Educational issues concerning young children and microcomputers: Lego with logo?

Microworlds, mother teaching behavior and concept formation in the very young child

“…Barnes and Hill (1983) stated that preoperational children cannot classify, yet research shows that young children can classify objects taxonomically (Mervis and Crisafi, 1982;Nelson, 1973;Rosch, Mervis, Gay, Boynes-Braem, and Johnson, 1979;Ross, 1980) depending on the level of stimuli they are shown: basic rather than superordinate or subordinate (Sugarman, 1979). Watson, et al (1986) reviewed young child/computer literature and found that neither recent cognitive theory nor research data supported the "concrete stage only" viewpoint.…”

“…PRESENT controversy over the microcomputer's monster/messiah characteristics (Shepard, 1985), premature conclusions that preschool children should not work with computers (Barnes and Hill, 1983;Bass, 1985;Brady and Hill, 1984;CufFaro, 1984;Tan, 1985;Sprigle and Schaefer, 1984;Zajonc, 1984), recent re-evaluation of the preschool child's cognitive abilities (Gelman and Baillargeon, 1983;Papert, 1980;Watson, Nida, and Shade;, and questions about how mothers will teach their young children to use a microcomputer led to the research reported in this article. A goal central to our research was to provide additional data in the hope of resolving the controversy as to whether or not preschool children should work with microcomputers.…”

“…Others (Sprigle and Schaefer, 1984;Tan, 1985;Watson et al, 1986) have also concluded that the abstractions inherent in two-dimensional graphic displays would not inhibit learning for young preschool children. Piestrup (1985) noted that microcomputer presentation of material is really no more abstract than picture books (the staple of early childhood education) and far less static.…”

Young children using computers to make discoveries about written language

“…Over the last decade, however, researchers have reported studies in which some positive impact on children's learning was identified. One set of studies described value to children within the context of the relationship between action on the computer keyboard to events on peripheral equipment (Hoot, 1986;Watson, Nida, & Shade, 1986). They noted that although computers have limitations, they serve to stimulate a variety of beneficial cognitive encounters for young children through graphics, touch screens, mouse manipulation, sound, and immediacy of response, among others.…”

Effects of Microworld Training Experience on Sorting Tasks by Young Children

“…One-third of the three-year-olds manipulated the oomputer and task independently. The abstract microcomputer task was shown to be no more difficult for young children than was the concrete doll house task.A number of researchers have called for a period of intensive testing to determine the proper role for the microcomputer in early childhood education [1][2][3]. Data are currently available to show that young children can manipulate the standard microcomputer configuration [4-10], work successfully alone or in small groups [5,8,11,12], manage meaningful microcomputer tasks as young as two to three years of age [8,[12][13][14][15][16], operate and learn from computer…”