVAL AND DATA SECURITY

Before collecting this data, approval had to be sort from the school’s director who then gave the go-ahead for the teachers to give free and honest responses to the questions in my questionnaire (Rogers 2015, p.57). This was necessary since the data that I was collecting belonged to the school and may be accessed by other readers. For security purposes, names have been withheld as well as any personal information to make this data anonymous to protect the school’s data as well as the respondents. The data collected is stored in an encrypted excel file that was also used for the analysis of the responses obtained.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

RISK RATING

Risk Rating Table

TIMELINE

RESOURCES AND DRAFT BUDGET PLAN FOR PROJECT

The following is a breakdown of the probable costs that will be involved in conducting this research.

Bibliography

Brenner, M. E., 2009. Interviewing in educational research. Handbook of complementary methods in education research, 2(1), pp. 357-370.

Fletcher, A., 2016. Applying critical realism in qualitative research: methodology meets method. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 20(2), pp. 181-194.

Flieller, A. J. A. a. T. Y., 2016. Who benefits from dyadic teacher-student interactions in whole-class settings?. The Journal of Educational Research, 109(3), pp. 311-324.

Fraenkel, J. R. &. W. N. E., 2009. How to design and evaluate research in education. Educational Research evaluation, 1(3), pp. 470-498.

Mangen, A., 2010. Point and click: Theoretical and phenomenological reflections on the digitization of early childhood education. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 11(4), pp. 415-431.

Marshall, C. &. R. G. B., 2011. Designing qualitative research. Handbook of complementary methods in education research, 5(2), pp. 357-370.

Rogers, W., 2015. Open access as a requirement for research ethics committee approval. Journal of research ethics approval, 2(1), pp. 52-99.

Towns, B., 2010. Computer education and computer use by preschool educators. Journal of computer use by educators, 4(1), pp. 24-35.