The educator, whether they be a professional or you are responsible for providing children access to information, and the means to interpret and use it. We cannot afford to toss out any tool available to us. Recognizing that our children are increasingly living in a technologically interconnected world necessitates an educator’s engagement in preparing young people to confront and thrive in such a world. Furthermore, judicious use of technology to disseminate techniques and materials to you and instructors is a simply good pedagogical process.
Reggio Emilia educators feel that kids should be engaged with physical items and the world around them. The use of digital/screen technology would seem to run antithetical to this. Just as a PlayStation is not a substitute for a basketball, a jungle gym, or a bicycle, a tablet should generally not be seen as a suitable substitute for a paint set, building blocks, or lump of clay. But, as Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of Reggio Emilia, once said:
“The meeting of children and computers is, in effect, the meeting of two ‘intelligences’ that need to get to know each other. The children’s intelligence is fluid, intuitive, curious, and yet able to ‘decentralize’ itself and assimilate new interactive rules, adjust its performance, to find alternate communicative and constructive proposals and solutions. The intelligence of the machine is more linear, rigid, programmed, in many ways an imposition, and in other ways receptive and willing to execute commands, able to listen to children and to encourage them (without humiliating them) to rethink their actions, to indicate the way out of a problem, to suggest the means for arriving at a ‘joining of forces.” (Malaguzzi 1996, p. 103)
So, it seems that there is a distinction between certain types of technology which provide a passive (i.e., YouTube videos) or overly “pre-fabricated” (first-person games) experience, to technologies that serve as tools and offer a “creator” experience. The fluidity of human intelligence can find a spark as it confronts and interacts with the more rigid and linear protocol of technology.
Like it or not, we live in a world in which our children will be engaging with digital tools in school, and eventually in professional situations, for the rest of their lives. Coding, digital design, music and sound composition, and recording, manufacturing, and robotics, economic forecasting, and accounting, all types of engineering and scientific modeling are just a few of the technology-dependent fields, with skills our kids are going to need to be able to master in the near future. There are certainly ways to engage children with the intellectual concepts that undergird the logic of these technologies, if not the technologies themselves so that they are prepared to engage with them with creativity rather than passivity. The goal should be to educate producers and makers, rather than simply consumers.
Furthermore, you need help in structuring days, creating activities, engaging with pedagogical techniques, and creating curricula and rubrics. Technology’s ability to deliver high-quality information to those that need it is unparalleled. The breadth of classroom materials and professional development opportunities available online is staggering. Classrooms and homes everywhere are already fitted with personal computers, tablets, smartphones, and televisions. Using them as organizational, analytic and dissemination tools for the educator is inevitable and should be managed for maximizing impact. Providing schools and homes with the materials they need, is a vital job in today’s world. It is incumbent on educators and care givers to have a service that does this with expertise and efficiency.
With that said, all of these terrific tools shouldn’t be employed without a healthy understanding of technology’s faults. Over the past few years, we have all become aware of the pitfalls of exclusively “online” learning and “social media”. The pandemic has forced us into our homes where our kids had nothing but their smartphones and computers to engage them. “Social media” and its’ disturbing dark side left kids vulnerable, and the social isolation suffered by so many kids during Covid lockdowns, as they had school via zoom, has been devastating to their social, emotional, and academic development. Care givers and educators have every reason to be concerned about social media and “e-learning”. Kids need teachers, friends, family, and schools. The “virtual” versions of these things should be avoided. Screens can enhance, but should never be a substitute for human interaction and physical play.
But Technology can bring a library full of texts, a museum full of art, and peers and teachers from all corners of the globe into the home of students. No classroom or home can possibly hope to be equipped with this sort of access without it. Technological tools can allow you to measure student progress and provide appropriate lessons for their skill level. Technological tools can help bring texts to life by providing multimedia supporting materials. Children can learn music and art using online instructional tools. The possibilities are limited only by the imagination of the educator and their access to tools to assist them.
