Blog Juice for Educational Technology

During a conversation that I had yesterday with Owatanna Schools’ Superintendent, Tom Tapper, he described how his four year old grandson was using Webkinz, a recent arrival (April 2005) to the virtual pets genre of children’s web destinations and current obsession for thousands of young children.  There’s been much written about concerns over the time children spend at computer interacting with games and with other children, and I do not want to minimize this concern.  I can still hear my mom telling us to go outside and play, as we sat glued to Saturday morning cartoons.  It was the only time with extensive children’s programming back then.  Nothing new here.  Kids will be kids, and parent need to be parents.

But what dinged in my head, as Dr. Tapper talked, was a comparison between his grandson’s play at a computer and my experiences watching Captain Kangaroo and my children’s with Sesame Street.  Although I made hats and newspaper trees along with the captain (I can still remember the sound of his scissors on construction paper), and my children sang along with Big Bird, I see something different in what children invest in their virtual pets and the social networking that happens.  They are not merely learning the information, but they’re working it, on its own terms.

Again, it’s critical that children learn to sing, play with other children, build with blocks, play in the sand, and read books.  But I wonder how learning to read, within the context of these online experiences, might differ from how we traditionally learn.  For this four-year-old, reading almost immediately becomes a tool that improves his experience.  It’s a skill that he uses to work his environment and, in this case, feed his pet, buy cloths, interact with and impress other children, and teach and learn.

Image Citation:
Chapman, C.C.. “Kids play on Webkinz.” CC Chapman’s Photostream. 22 Feb 2007. 22 Jan 2008 <http://flickr.com/photos/cc_chapman/398712827/>.