Our feature this week is written by Henry of Ducky Lucky, an app development studio where two brothers-in-law plus nephew created an interactive app for firetruck fans. Henry contemplates the question we continue to ask ourselves: are apps good for young kids? As we form our opinions and policies on how our children interact with technology, it’s always interesting to add another point of view.
We have a son who loves firefighters. Naturally, many of our activities center around firefighter-related activities such as watching instructional fireman videos for kids, reading books related to firefighters and visiting fire station open houses. However, when my brother-in-law said he was going to develop an app called Kids Fireman for our son, I was skeptical. Our son had never seen an app before and I was not sure if it was a good idea for kids to start playing with an app so early. As I watched our boy play with Kids Fireman, however, I was quickly convinced that apps do have certain values for kids.
Our boy was three years old when Kids Fireman was complete and he started playing with it. He went from fumbling around to poking, sliding, moving and touching with dexterity at such a frightening speed. When I tried Kids Fireman for the first time, he started to show me some of the things that I missed. The value of apps for kids was further confirmed when we went to our boy’s parent-teacher conference at a Montessori school that is pretty well respected in the region. The school showed us all the activities that they go through daily to emphasize the importance of finger movements and the ability to learn from touching and feeling. Can apps assist with such a learning process? I believe the answer is yes. Although apps cannot be a substitute for many of the learning activities that kids go through at school, I believe that apps can supplement some of the learning process and enhance learning.
I haven’t seen any studies that relate apps to very young children’s brain development (perhaps someone will do this in the near future and such correlation will be established). However, there are many studies and reports that talk about video games in general and how that affect our brain – there are both positive and negative reports (one particularly good article I found is here: http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=22800). In spite of these conflicting reports, they seem to agree that video games teach certain skills and improve visual acuity. Apps, in my mind, go a step beyond video games because apps require kids to point, tap and slide small images and icons on a relatively small screen. This requires finer motor skill, which would be beneficial especially for toddlers and pre-schoolers who are just learning how to utilize their motor skills.
Are apps good for kids? The jury is still out until the scientific community decides to back that up with some concrete data. However, one can certainly make a case for the benefits. I, for one, am a believer that apps deliver “skills” and learning processes that are valuable for toddlers and pre-schoolers.
Although there hasn’t been research done specifically on touchscreen apps for babies and toddlers that I know of, there’s certainly plenty of research done on young children and learning from various forms electronic media.
Patricia Kuhl (co-director of the Institute for Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington) recently presented some of her research at TEDxRainier where her research showed that at a deep brain scan level, exposure to different languages to babies made zero difference if it was delivered by electronic media (in her example, video of a person attempting to engage with the baby). The babies’ brains automatically filtered it out as noise and no cognitive learning occurred. If the language was shared by a live person with physical interaction, the babies’ brains automatically engaged and significant learning was achieved, demonstrated by motor interactions as a well live brain scans of the events. This pretty much shows that audio and video type media for babies “learning” foreign languages by immersion are useless. You need a live person. You can watch her talk here for more information: http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies.html
Within the early childhood education community, there is a strong preference for non electronic forms of learning, one reason being that most electronic media/apps have strong prescripted forms of play. At that age, children’s cognitive development relies strongly on free form expressions of play and exploration. Apps certainly provide some elements that can be part of a balanced curriculum, but the danger is that parents may attempt to provide a range of apps as play at the risk of losing far greater benefits from free form, non-electronic play. Esa’s written about the alarming drop in free play from children the world over on this momswithapps post: http://momswithapps.com/2010/11/07/let-the-children-play/
The Dana Foundation report cited above references violent video games specifically. At the early ages you’re talking about – children’s cognitive learning is doing something very different – “parallel play” for the toddlers and preschoolers. I think it’s a case of apples and oranges – the study doesn’t relate to early childhood learning at all.
I do think that apps such as Kids Fireman can help children develop significant hand-eye coordination and fine-motor skills. If you’re interested in early childhood cognitive development though, there’s a rich body of research available to learn from and design apps from that basis.
– Ian
I love the information you provide and think that apps are wonderful learning tools when monitored by parents. This is the world we live in now and the technology should be incorporated into traditional learning methods.
This just popped up on my twitter stream from my friends Amy Jussel (shapingyouth.org) and Janet Lansbury.
http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/11/4-reasons-to-ditch-academic-preschools/
Janet’s post has links to lots of good cognitive and social research and learning strategies for early childhood education. In my opinion, this is the direction apps and their related platforms should foster to make quality early childhood experiences. Definitely a challenge to accommodate those principles, but the solutions will be highly innovative and most importantly – doing it by understanding the reason why will result in significant outcomes for children AND their families.
– Ian